congressional patriotism

Singing an anthem on the steps of the Capitol doesn't exactly cut it for me. That's too much like waving a flag, slapping a yellow ribbon magnet on your car or saying things like: If you're not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about. Summer soldier and sunshine patriot shit that is common enough, but not so common as to define us as it has in the past six years.

I keep suggesting to people who wonder aloud what possibly can be the matter with the Democrats that they are acting the most like people whose families are being held hostage by terrorists. Given that the official story for 9/11 is so lame that a grade school student can demolish it, it isn't hard to posit that all of them have a very good idea what really went down, and that is damn scary... as in Secret Service as rogue agency kind of scary. But these people are in positions to determine who the rogues are and to deal with them appropriately. There is a crystal clear need for it, but it does not happen.

All these wafer-thin excuses like it's unpatriotic to accuse your fellow citizens, or your government, of perpetrating the attacks of 9/11, and America cannot be seen to lose a war, even if we didn't agree that we should fight it, even if it's proven that we were defrauded into fighting it, even if hundreds of thousands are dying and we are coating the entire Middle East with alpha radiation poisoning.... It's not credible that anything near the majority of the people in our government believe these things, but they appear to believe these things, and appear to want us to believe them too.

I don't even think it's just the suggestion brought on by the assassination of Paul Wellstone, the attempted anthrax assassinations of Daschle and Leahy (which are still not being investigated).... It really seems as if it's even more overt than that... as though there are men in black camped in black SUVs in front of all their houses. I can still see * pitching a hissy on the White House lawn about Congress needing to strike down habeas corpus or he wasn't going to interrogate prisoners anymore, and thinking that really was not a sufficient threat to induce anyone, even a Republican, to deface the Constitution so openly. But damned if they didn't immediately and entirely too bipartisanly strike down habeas corpus... breathe... count and breathe.... Stuff like that.

I think they are all in bad fear for their lives, or those of people they love, and I don't think this is any excuse. I don't think people ever take into account the true life-and-death implications of voting for government officials, otherwise we'd probably have much better representation. As I've said before, I think they will kill Gore if he runs for president again, but there really is reason to believe he would be malleable enough that they wouldn't feel they had to. Certainly Bill and Hillary have both proved their fealty convincingly enough not to have to worry about boarding planes and opening mail, and Nancy Pelosi is catching up to them apace.

This is probably true for Republican officials, too, just to a lesser extent. The K Street money explained it well enough for most of us, and the AIPAC money explains the Democrats to most people too. But I think those really are rewards for treason more than they are causes of it. Maybe I'm still too optimistic and all that cash really does explain it all, but I don't forget that most of these people have no real need for that cash, and that cash cannot compensate everyone for having repeatedly to humiliate themselves so egregiously in front of the whole world, in front of God and everybody. When does even double-strength hypocrisy, and triple-strength greed, stop being enough to explain truly evil behavior?

The problem with Congress being held hostage is: Who has the power to ransom them? And, if they know this and do not fight, are they friend or foe?