Jane Smiley on Huffpo. Bush is not making mistakes.

[bklyncowgirl]

President Bush is not makeing mistakes. Things are going according to plan very nicely. The ultimate goal: a total transfer of money and power from the middle class to the corporate elite.

All I can say is wow, just wow.

She has articulated everything that I've had simmering in the back of my mind for a long time.

No doubt she's earned herself an honored place on Bush's enemies list.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/a-tenstep-program_b_12451.html

[TahitiNut]

1. In a (Tahiti) Nutshell ...

... it's delusional to depend in any way on what they feel or what they think. It'd make more sense to attempt to befriend the Ebola virus.

[babylonsister]

2. Wow! First 2 paragraphs-NOM!

Is Bush in a bubble? Is Bush a dry drunk? Is Bush a drunk drunk? Is Bush a narcissist? Is Bush an idiot? Is Bush a madman? Does Bush have an “Authority Problem”? Theories abound about why Bush does the things he does, but most of them assume that he is making mistakes that he could or would correct if he understood how misguided he was.
On Monday, there was an editorial in the New York Times lamenting the apparent indifference of the Bush administration to the rebuilding of New Orleans, the levees in particular. On Tuesday, there was another editorial, excoriating the shameful behavior of the Bush negotiators at the Montreal conference on global warming. The gist of both editorials was that without national leadership, two chances are about to be lost--the chance to rebuild the city of New Orleans and the chance to mitigate the effects of global warming. Then at the end of the week, we learned that Bush has been wiretapping the phones of his own citizens--an impeachable offense. The Times writes as if it is possible still to alter the direction of Bush administration policy, but obviously it is not. The Bushies have a pattern and they stick to it in spite of every apparent reason to change course. It’s not as if we don’t know what pattern it is, and it’s not as if they haven’t advertised what the pattern will be--it is to break down the government so completely that it can’t be put back together again. Let’s take a look at the “mistakes” the Bush administration is said to have made, and, instead, ask ourselves if they are actually realized intentions:
more...

[Swamp Rat]

9. I hope Bushler is 'spying' on this article.

[converted_democrat]

3. WOW.....Just WOW...What a read!!!!!!K&R...n/t

[merbex]

4. My daughter is currently taking American History as a junior in High

School

This essay by Jane Smiley should be required reading. I am constantly telling my daughter that US History is important not only because of what happened in the past but because of it's relevence to today(current events)

History should guide us;I think all of us here on DU love American History and have a good understanding of it - we are the threat that Lynne Cheney and her efforts to control the teaching of history sees.

[xchrom]

5. the legislative branch, the judicial branch, the executive branch,

and the corporate branches of the new american political spectrum.

bushco is merely a symbol for a branch of government that for too long has been hard to describe -- but smiley just came as close as any i've ever read.

bushco -- like any good corporation has been about eliminating a certain amount of competition from the other branches of our government -- not do away -- but make the corporate indispensable.

[Horse with no Name]

6. Awesome read

K & R. Thank you.
>>>>
snip
My point is not to psychoanalyze Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. How they came to think as they do, and how things look to them are not actually very interesting. What is important is that average Americans come to comprehend how dangerous they are, and how destructive their plans are. Do they actually plan to disenfranchise everyone but their reliable base? Well, yes they do. Can they? If they have control of the electronic voting machines, they can. Do they actually plan for their associates and cronies to skim off vast quantities of the taxpayers’ money? Well, yes they do. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, and the major war industries already are doing so, and they have taken plenty from the Indian tribes and foreigners, too Do they actually plan to let New Orleans, that blue spot in a red state, slip away? Looks like it. Do they actually plan to destroy the middle class? They are making good progress--poverty was up twelve percent last year, and the “booming economy” is strangely low on job growth, at least for Americans. The catalogue of their “successes”, or, as average Americans might term it, their “failures”, is pretty long. Given the sympathy the Democrats afford them, we can stop them in only a few ways, it seems--by constantly bearing witness to their crimes, and prosecuting them if and when we can, by never underestimating the ruthlessness of their motives and the enormity of their goal, by being immune to their habitual public relations tools: fear, accusations of betrayal, false patriotism, appeals to populist and religious resentments, use of political red herrings like gay marriage. Most important, we must make every effort to oversee and guarantee the credibility of our elections.

