We Are All Frogs In Boiling Water Now

So Peter Daou says:

Remember: this is not about fighting terrorism, this is about honoring those things that make America the great nation it is. This is about honesty in government, about liberty, about our rights as Americans. This is about standing up to those who will run roughshod over the values our framers held dear, the values they enshrined in our binding document.

Daou cites a reader from Democratic Underground:

In the past few years, our people have lost sight of the truth. We have blinded by fear and hatred. Our President has taken advantage of this blindness, and used it for his own personal gain. Time and again he has asked for more authority, and time and again we gave it to him. Now we realize how foolish that was. We will be no safer with tyranny than with terrorism. We have replaced one problem with another. And now we pay the consequences for our collective lack of character.

Another commenter:

What is becoming of our beloved country?! More and more it feels like George Orwell's 1984. The United States is morphing away from being the beacon of light and liberty for the world and into a fear-ridden police state where everyone's allegiance is conceivably suspect. This is very upsetting to me. The meaning and purpose of what it means to be an American is being lost in a so-called war on terror that has no clear boundaries -- no beginning and no end. An unending war. GOD HELP US! ...

Bush has violated his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. To me, he is a traitor to the American cause, to the American vision of freedom and liberty and equal justice for all.

Personally, I have to wonder if it is really just a coincidence that this president, who came to power as "a uniter, not a divider" turned out to be such a radical. Is it really just a coincidence that 9/11 happened on THIS president's watch? Or was the Smiling Chimp's presidency a massive setup from the very beginning?

(The oft-repeated Bush argument that "9/11 changed everything" holds little water, given that Bush was already a hard-nosed radical before 9/11, even if most voters didn't notice).

Daou says the netroots has been "the last line of defense against the destruction of our Constitution". Or as Digby put it:

Without us there would have been virtually no critical voices during the long period between 2001 and the presidential primary campaign during 2003. We were it.

Daou wonders if this will turn out to be yet another scandal that peters out into nothing. As a fellow blogger who is tired of repeatedly being outraged and disappointed, I know that fear all too well. But Bush's continuing collapse in the polls should give us all encouragment. The one thing that will save us all, I think, is our burning sense of outrage:

All I can say is my two grandfathers did not give heart and limb(s) fighting for years in WWII only to have these unamerican tyrants fleece this country of not only its wealth, but also of its principles and freedoms, not to mention stature amongst the international community. Simply put, the evil bastards need to go to jail. No pardons, no keys, no Shawshank chipping at the walls.. No, nothing more than 3 squares and a few rays of sunshine so they can remember what it was like before they tried to take it all for themselves.

That sort of anger is not something you can just switch off, even if you want to!