Bankruptcy Notice: Democracy

The Vice President Touts...or is it "announces"?
Cheney: Credit checks aren't illegal

There are moments when the ludicrous becomes just plain ridiculous. This article and its headline, is the epitome of circuitous reasoning. Because credit checks have become the de facto means by which people in the country are hired, housed, given license to borrow, and monitored for "creditworthiness", a statement such as the use of credit checks to catch terrorists simply is "so what else is new" in the daily news scene. The fact that terrorists, apart from inept thugs, are quite aware of the means of monitoring financial activity and can skillfully run through or around these techniques is yet another "look what we are doing to make Americans safer" dodge.

Meanwhile, thanks to the transparent techniques of presidential "letters", financial "policies", and privacy caveats such as: information sharing is perfectly OK for reviewers, billers, researchers (with or without IRB protocols), the shreds of freedom and democracy are nearly swept clean from the foundation of America's cherished vision.

Sadly, it will not matter much what the congress sets out to achieve as long as Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush are busy playing Imperator with the nation at the financial, moral and human life cost of citizens of the country and the world. As in most cases where persons are held captive in concentration camps, the hostages develop a strange attachment to the hostage takers as it becomes the only means to hope for survival. This may seem irrational...for instance why hasn't the Administration been charged with crimes against humanity, sedition, murder, theft and extortion? The problem is the crimes themselves are too small to apply to the enormity of the damage being incurred. It's not as though these decisions and actions can be remedied through the next election and a new administration. Mr. Bush., Mr. Cheney and his entourage of faceless "yes puppets", to include Ms. Rice, Supreme Court appointees, and, of course Mr. Gates have bankrupted the country and the concept of democracy as well as soiled its ideals with all that is corrupt, greed based and debased in every breath they take (*must remember in group think there is one breath not individual breaths).

The transparency of having a national budget that simply leaves out sizable parts of the spending of citizen's money...such as the war in Iraq, and an administration and congress which flagrantly touts personal privacy in health care, unless it happens to be a matter of "interest" to the government, supports the freedom of information, unless it happens to be an item excluded from types of FOIA eligible documents, is not lost on the American public. The enormity of the impact is daunting and it will take tremendous vision and creative, ethical action for at least two generations to effect any positive momentum to restoration of the light of freedom and individual rights. While there may be many firebrands seeking cataclysmic change in the government, it will be purposeless to replace one tyranny with another in the name of moving back to the country's foundations, even though the thought of excoriation is a longing for many.

There is no choice except to make a choice and hold fast to it regardless of how the wind blows in government quarters. If one lives ethically, morally and compassionately, actions that follow can only be toward human and world survival and growth. We may, sadly, extinguish ourselves as a species. One can only hope that the wisdom of the Earth will survive the emptying of its coffers.

Wooden Shoe