[xchrom]

7. and i gave it a recommend.

[BlueEyedSon]

8. You got me interested, but i thought I would add some red meat for others:

We normally think of American political thought running along a single continuum, from right to left, from, let’s say from the Ku Klux Klan to the American Communist Party. Most Americans fall in the middle. Moderate Republicans live next door to moderate Democrats, and the way moderation expresses itself shifts, and is expected to shift, from region to region. In an ethnically diverse country where ideas, and ideology, are important, Americans generally understand, almost without realizing it, that moderation is what holds things together. But American political thought runs along another continuum, too, not a continuum of ideas but a continuum of power. What differentiates various groups on this continuum from one another is their embrace or rejection of power as a goal in itself. Essentially ideological thought seeks power in order to achieve certain ideas; power-oriented groups use ideas in order to achieve power. In the conservative movement today, this split is evident--old-line conservatives distrust the Bush administration because small government, low debt, and isolationism are about circumscribing the power of government. Bush is about enhancing the power of--well, I almost said government. But any government is essentially a smoothly-operating bureaucracy. Bush is about enhancing the power of himself and his cronies and dismantling any countervailing entity. The Bushies are not shy about acting on their craving for power (as in the K Street Project) or about talking about it--”Permanent Republican control of the three branches of government.” In addition, Bush himself tends to express his desire for power when he’s joking about how it’s easier to be a dictator than a president, or how the Chinese sure know how to treat journalists. The only reason the Bushies are called “conservative”, as many conservatives will themselves tell you, is that the theorists of Bushism managed to graft themselves onto the Republican Party in the 1970s and 80s, when the Republican party was the party of disgruntled racists, fundamentalists, workers, and farmers left behind by Civil Rights, feminism, the sexual revolution, the end of the manufacturing sector, and the abandonment of a rural way of life. Many of the neo-cons are former leftist student radicals because when they were student radicals, power was what they wanted. They needed to be converted from one ideology (Marxism) to another (capitalism), but the essential goal--gaining power--remained the same.

If we add the power continuum, then, the American political scene starts looking like a coordinate plane. There is the x-axis, from left to right, and the y-axis, from bottom (power dispersing) to top (power consolidating). Institutions and entities that are power dispersing would be the Libertarian Party, the Novel, the blogosphere, and democracy itself. If we plot the Bush administration point, it would be at the top of the y-axis, but not necessarily very far right, in terms of small government, low debt, and isolationism. In fact, it is this apparent moderation in expressed Bush ideas that makes him seem relatively harmless to many Americans. But the ruthless drive for power of Bush and his cronies is really not about ideas, and in fact views ideas as a kind of trash, even, according to witnesses, the ideas expressed in the Constitution. The reason I never support any Bush policy, no matter how “moderate” on the surface is that every Bush policy is designed to enhance the power of Bush and his cronies. The grab for absolute power must be resisted absolutely. No doubt the Democrats who are in sympathy with the Bush crowd are high on the power axis, too, at least in their own minds.

[Swamp Rat]

10. ... yes, like Lieberman

[gulfcoastliberal]

45. I'll add some coal:

In the face of the administration’s successes, it seems that it is the responsibility of the Democrats to save the republic, and to prevent the government from being shrunken and drowned, but they have been very lax about stepping up to the plate. With the nation beginning to wake up to the injustice and futility of bringing chaos to the Middle East, the most prominent Democrats choose to distance themselves from the citizens and to link themselves more tightly to the administration. Hillary Clinton, for example, refuses to denounce the war and takes up the issue of flag burning! John Kerry refuses to confront the probability that his honor was besmirched and his own election was stolen. The DNC takes the time to denounce the peace movement, even though the peace movement was right about the futility of the war. Bill Clinton seems to be of two minds. He’s willing to speak out about global warming, which is a plus, but every time he takes a stand about any other issue, he soon backpedals. How to understand this? Democrats outside of Washington widely infer that Democrats in Washington are simply cowardly or deluded, but it is also a possibility that they are in on the shift from what Tyrell calls the “Old Order” (democracy) to the “New Order” (what shall we call that?).

