Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Our Endangered Democracy

The Republicans are at it again -- "purging" new registrations from voter rolls in Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, and Nevada. Guess who's being purged. You're right if you guessed blacks and Hispanics. "They" shouldn't be participating in our democracy! Just as Alberto Conzales's Justice Department illegally weeded out any applicant that didn't embrace Bush's right-wing Republican posture, so Republicans now want to prevent Democrats--especially minority Democrats--from participating in this year's Presidential election. The rot in Bush's Justice Department is hitting the fan this week with the testimony of flunky Monica Goodling before the House Judiciary Committee. Unless there is massive protest and Congressional action, we'll have a repeat of Florida and the stolen 2000 Presidential election. That can't happen. Anybody who cares about the future of our country must take action to prevent what will amount to the destruction of our election process and the ultimate destruction of democracy in the United States. Fact is, democracy's just too risky. The people might actually kick the lobbyists out of government. The people just might win for a change. Bush/Cheney and an all too compliant Congress have set us on the road of becoming a big banana republic, lawless, fascist, a pathetic vestige of what we could be. Author Jane Mayer has just published a book called The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. In her essay, "The Battle for a Country's Soul," published in the August 14, 2008, issue of The New York Review of Books, she writes: "Seven years after al-Qaeda's attack on America, as the Bush administration slips into history, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America's security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country's soul."

But the Bush/Cheney era will not slip into history if John McCain wins the White House. McCain is making himself into a Bush clone. His flip-flopping positions and ignorance of basic geographical and political facts will push us into an ever darker age of deception and fear manipulation, continuing the Bush/Cheney dismemberment of our Constitution and keeping us bound to the only foreign policy he and Bush/Cheney seem capable of -- war. Forever.

Greg Palast, a fine investigative journalist, reports the underhanded attempts by Republicans to subvert our electoral process in an essay titled "Obama Doesn't Sweat, He Should." For more information see www.GregPalast.com.

No comments: