7/24/7 Tuesday AM
Glorious.
Sunshine and Rainier, a glassy Sound, rippling wake trailing my morning ferry. Snowcapped peaks west and east. If only I weren’t going to work.
Finished the Einstein book. His conclusions, Isaacson’s conclusions about Einstein’s life and way of thinking have profound meaning today. Abhorrence of conformity, authority, anything that impinged upon free thinking and the rights of the individual – we are, should be acutely concerned about these things today.
I saw the man next to me reading about more Alberto Gonzalez hearing. Criminal. All he wants/needs/ is trying to do is survive through the Bush administration. As long as he’s there he can obstruct justice, protect his cronies and earn his retirement. Because all these clowns know they are going to be well taken care of. The Bushes, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Bechtel, AEI, you name them, The Carlyle Group, they will all be there offering fat jobs to whoever needs one. Fuck their legacy – they don’t give a shit about that, now they’re trying to save their skins.
If someone could do something, if someone doesn’t do something, we are looking at decades, generations perhaps, if we ever can regain our position – and by that I don’t mean our hegemonic position, our place as world cop, dominant global hyperpower. I mean our place as a vibrant social experiment, our place established by people like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Thomas Fucking Paine. I mean our place preserved by men like Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, hell Bob Dylan and Marlon Brando. We need to do better. If we can’t do better, create, re-create, preserve a living breathing authentic liberal democracy then for fuck’s sake we’re just a bunch of hypocrites propping up one government façade after another. The Washington DC dance is a charade, Democrats and Republicans alike must take money from big business, pharma, oil, military, in order to pay the media to advertise their candidacies. But, they are all complicit, it’s a rigged game and what’s happening now is proof. Something got jolted out of place by this crowd of con men – incompetent con-men (and women) and the scam is revealed.
It doesn’t matter what you do. Lead us into, falsely into an intractable horrendous war. No problem. Throw out habeus corpus; torture and then torture the definition of torture; pardon (commute, ha) convicted criminals; hand out billions of dollars in no bid contracts to former colleagues (Halliburton) if not friends; rape the environment (fish kill); defund social programs, deny health insurance to children; cripple reconstruction after bungling disaster relief; starve public works to effectively erode our infrastructure (bridges falling); stack the courts with ideologues. It goes on and on. What then is the rest of the world to think. They think we’re full of shit, that’s what they think. No right-minded person could look at what we’ve consented to over the last 6 and half years and say the United States is being honest. Why trust a nation that allows itself to continue paying for a failed war, continue paying for rape and destruction – murder and mayhem.
If we allow the authors of this debacle to walk free then we’re a bunch of sac-less schmucks and the world will know we’re a bunch of sac-less schmucks. No one will take us seriously nor should they. If they see this crowd walk then they’ll know the truth – that as long as we can sip our lattes, binge buy luxuries on credit; and live a life built on cheap oil bought with blood - then we’re happy thankyouverymuch. We’re all a bunch of lying fat hypocrites. To hell with us. If we continue to mortgage our future it won’t be long before someone calls in the loan and that won’t be pretty or easily combated with our one-trick foreign policy pony, a bloated military.
No. We have to arrest them – arrest them now. It’s been shown to be legally viable – the Senate Sergeant at Arms is empowered to arrest anyone at the behest of the people’s branch of government. They are contemptible, yes. But they are also in contempt. They have broken the law and they know they have broken the law and they are laughing at us because they know they are going to get away with it.
They know this Congress won’t resort to such extreme measures because they’re all a lot of bought cowards, too.
It’s a sham and a shame and today more than any day in my life I can say I am ashamed to be an American. And fuck anyone that tries to paint me as unpatriotic – this line of thinking is completely in tune with that of our “Founding Fathers.” We’re all a bunch of rebels, immigrants and mongrels – let’s please stop pretending we’re anything else and get on with the business of living our lives, loving our families and leading a truly peaceful existence – at the very least let’s try to be decent and stop killing people. Is that too much to ask? Am I a raving lunatic just because I want my country to show some kindness?