Why do they not shut down the senate to stop more millionaire tax cuts, while the poorest get their food stamps and student loans cut? Why? They have the means but do nothing. Do nothing dems.

[newspeak]

46. what do we call it?

fascism--they believe they will succeed where Hitler didn't. If you look at the American companies in bed with the fascist movement in the thirties, you'll see a continual effort to succeed. This is not just about the bottom line, but ideology. The attempted coup against FDR. FDR knew that if progressive policies were not put into place, there would be a revolution in this country. The "isms" (communism-fascism) were being bandied around throughout the populace. It is a way to divide the majority of the people as it is dividing us now. The new world order is just the old world order still attempting to gain power.

[lildreamer316]

48. The DND! Do-Nothing-Dems!

YOu're brilliant!

[BlueEyedSon]

11. Oh, yeah and... k/r!

[BlueEyedSon]

12. I have been saying for a while that Iraq is not a mistake.

It's going exactly to plan: chaos, permanent war for permanent war-president-capital, draining the treasury, no-bid contracts, etc etc.....

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

May 9/11 wasn't a "mistake" either....?

[glitch]

26. You and me both. This theory gets sneered at by the most amazing people,

people who otherwise are quite bright. And it's so blatant that this is what they are doing, and they even state (like in the PNAC papers) that this is what needs doing.
"Criminals in power looting" is interesting, because we need to stop them, not because they are doing anything unique or brilliant. But what is really interesting is the denial, the absolute refusal to consider their criminality, in the populace.
That is interesting.

OP: K&R :dem:

[springhill]

47. And I have been saying for awhile now.........

that the Katrina response was not a mistake. The indifference they showed during that catastrophe was the real deal. They didn't think it was the governments job to help in any way. Just listening to Brownie when he was questioned, well, the contempt he displayed was real mind boggling.

[annabanana]

13. It's a must read..

It should be required for everyone who's on the fence. Every moderate Democrat, every genuine conservative, every real American.

[Fridays Child]

14. In the end, how his policies and actions affect the U.S. and the world...

...is all that really matters. So, the author is right: why Bush does what he does, or whether he could do things differently, is immaterial. He's the leader of the most powerful country in the world and in history. He deserves no slack, and that is, by the way, a rule that Republicans steadfastly insisted we all adhere to, when Clinton was in office.

[Nordmadr]

15. Kick and Recommend! N/T

[Cassandra]

16. The only "enemy" Bushco knows how to fight...

is us. They think if they seize power over all of America they will be at the helm of a powerhouse. They're actually working on killing the goose that lays the golden eggs; they will destroy us.

Adding this from the article:
"I began considering the possibility that what we see around us might indeed constitute success, as far as the Bushies are concerned, when I read in a post by Karen Kwiatkowski that three witnesses had confirmed that Bush referred to the Constitution as a "just a god damned piece of paper." Then there was the article in The Guardian in which six American pundits were invited to reflect upon the meaning of the last five years of the Bush administration. Two commentators said interesting things. Howell Raines pointed out that four generations of Bushes and Walkers (since 1850) have shown a willingness to do anything for money and power, but no interest of any kind in the common good. R. Emmett Tyrell implied more than he stated when he maintained that the anger that people like me feel toward Bush is mere psychological projection, expressing "the need of the passing Old Order to have enemies." What was striking in Tyrell's section is his assumption that the Old Order (legal elections, citizen soldiers, healthy middle class, commonly agreed upon morality, laws, and regulations, useful beaurocracy) IS passing. He must know something I don't know, because I had been thinking the country we used to have was still salvageable. In addition to these signs, though, we have several others, among them the fact that Bush and Cheney attempt to communicate only with their base (and remember, in "Farenheit 911", Bush told a group of wealthy contributors that they WERE his base). Their base is fairly small and getting smaller, but they seem to have no desire, even when campaigning, to enlarge their base. It's as if they know that the voters don't matter, and, of course, according to the president of the Diebold Company, the voters don't matter (see Avi Rubin's post about voting machine certifcation)."

