Over the last several years, we have been writing articles about how we see what we know as a democracy in this country being taken away by this administration. We have wondered why others don’t see it as clearly as we do. We have watched in fear as an oblivious American public allows their rights and freedoms to become a thing of the past. But even to our surprise, this administration has gone above and beyond the call of dictatorship. A brief chronicle of this administration’s actions, if taken from another country would be proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the loss of democracy.
First of all, there is an attack on another country unprovoked in the name of national security. In order to do so, the leaders lied to the country with a docile consent of a Congress controlled by the party whose leader of that country is the leader of the party. At the same time, the minority opposition in fear that it will be branded non-patriotic cowes from their responsibility and makes themselves irrelevant.
The country goes to war fought on the backs of a military predominately made up of the lower socio-economic class of the country. Meanwhile, the rich elite do not shed an ounce of blood in this endeavor but rather make fortunes over the spoils of war and the government contracts that they receive.
Then it is reported that the leader has usurped his authority under the constitution and started conducting illegal wiretaps between communications from this country going out of this country and back. There are rules and regulations for that process yet the leader of this country claims that as leader he and he alone has the authority to not follow the constitution because he is doing it to protect the country. The reason why he claims that he is protecting the country is that there is a war on terrorism. Yet, by definition a war on terrorism cannot be won, because terrorism is the fear of the unknown and since you do not know it, you never know when it will occur. So therefore, the leader believes that he has unlimited power in perpetuity to do these actions that violate the country’s constitution.
However, there is more. It is then revealed that this country’s political machinery in order to simply punish an opposition for revealing that the leader of the country lied in its reason to go to war, reveals a state secret outing one of its secret agents because she solely is the wife of this political foe. It does not matter to the administration that this opposition did nothing wrong except being loyal servants to the country. When it is revealed that the leader of this country has in fact done this, the leader and his condray claim that because he is the leader, he has the inherent power to once again violate the law and reveal classified information.
Worse of all, much of the press in this country is controlled by those friendly to the leader. The others whether from greed, fear or simply fear of access to the leadership, sits idily by allowing this to occur. Certainly, there are some voices that speak out, but they are drowned out by the vast majority of their brothers and sisters in the media who for the reasons mentioned above are in bed with the leader.
Well, obviously, the leader is George Bush and obviously the story is about the United States. And obviously, if it wasn’t the United States, we would be saying wow that’s a scary place, wow I’m glad I don’t live there. More importantly, some of us would be saying we gotta do something about it, we got to change this. It’s time we changed this.
The most frightening thing about how this administration is operating, for those of you who remember Watergate, is this President would have said that he had the inherent power to break into the Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. This President would claim that no law was broken. This press would have sat by and just had it delegated to that minor story on page 22. This press would have painted a picture that the break in was for national security. If we thought Watergate was bad and we thought the Nixon administration was bad, the Bush administration is a lot worse. We should be doing everything possible to make this President and this administration accountable because if we don’t the country that we were raised in and grew up believing in is not the country we are handing over to our children.