Too Casual About It

Tinfoil hat time!

I first got this feeling last week, with Bush’s dance before his endorsement of John McCain. It was like he didn’t care what anyone thought, like democracy (small d) was meaningless. (Picture from Sushimoo.)

Is anyone else out there worried that the Bush Administration is acting a little too casual and flip about its continuing efforts to undermine the Constitution?

To the complete disregarding of Congress’ oversight and its treaty-making role, we now have the sudden resignation of Adm. William Fallon, who was thought to be among the few voices in the military trying to tamp-down talk of an attack on Iran.

Every week or so, it seems, I read new blog posts about buying "taser cannon" to control demonstrators, about the growing politicization of our military, even a deliberate refusal to abide by Supreme Court rulings which go against them.

It sometimes seems as if the Bush people aren’t even trying anymore to hide their disgust with the popular will.

It’s true that this may just be total incompetence, and it’s also true that such dark thoughts as these are one mark of a generational crisis. Anyone who remembers the late 1960s remembers fearing for democracy, as their fathers feared for it in the early 1930s, and their fathers feared for it in the 1890s, and their fathers feared for it in the 1850s.

Fear for democracy’s fate is a necessary precondition for major democratic change.

But still…

Liberals hint darkly of concentration camps, while conservatives talk about secret directives
to declare martial law at a stroke. This, frankly, is what keeps me
from running screaming into the night. When both sides fear the same
thing, it means there’s opposition everywhere.

I frankly don’t believe a Bush coup would work. I frankly don’t
think the NRA would support it. They may be gun nuts, but they’re also
patriots. There are enough guns in this country to give an insurgency
plenty of ammunition with which to take back power.

If a coup is what Bush is thinking about, he needs to think again.
Mr. President, if you cross this line, we will kill you. And your wife
and your kids and your dog and your cat. And everyone who supports you,
who ever supported you. We will destroy this country, root and branch,
before we give in to a tyrant. Because we’re Americans.

Even our conservatives. Don’t confuse their cheers for you with cheers for you.