[The2ndWheel]

17. Yup, nt

[robbedvoter]

18. Paul Krugman is been writing about this in every column - and a book

too. he said over and over that BFEE are radicals bent on overturning the regime in this country. Glad jane caught on to it too.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

19. She's dead on, point for point.

[dennisnyc]

20. excellent! It's important to see all this summarized into one article.

It reminds me of Rob Stein's presentation about the intricate web of cooperation that has been built up over the last 30 years on the r-wing. The long-term strategy is working. America is suffering from these people and their policies.

[immoderate]

21. Right out of the Party Handbook in 1984

Bush (or the people who think for him) has caught on to the idea of perpetual war to keep your own people in a state of perpetual subjugation.

Great analysis by Jane Smiley.

--IMM

[immoderate]

22. Kick. This should be on front page.

--IMM

[Beetwasher]

23. Nicely Put! Many Of Us Have Been Saying This For A LOOOOOOONG Time!

She definitely nails it. It's all going according to plan.

[SupplyConcerns]

24. Good article, but nothing we don't agree with already

[gristy]

25. jeebus

:scared:

[Enraged_Ape]

27. That is the best essay I have read in years

Just fucking amazing. Lays it all out there. And now that I think about it, all this stuff is really pretty obvious and makes absolute sense; it's just too horrible to think about.

:kick:

[mike_c]

28. please put this on the DU Front Page!

Kicking and recommending-- Jane Smiley nails it!

[Me.]

29. Brilliant

my fears confirmed in writing

[TheUnspeakable]

30. k&r..I've always thought this-NOTHING IS A MISTAKE!!

[livvy]

31. Excellent piece.

These paragraphs really hit home for me, in particular the parts I've done in bold.

"How else are we going to interpret the satisfaction the President continually expresses in the results of his policies so far? As an example, when Bush said, “Heckuva job, Brownie”, outsiders generally assumed he was making a mistake--that he didn’t know what a bad job Brownie was doing. But let’s say that he knew perfectly well that Brownie had abandoned new Orleans to the forces of nature, and that THAT was the essence of the heckuva job he was doing. In the same way, many people assume that the administration is embarrassed that the extent of the American rendition gulag or the techniques of torture used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have gotten into the news along with the use of white phosphorus in Falluja, as if torture and rendition and white phosphorus were something that Bush does not want to do. But let’s say that torture and rendition are something that the Bush administration is happy to do, and doesn’t mind others knowing about. Likewise, many observers, let’s say Jack Murtha, for one, assume that the president does not want to destroy the army. But if the army is destroyed, then the services that the army provides at a relatively moderate expense to the taxpayer can be farmed out to companies like Halliburton. Let’s say that Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush have cast their lot not with the draft, or even the volunteer army, but with the mercenary army, which is more profitable, less subject to Congressional and public oversight, and, really, the appropriate army for a rogue state. And, with a mercenary army, there is no problem when a fallen soldier is sent home as a piece of freight. It is only citizen-soldiers who make the ultimate sacrifice out of patriotism. When we get rid of citizen soldiers, then we don’t have to respect them.

