Now What?

After a few weeks of unseemly public bickering, Bush's criminally corrupt GOP seem to have closed ranks again. The NSA wire-tapping scandal rift is being papered over, despite its overtly criminal status. Tom DeLay remains the party's favourite power-broker, despite the fact that he is currently indicted.

It sounds like Karl Rove has explained to his colleagues that if the truth comes out (and it will - Abramoff is talking) they will all fall together. So their only option at this stage is to unite as one and... completely IGNORE the truth. Don't laugh - it has worked before and will again, as long as the compliant US media do not call shenanigans (and they won't).

Given the Bush-Rove playbook history, we might also expect to see something major very soon, by way of distraction. To quote Bernard Weiner at Smirky today:

The crimes of the Bush Administration are so many and varied that none of us should be surprised by anything that might happen in the coming weeks and months: Bin Laden captured or reported killed, a U.S.-Israeli air assault on Iran's nuclear facilities, a major terrorist attack inside the U.S. to be followed by martial law, the announcement of a bird-flu outbreak with the military placed in charge. I'm pretty level-headed and don't usually think in these dire terms, but these guys have backed themselves into a tight political corner and are desperate -- and dangerous.

Weiner quotes a host of GOP/neocon parasites who have been turning on their host lately, many of whom are also documented on this blog. He concludes that it is time for the anti-Bush community to hold fast and continue building momentum towards impeachment:

So, friends, when we're down in the dumps, depressed by the fact that Bush&Co. are still in power even in the face of all their lies and bumblings and policies that result in thousands of people getting killed and maimed and tortured, let us consider that even their once-loyal rats are deserting the sinking ship of state.

The thought of nearly three more years of Bush&Co. misrule is too horrible to contemplate. So let's ratchet up the pressure, incorporate distressed GOP moderates and conservatives into the impeachment momentum, and send the Bush Bunker crew packing and return the country to reasonable people dedicated to a restoration of Constitutional rule of law and a realistic foreign policy.

But is it really that simple? Others at Smirky today do not sounds so sure. Indeed, they are so shaken that they are left questioning the very foundations of US society. Mollie Bradley-Martin asks whether it's time to say 'adios' to democracy altogether?

Have we reached the point where we need to banish our leaders and write off a few of our states as lost causes? We fought a civil war to keep the union together, were we wrong all those years ago? We certainly have little in common and apparently the documents that our countrymen died to protect aren't worth all the trouble...

Ellen Terich ruminates on the implications of 'Republic, democracy or oligarchy?'

... the oligarchs running this country really do not like the idea of democracy, representative or otherwise, and they are determined to limit the power of the people by nixing any uppity democratic ideas... America may be technically a "republic," but the people have always believed they had a government of, by, and for the people – at least until now.

These days, indeed, one might well wonder whether the USA has ever really been the model Democracy which it has always imagined itself to be. Anyone familiar with the Gulf of Tonkin, Operation Northwoods, MK-ULTRA, the Kennedy assasination and a host of other uncomfortable historical facts might well question such an assumption. Perhaps US Democracy has always been something of a slieght-of-hand, a semi-transparent facade manipulated by a close-knit coterie of wealthy, powerful families for their mutual profit?

But to me, what has always been most inspiring about the USA is not so much the reality as the dream, the vision of freedom, equality and prosperity which the word "America" has represented to generations of oppressed and impoverished people around the world. It was a dream in which Americans themselves were proud to participate, something which elevated them above the rest of the world.

Maybe, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, that dream is now outdated.

Maybe it is time for the USA to take a good, long look at itself and come up with a new self-image.

Maybe, in the wake of Abu Ghraib, Hurrican Katrina, Gitmo and all the other Bush administration atrocities, the dream that was "America" is now dead.

Maybe it is just smouldering in the ashes of Falluja.

The answer is...?

The answer is up to you, America.