All We Need Is Just a Little Patience

Have you read Jane Mayer's article, The Memo from a few weeks back? Do it. It details at great length how truly evil this administration is. Further, it demonstrates that Dick Cheney and his buddies both run the show and honestly believe that the Constitution is irrelevant when it specifies that the United States is anything other than a dictatorship. Cheney believes in tyrannical rule by a single executive (and apparently the establishment of a puppet figurehead as well).

Of course, this is all uncovered in the context of her examination of our torture policy. I'm reading this on the train this morning (Happy St. Pat's!) and wondering – where has the outrage gone? The Democrats are winning votes by whining about the ports deal or the illegal wiretaps. These are legitimate reasons to fear the Bush Administration for sure. But I don't care if it doesn't win a single vote, every single Democrat – no – every single American should be screaming from the rooftops about our established national policy of torturing and degrading our prisoners of war. Salon's torture gallery has grown to 279 photographs and 19 videos from Abu Ghraib. Does that sound like a few bad apples to you? Of course it isn't. This is official United States policy. And if you read Jane Mayer's article, you will see where the direction came from and how it was viciously implemented.

To be clear – you live in a country whose government believes that it is not only acceptable but necessary to violently degrade, humiliate, and torture other human beings in your name. People in Germany even today live in shame over the atrocities that their grandparents allowed to happen. That is our fate; it has already been sealed. We will look back in horror at what we've done, and our children and grandchildren will ask us why nobody stepped up and demanded that it stop, (assuming we're still allowed to ask questions in the years to come). Take that to your grave.

I have a theory too. Wanna hear it? Since taking office, this administration has one by one stepped a baby step farther along towards the dark side of the force. We keep finding ourselves amazed at their giant balls for a day and then getting bored with it. "Oh, that Bush - he's a nut! What's on TV?" Once the ennui sets in, they take another step. And so on. I believe they are intentionally dulling our senses so deeply that when they say, "We have no choice but to destroy Iran," we won't think about it for more than a day or two. Next thing you know, a nuclear warhead detonates in Tehran and we are so numb to death and destruction and the killing of innocent civilians that the 3,000,000 dead Persians will barely measure on the radar. Hell, if it's Super Bowl Sunday we might not even notice at all.

This is what I get for coming to work instead of getting drunk today...