When Grover Norquist said he wanted to strangle the shrunken government in the bathtub, he was not kidding. He meant that the taxpayers and and voters would not be able to look to the government for any services whatsoever, but also that they would not have any control over the government does. The drowned and strangled government, having ceased to exist, would not only offer no benefits to citizens, it would offer no obstacle to those who wished to break the laws (for example against internal spying), because there would be no law to break. It is for this reason that the Bush administration pays absolutely no attention to the polls--they have already discounted the preferences of the citizens. When the government has been shrunk to nothing and drowned in the bathtub, the citizenry will be entirely powerless--that is the real goal, not an unintended consequence. Norquist and his fellow theorists understand perfectly that in a modern democracy, there are two competing modes of voting: there is “one person, one vote” and there is “one dollar, one vote”. They not only prefer “one dollar, one vote”, they want to entirely get rid of “one person, one vote”.

The outcome of such policies will be a dictatorship or a tyranny. Such policies cannot be reconciled with the US as we know it, or with the vision of the Founding Fathers.">snip

[electron_blue]

32. Wow. Crystal clarity here, folks.

And somewhere buried in here, I feel hope, just knowing the secret is getting more and more "out" there.

[pberq]

33. Right on! - things are going as planned

It is great the way she calls the NYT on saying that there is still a chance the Bush administration will change. Wake up! Everything we're seeing is part of the plan.

[bread_and_roses]

34. And: "prominent Democrats...link...to the administration"

<snip> In the face of the administration’s successes, it seems that it is the responsibility of the Democrats to save the republic, and to prevent the government from being shrunken and drowned, but they have been very lax about stepping up to the plate... the most prominent Democrats choose to distance themselves from the citizens and to link themselves more tightly to the administration. Hillary Clinton, for example, refuses to denounce the war and takes up the issue of flag burning! John Kerry refuses to confront the probability that his honor was besmirched and his own election was stolen. The DNC takes the time to denounce the peace movement, even though the peace movement was right about the futility of the war. Bill Clinton seems to be of two minds... How to understand this? Democrats outside of Washington widely infer that Democrats in Washington are simply cowardly or deluded, but it is also a possibility that they are in on the shift... <snip>

Cowardly, deluded, or complicit. What a choice. And these are people we are supposed to support because they have a "D" after their name.

[BrklynLiberal]

35. Fantastically scary! Recommended and forwarded to everyone I know!!!

[otohara]

36. Three More Years - Can He Un-Do It

all?

I'm scared

[Helga Scow Stern]

37. That is the best article I have read since The Nation

made the case for electing Kerry in November 2004. They dropped the ball completely, of course, in not acknowledging that the election was stolen.

Jane Smiley takes it all into account.

[Straight Shooter]

38. He who rules the U.S. rules the world.

I said "rules" deliberately, for bush does not intend to lead. He intends to rule.

[redacted]

39. A MUST READ! K/R

[Protagoras]

40. One of the best pieces I've read all year

This needs to be forwarded along with every letter we send our congress critters.

They need to know that we know. And that it's starting to get talked about in bigger and bigger places.

[mod mom]

41. thanks for posting. rec'd

[davekriss]

42. Read this one with the lights on. Chilling.

I must've used this quote (below) more than a 100 times by now, always with the intent to raise awareness to what the consequences of the Reagan-GWHB-GWB agenda will be, which is a non-democratic ascendency of an oligarchy and an end to effective democracy (an end to the "American experiment"):

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there
government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and
life and property are his who can take them.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Annapolis Citizens, 1809

Because this administration is the culmination of several decades of activity, everything from formation of various corporate funded "think tanks" that give academic respectability to their propoganda, to successful assault in court on the Fairness Doctrine and diminishment of the Rule of Sevens (reducing "news" to propoganda), to the S&L scandal-driven raids on the treasury, through the impeachment of Clinton, to the absolutely stunning series of horrors of the Bush administration -- because this represents a momentum decades in the building, it will be immensely difficult to stop.

My father thinks the tide will turn in 2006, that America is fed up. I think it doesn't matter to the Regime, they control the vote counting, and just in case they had Ollie North craft plans for FEMA internment camps should dissent bubble over. We have quite a job in front of us. Patriots get ready now!

