Of a Bad President and 'Good Germans': Our Long National Nightmare Continues

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief, "There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.”

-- BOB DYLAN

Even in the seventh year of the Age of Bush, I still don't want to believe that my country is being led by an intellectual, ethical and moral lightweight in the thrall of dangerous power mongers whose views and policies are inimical to what my mother told me that the U.S. of A. is supposed to stand for.

Then I wake up and realize that Our Long National Nightmare rages on.

I also have come to understand something else of perhaps greater consequence. I'll cut right to the chase for those of you who won't read the entire post, let alone the snappy joke at the end.

George Bush and his Merry Bunch of Enablers deserve the lion's share of the blame for these toxic times, but let's reserve plenty of blame for a feckless news media, a Supreme Court newly packed with justices who are conservative except when it comes to activism, a compliant Congress and emergent Democratic majority that has talked the talk but largely failed to walk the walk.

But you, my fellow American, share a big dollop of blame as well.

That is unless you speak out at forums like this one, write to your congressfolk, show up at the rare demonstration or plan to vote in the next election and encourage others, especially those who aren't registered, to do so. Praying for America's salvation also counts, even if you don't do it in front of others.

But while one or more of the above certainly disqualifies you as a silent lamb by my calculus, doing nothing qualifies you as a “Good German,” as Frank Rich puts it so powerfully. Why? Because we are inching ever closer to the shocking realization that analogies to the silent citizens of the Third Reich no longer seem so extreme.

The typical response of Bush sycophants has been to accuse people like myself of suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. But with the destruction that the president has wrough as obvious as the nose on your face and his hard-core supporters dwindling to a lonely few, that perjorative seems as quaint as an archaic expression like "Gag me with a spoon."

Let’s briefly recap some of the highlights of Year Seven:

* There is no darker stain on America today than the top-down approval of torture and newly minted justifications for its use that don't merely remind the historically enabled of the Nazi's Verschärfte Vernehmung, but are in some instances grotesque carbon copies of their rationales for using enhanced terror techniques that left no visible traces when administered properly.

* The war in Iraq drags on and on, sapping the national Treasury and decimating the Army, as well as that lose of life thing, with retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, unapologetically calling the administration's conduct incompetent and warning that we are "living a nightmare with no end in sight."

* In its lust to outsource government services, the administration has allowed Blackwater USA's trigger-happy operatives to run roughshod over innocent Iraqis. Team Blackwater was briefly benched after its operatives blew away 17 Iraqis last month apparently without provocation, which led to a lockdown of U.S. officials in Baghdad's Green Zone because they lacked bodyguards, putting the lie to claims that the Surge has pacified the capital and bolstering Sanchez' brutal assessment.

* Former Qwest chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, who was convicted of insider trading, may have been framed by Alberto Gonzalez' Justice Department because Qwest refused to go along with the NSA's secret electronic eavesdropping program.

* Speaking of secret eavesdropping, the White House is opposing the most modest of checks on the government's Orwellian compulsion to snoop on pretty much anyone at any time – including Americans abroad on vacation -- because (gasp!) reform legislation would restore judicial oversight and that would give terrorists the upper hand.

* That lie, as well as the canard that Al Qaeda in Iraq launched the 9/11 attacks, are among the ways that the administration continues to use the tragedy of the terror attacks for extralegal power grabs that should set the Founding Fathers -- as well as my dear departed mother -- to spinning in their graves.

* Utterly oblivious of the irony, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice harrumphed that Boris Putin had grabbed so much power that he might undermine Russia's commitment to democracy.

* In twin metaphors for the administration's ethical lapses, the inspectors general of the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department are being investigated. The CIA's chief investigator is under the gun as punishment for looking into the agency's detention and torture programs, while State's chief investigator is in the crosshairs for blocking fraud investigations.

* The administration's attack on America's middle class continues apace. For only the fourth time in his tenure, the president vetoed legislation -- in this case a bill with broad bipartisan support to expand a popular program to enable more middle-class families who lacked adequate health insurance to obtain it for their children.

I could go on, but enough is enough . . .

About that joke:

One of the late-night TV comedians wisecracked that the Supreme Court had voted 5-4 to overturn the selection of Al Gore for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. It was a great line, but had the painful ring of truth in this the seventh and most perversely bizarre year of Our Long National Nightmare.

Image: Detail From "The Garden of Earthly Delights"
by Hieronymous Bosch (ca. 1500)