Reply #60: Here's what I was going to say, and its implications are interesting:

[Peace Patriot]

I was going to say that I'm just about ready for a LEFTIST dictatorship. Demolish the AEI. Shut 'em down. To Hell with rightwing "bought and paid for" free speech! Orange jumpsuits for Gonzales and a few others (--although my favorite punishment for Bushites is a lifetime of cleaning bedpans in Veterans' hospitals). Nullify the "trade secret," proprietary vote count of 2004, and all Bush appointments and "edicts" since then. Dismantle the corporate oil giants, pull their corporate charters, seize their assets for the public good. Dismantle the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, pull their license to use the public airwaves, and open up our public airwaves for political debate only among people making less than $50,000 a year.

It was a great fantasy--as American democracy seems to be breathing its final gasps.

But then I got to thinking what kind peril the Bushites have put themselves in, with all these outrageous extralegal assertions of power--to spy, to detain, to torture, to unsign bills passed by Congress....

Of course, this is what the "balance of powers" and the Bill of Rights are all about--to protect the minority, to assure the rights of those who are out of power. And this is why the Bush Junta's behavior is so stupid, ultimately. The powers that they are asserting can be turned against them.

Some people fear that martial law is coming--that the Junta will simply not give up power--and that we are about to lose ALL our rights in a Nazi boots clampdown. But when I look around me--at the polls, for instance, showing only 13% support for sending more troops to Iraq (--and a Gallup poll at that, which means the real stat is more like 5%)--70% wanting the Iraq War ended now, 84% opposed to any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war--the dissent in the military, both exiting generals opposing an escalation, even Daddy Bush chiming in with the "Iraq Study Group" report (trying to put the brakes on Dimson and a Mideast conflagration), and even the war profiteering corporate news monopolies wanting more Democrats in Congress (--unleashing an old pedophile scandal on the Bushites just before the election)...these things and more...the sheer size of our country and its cultural variety (so unlike Germany), the absence of Nazi youth groups marching around (virtually no one buying the war propaganda, or anything else)...

I just don't see how they could do it--clamp down on the U.S. I think it's a rightwing fantasy (--that bleeds over into the left's paranoia). How, practically, could it be done?

I can see how they can attack Iran and get away with it--and try to involve all future Democrats in protecting Exxon-Mobile's oil fields. That's a plausible scenario. But I don't see how they can survive the explosion of dissent and opposition that will occur as a result. For one thing, we simply don't have the money (not to mention the troops) to occupy Iran. So they attack Iran--then what? Another plausible scenario is that they attack US here at home (--what many people believe they did on 9/11). Another "terrorist" attack that disrupts the government--maybe followed by martial law, suspension of Congress, etc. But where are they going to get the troops to control THIS country in that case? They've bled us of National Guard! Most of the military is in Iraq. How are they going to control all the people on these two huge land masses--the U.S. and the Middle East?

I'm just sitting here shaking my head. Yeah, their assertions of power are damned scary--but what of their ABILITY to use those powers? It's EMPTY power. Almost no one supports them. Down the line, maybe, when this country is as poor and abject as Germany was in 1932, they or someone else could conceivably convince the majority to 'sieg heil.' But that is not the case now. Far from it. The American people have obviously grown impervious to the 24/7 war propaganda.

So maybe what we have more to fear--than some desperate Bush/Cheney moves to avoid prosecution and removal from power--is a future "liberal" Corporatist (a la Clinton) coming BACK into power, and using the spy network, and the detention, and the torture, to keep WINGERS out of their hair, while they re-impose global free piracy on an reluctant world, privatize everything, throw a few sops to the slave labor, and institute a Draft. Hell, I might end up joining a winger militia!

Could it be that all this Bush Junta stuff that gets you in the gut--suspension of habeas corpus, torture, ripping up the Constitution and so on--and even the war, are DISTRACTIONS? And that what's REALLY going on, or rather, what's really important, is...the consolidation of CORPORATE power. Not military and police power. But the power of Corporations and their "trade secret," proprietary vote tabulation choice in '08, for instance, to override Congress on global free piracy, or to prevents moves to pull their charters and curtail their media and lobbying power. They may like the violent enforcement power, but that's not what they're really after. They're after the "signing statement" power!

Bait and switch. While Bush is dazzling us with his dramatic tyrannical assertions, and escalating in Iraq--items sure to get the Left (the majority) upset--the Corporate Rulers have no intention of poisoning the Middle East with nukes, or permitting an extensive war. There is not much profit to be had in that (--beyond what they've already drained out of our treasury). But there IS profit in squeezing the poor, here and abroad (South America, for instance), and looting all the earth's last resources, everywhere they may be found (--again, South America comes to mind). And for that final plundering, they need to have power over, 1) our election results, and 2) any residual populist sentiment in Congress. Diebold takes care of the first, and to some extent the second. Bush's "signing statements" takes care of the rest. (--also, spying for blackmail of any of our reps who slip thru Diebold's "trade secret" programming, and who cannot be bought). It could be that the Corporate Rulers don't give a crap what happens to Bush and Cheney. Maybe they're just as discardable as all those leftists and peasants that the Corporate Rulers threw out of airplanes and buried in mass graves in Latin America in the '80s (with the help of some operators in the Bush/Cheney Junta). Maybe they'd just as soon see Bush/Cheney immolate themselves on the Mideast pyre, as long as Congress never challenges the most important (to them) of the president's new imperial powers.

Are we all talking about the wrong thing? It's not the war; it's the "signing statements" (and Diebold). Well, I wouldn't say, don't talk about the war, or protest it. Of course we should. But haven't y'all noticed the hollow quality to the war debate, in the corporate media? It FEELS like bait and switch. Maybe it's just bait and switch regarding motives (real motive: more war profiteering). But it could be bait and switch regarding EVERYTHING. And it certainly wouldn't surprise me to find our soldiers' lives, and Iraqi and Iranian lives, being used this way--as a distraction. That's how the lives in the WTC were used.