[Triana]

43. We're on to them...

...My 70-something year old Mom has said time and time again that they ARE set out to destroy this country and they intend to do so - irreparably - before 2008. We already DO NOT have elections in this country - not viable ones. And the poor and middle class have already been raped of any power or benefit from this regime. That's all for the corprat elite - and NO ONE else.

That's the New Republicanism, and that's their objective. OF COURSE they can't get on the evening news and openly state that. People wouldn't stand for it! They can say the OPPOSITE though, while DOING it. And people - some very stupid and gullible people - will stand there, and LET THEM.

MOST OF ALL, the Democrats and moderate Republicans (those Old Republicans) ought to be screaming bloody murder on a daily basis over this.

WHERE ARE THEY?

[Iowa]

44. We are among only a small portion of the country who know...

Sometimes I think it would be easier to be clueless. Most will wake up one day and wonder what the hell happened - but not us. For us it's like being in a car accident in slow motion - we see it coming long before impact and experience every horrible detail, one by one, as it all unfolds.

The best essay I've seen in a long time. A must read!

[donheld]

49. Kick and Recommend

Wow is right.

[eridani]

50. Good post--however

The Kwiatkowski blog mentioned STILL only refers to Capitol Hill Blue as the source of the "goddam piece of paper" quote. Just because it's just the kind of thing Bush might say doesn't mean that he actually said it.

[B Calm]

51. Nominated and kicked!

[Peace Patriot]

52. I have not been paying much attention to South America over the last

decade (to my shame), except to note that dictatorships seemed to be falling and the truth about the 'disappeared' and about US-backed death squads and juntas seemed to be coming out. But I HAVE been paying attention over the last several years--during the Bush junta--and what is happening in South America is an amazing democratic revolution.

Bolivia just elected a president, Evo Morales, by an overwhelming vote (51% in a field of eight), who campaigned with a wreath of pure coca leaves around his neck, and said that he is "the United State's worst nightmare." That is, a democratically elected, leftist, brown-faced, indigenous peasant, who never finished grade school--and who, like Hugo Chavez, is as smart as a whip--and who intends to, a) end "the war on drugs" (by which the U.S. keeps killing leftists and peasants); b) throw US corporate predators out*; and c) PEACEFULLY create a just and equitable society, in which the country's resources are used to help the vast majority, the poor (perish the thought), and form regional common markets with all the other new leftist governments that now DOMINATE most of South America (Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, etc.), and that are creating their own economic alliances and markets to the east and west across the great oceans.

When I said, above, that I hadn't been paying long term attention, what I meant was that I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY DID IT--how they have overturned centuries of exploitation by the rich and powerful and their U.S. corporate/military/intelligence supporters, PEACEFULLY. No gun-toting Marxist revolutionaries here. Democrats with a small d, committed to constitutional government and the peaceful empowerment of the majority.

And I can only presume--and do have hints of this--that this revolution is occurring because of ELECTION REFORM. I know that numerous EU election monitors have been involved in the Venezuelan elections, along with the Carter Center and others (the OAS, for instance). And these kinds of groups don't get involved without a long lead time and prep. They first help set up the voting system (Venezuela--OPEN SOURCE CODE electronic, with paper trail), and then they monitor and verify (with REAL exit polls--unlike our corporate variety).

You can't do anything without honest, transparent elections. They are the beginning of reform, the starting condition, the fundamental premise of real democracy.

I therefore believe that the instincts of many of us here at DU, to concentrate on our FRAUDULENT elections, to get the word out about them, and to organize and inspire ELECTION REFORM, is the right instinct. We CANNOT stop this war and its expansion, or implement any other badly needed new changes. We just can't do it. It is beyond our power--because we have lost the power of our vote.

