With Vice-President Cheney's appearance on Fox and the President's interview on 60 Minutes yesterday, we were given a glimpse of the new America. No more are we in a land where the voice of the people matters. No more do we act through our elected representatives in Congress. No more are our views important, relevant, or otherwise a part of policy decision-making. No more are our pundits, bloggers, coffee house banter, work-place discussions, church social-hour talk at all meaningful or helpful. Journalism is a thing of the past. We are to sit still and follow our leaders. If we don't follow, too bad because they are leading anyway.
In his Politics, Aristotle called tyranny the end of political life. Because there was no way, within a tyrannical system, to redress grievances, to formulate policy based upon balancing interests, or to check the power of the ruler, political life, for all intents and purposes, comes to an end with the rise of a tyrant. George Bush, and with him Dick Cheney, have now declared for all the nation and world to see and hear, that they do not consider public opinion or Congress worthy of governance or a role in governance. They formulate policy and carry it forward without regard for legal niceties, constitutional checks on power, or the pro forma consultation with Congress. They are now, for all intents and purposes, putting an end to politics in America, at least at a national level. All the discussion, debate, resolutions, and even laws can and will continue to go forward, but they will have no effect upon the actions of the White House. The President feels himself unconstrained by anything or wnyone, and his VP argues forcefullly that the President, as commander-in-chief, can do what he wants in a time of war. Period.
On this day, when we remember the courage of one man who stood against law and custom to proclaim that we had yet to become a great nation because of our failure to grant legal and human dignity to millions among us; when we remember the courage that faced the hatred of Bull Connor, the scheming of J. Edgar Hoover, the manipulations of the Kennedy brothers, the fractiousness of his fellow Civil Rights leaders, the rage of the growing Black Power movement, and his own growing irrelevance as time and events outstripped his desire to shape a movement for all Americans - when we remember all this, we should find strength in knowing that one person, who faces fear and hatred, dogs and hoses and bullets and bombs, can make a difference. Who among us today is willing to stand up to the tyrant in the White House and call him out for what he is? Who among us is willing to stand up to a corrupt establishment, blind to the realities around them, announced around them, and tell them - press and pundits, House and Senate, courts and lawyers - that they no longer matter, and will continue to matter no more as long as they refuse to work to end what has become, for all practical purposes, the assertion of tyrannical authority?
In saying that "everyone" is irrelevant, I am suggesting that this is a unique moment, perhaps unprecedented in American history. We have an Executive officer of the United States, asserting without compunction or fear, that he can do what he wants when he wants to, and there is no authority to stop him. As long as members of the various checks upon power in this country - journalists and pundits, Congressmen and Senators, the courts and the lawyers - continue to treat him as just another President, saying and doing things in a political manner (thus rendering his words, for all practical purposes meaningless in and of themselves) there are no more institutions in this country to stop him. As long as we all play the game, go through the motions, register our defiance on blogs, in letters to the editor, in special order speeches on the floor of the House or debate in the Senate, in argument before the Supreme Court, no one will know that our liberty has been stripped from us, our rights taken away in the utterance of a few words, leaving us bereft of choices and places to turn.
One person, or perhaps many individuals in many places, not acting together, but each acting out of the realization that the situation had reached a point beyond the control of all our normal checks on power, can make a difference. Shout it from the rooftops, whisper the words - "tyrant", "lawless", "dictator" - among yourselves, get yourselves used to them and thier use as applied to our current Administration. Once they become familiar within a small group, spread these words to others. Talk at work, at church, synagogue, and mosque or around the kitchen table.
Perhaps we will have one person, one individual with the courage to stand and say, softly enough to be heard under the chatter and blather that is now as meaningless as a debate in Esperanto, "Stop!" Perhaps an individual will emerge who can take all these other individuals and make them into something greater than themselves as individuals - a movement to open the eyes of the American people and American ruling class that, in the course of one short January day, they were all rendered irrelevant by the President and Vice-President, that we no longer have a funtioning polity, and that we have to fight to get it back.
There was a time when I would have thought such talk as this was fear-mongering of the worst sort. Hearing the words of Bush and Cheney yesterday, and taking both of them at their words - trusting that they truly meant what they said in the midst of all the blather and nonsense and fabrications and lies - I can no longer pretend that anything less than some kind of citizen action to stop them is necessary. In closing off all recourse to political action as it should be constituted, they leave us little room for anything else. Most radically, I do not believe impeachment would matter, because, if convicted by the Senate, I do not believe for one moment that either man would leave office. They have already said quite clearly they do not consider the actions of Congress relevant; why should impeachment be any different than any other Congressional act?
On this day, when we remember a man of hope, of courage, of energy and intellect, a man of peace and love (not squishy, sentimental love but the tough love that comes from facing harsh realities) we should not just pray but act to ensure that his legacy - an America where politics matters, where people matter, where the actions of government matter in the lives of individuals - does not end on one January Sunday in the words of a failed President and an embittered Vice-President. We should honor Martin Luther King, Jr. by starting today to spread the word that we have to act now, right now, to ensure our democracy, our republic, still stands.
Virtual Tin Cup