So, antiwar protests--while important for many reasons--CANNOT change things; CANNOT move the government, no matter how many people disagree with the war (and that number was nearly 60% BEFORE the invasion, and is 70%-80% today). We can't even get many Dem leaders to say the war was wrong. And we are, for sure, going to have a War Democrat shoved down our throats as our only 'choice' in 2008.

We have to strategize from a basis of REALITY--and START with the actual mechanics of power: restoring our right to vote.

And I'm wondering right now if we should ask for EU, OAS, Carter Center or other help. How could that be done? (I know the Bushi'ites threw EU election monitors out of Ohio, but that was then. What might be possible now?)

Wouldn't that be a beautiful irony--to have the OAS help us restore democracy in the United States?

--------------------

*The Bolivian people threw Bechtel out of their country a few years ago. Bechtel had gained private control over their water supplies, and, when Bolivians seized their water back, Bechtel demanded billions in compensation--that Bolivians should have to pay for their OWN water. And Bolivia refused. That was a grass roots movement--started by ordinary people. But I can't help but think (don't know for sure) that it was accompanied by (or preceeded by) election reform and some support in government.

[ProfessorGAC]

53. Then I'll Disagree With Her

I don't think they're strategic enough. They intended a cash grab for as long as they could get away with it. They don't care about permanence. They just care about themselves and getting what they can, RIGHT NOW!

Along this path, they have had a series of royal screwups, that will take years from which to recover. But, that was never their plan. They don't think that far ahead.
The Professor

[Peace Patriot]

55. That's been my read on it, too, Professor! Greed is their main motive.

The Bushi'ites are not exactly Nazis, in that respect. They are not tooling up a great industrial power. They are not into "making the trains run on time"--efficiency, competence, goal-oriented purpose. They are not even into convincing anyone of anything--transforming society. They are just into hoodwinking people long enough--and hanging onto power long enough--to loot us blind.

But I DO think that our corporate rulers are preparing something worse, down the line, when all these new tyrannical powers of the executive will still mostly be in place. (I don't think that the War Democrat, whom they are going to shove down our throats next, is going to rescind all those powers. She may not use all of them. But there will be no restoration of law and order and constitutional government. The powers will be there for after they get rid of her--when they've gotten their military Draft, and everything else they need (such as blaming everything--financial, foreign policy disasters--on the Democrats)).

What Hitler took over was a shattered country. That's where we're going. And one key component of that takeover was the splintering of the center/left and its inability to govern. This is one of the reasons I intend to back Hillary to the hilt. I'll even cheer her on as to the Draft.* (It'll be great to see the Bush twins in boot camp.) Because I think that will be our best window of opportunity to get election reform quickly, on a national basis--something like Russ Holt's bill HR 550, which (among other things) bans undisclosed "trade secret" software. (That will get the corporations out of it in one fell swoop.)

*(There may be another reason to support a Draft--to get the private contractors out. "Citizen Army" and all that. And if rich and middle class kids are being drafted, we might actually stop war. It sure threw a monkey wrench into Vietnam. Didn't stop it, but gave people big pause, and a big lesson in the realities of unjust war, which most people have not forgotten. The corporate rulers, of course, would not have that purpose in a Draft--democratic opinion hindering war. But our coffers are empty. We can't keep paying for this private contractor hogfest in Iraq. We're tapped out. The volunteer military is tapped out. And to get Iran's oil, they need cannon fodder. THAT will be their purpose. Cheap cannon fodder. MY purpose will be ELECTION REFORM and restoration of DEMOCRACY. And I don't really know what Hillary's purpose is, possibly just to grab the main chance. With peaceniks and populists automatically excluded--by devious means or by outright assassination--the only kind of Democrat who can get nominated and reach the White House is a pro-war, pro-corporate Democrat. And that's what I think is in the works. It may calm things down, temporarily--but with the intention of stirring things back up, on cue, to shatter the center/left, and install the real Hitler....Jeb? )

[Pathwalker]

54. Kicking so others can see this.

:kick: