Are We Ready To Debate the Real Issue?
The ‘I’ Word: Impeachment
by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese
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This morning I was driving on Broadway near Portland State University. There was a young man holding a large sign with these words printed on it:
“Release the memos.”
I knew what he meant and I am quite sure that most people in that part of town also know. Yet, I just looked at him and drove on, thinking “That’ll get us nowhere.”
This is defeatist, I know. My political lethargy which, I’m sure, is temporarily dormant stems not only from my personal disconnect from our governmental processes (legal and illegal) but also takes firm root in the fact that no matter what issues come up (Bush and coke, Gannon, Bush’s armed service record, the entire Iraq War, amongst a tome’s worth more…) the common man’s concerns are for naught. We don’t matter and the conduits from which most people receive their news also don’t matter in the scope of professional journalism. The news is all cheap chocolate and colored carnations.
I’ve listened to Air Americans rail everything this administration has done wrong (even to the point of missing the truly important issues) but it all doesn’t seem to matter. What rules us all is fear. We’re afraid. Mainstream media outlets are afraid. Democrats have skid marks in their drawers. Centrist Republicans want a job when their time for re-election comes up. We’re all afraid. There is no Deep Throat in America. No one has balls.
Ralph Nader has what it takes to move and shake but can’t get it done when so many people are asleep. I stuck so closely by the Democrats last November and the subsequent months afterwards. It was not John Kerry’s loss that made me disillusioned. It was not that our country fell gleefully into the hands of feudal lords. It was the simple fact that Democrats shut their pie-holes as the Republicans told them too and rolled right over. The first I’ve heard of Howard Dean since his selection as the chair of the Democratic Party was at the end of last week and what he had to say was so empty and soulless that it didn’t even matter that he spoke at all. Where are the dismantlers? Where are the revolutionaries? Where are the people?
Why do you think there has been no push for impeachment amongst Congressional Democrats? The Republicans took the ball and really ran with it when the Lewinsky scandal happened. It seems like the Democrats would have about 1000 times more “ammo” with which to attack Bush. What makes them so afraid? I mean, yes of course we as a people have to support the troops, even if we oppose the war, but if Bush were impeached and replaced would anything change? No, we’d still support the troops, oppose the war, and pursue the quickest possible exit strategy – just under a different leader. I just don’t understand the lack of outrage…
By the way, in the event of impeachment of both Bush and Cheney, would Dennis Hastert (Speaker of the House) become president?? I believe this is so.
I believe your right Tony.
I don’t think the Dems’ have been fighting because it’s an uphill battle they can’t afford to lose. With the spin machine Karl Rove owns it’s nearly impossible to bring the truth to the public through the only channels the Dems’ have, the media. Look at how the Reps’ made Bush’s military record look admirable, or how they subtly rid themselves of the facts that Bush used cocaine and was a severe alcoholic. All the while Clinton took hell for smoking a joint!
The Dems’ may have the “ammo” but aren’t in any position to pull the trigger. The Lewinsky scandal was a moral issue people easily understood. Man cheats on wife. The Iraq scandal is a whole other beast. We’re talking about people with “Bomb ‘Em All and Take Their Oil” bumper stickers. How is anyone going to get through to them? They don’t care about the “sand niggers” in Iraq. They love the cowboy aspects of Dubya and hope the next guy will “kill the rest of ‘em.”
This is my interpretation at least…
Your interpretation is pretty close to the truth, I think. It is completely about the “rah-rah” of war as opposed to the “tsk-tsk” behind not restraining your willie. Yet, when it all gets boiled down, both are moral issues in which one includes destruction, death, famine, as well as a host of other “peripheral” side-effects, and the other is personal morality involving a man, a wife, and a young woman. War doesn’t effect many people directly here in the United States. Heck, even 9/11 didn’t affect many people directly (relatively speaking, of course). Ah, but the almighty cheating spouse; now, that is something that touches many, many people and can easily become manipulated to manipulate the general populace. The mob mentality allows for the masses to look at morality in such a way. The question for most is what effects ME the greatest, not what effects the whole. It is easy to cover military maneuvers and offensives as killing for our right to eat the patriotic McDonald’s Big Mac, or as carpet bombing to save us from the “terrorists” (you know, the brown skinned people from the Middle East). This is how the mob continues to breathe and multiply. Feed the beast nice fattening morsels of nothing and they’ll just get fatter and stupider.
On the same note, I came very close to losing my mind when I heard just one too many people on the TV and radio say that Memorial Day is about supporting the troops in Iraq because they’re keeping us free. They are? I didn’t even realize we were positioned to be taken over, unless you’re talking about a hostile corporate take-over by the BIG FEW.
The selfishness you speak of is a result of the capitalist society we live in. When our identity (job) entails that we back-stab, one-up, etc. it negates an “all for one, one for all” standpoint. With socialist reform (as a result from failing capitalism) the entire culture would eliminate this anxiety against our neighbors.
We’re all victims of how society tells us to behave. I simply don’t see how events such as 9/11, Enron, and Iraq hasn’t allowed the people to realize that our leaders (corporate and political) can’t be trusted therefore reform must take place.
I feel the difference is that the details of the Lewinsky scandal were, at the end of the day, relatively inconsequential. Yes, Clinton’s actions were disrespectful to his office and his publicized adultery was a disgrace, but it pretty much stops there. Some of the charges that could be brought against Bush involve serious, serious stuff. Life and death stuff. People don’t want to confront that. It’s not that the public doesn’t question the Iraq War, they just don’t want to believe that we’re over there for the wrong reasons. Is that just as bad as the more simplistic interpretation that Randy offered? Maybe so. But I think that many who support Bush do so only outwardly to hide the internal conflict they feel as a result of this war. Especially now that the situation hasn’t turned out as we were told it would – Iraq is still violent and dangerous, terrorist attacks are still common, the new Iraqi army is a joke, and the Iraqi people don’t seem to want us there, yet there is no plan for us to leave anytime soon. I don’t think that the Dems are being “held hostage” by a mob of inarticulate constituents who blindly support the war and who harbor outright malice towards Arabs. Perhaps they just lack the backbone to make a stand. Or maybe they believe in the war just as much as Bush does. Maybe they really aren’t the party of the common man, as they would have us believe around election time.
I disagree with your “almight cheating spouse” theory too, Cas. Not everyone has been affected by adultery either. It would be just as easy to imagine losing one’s family in a war as being cheated on – both are powerful and scary possibilities, but the thought of war is far scarier. That’s why people were able to latch on to what was ultimately a mickey mouse issue – the Lewinsky scandal, but can’t deal with what is happening in Iraq, which is the exact opposite of a mickey mouse issue. So they try to let themselves off the hook by coming up with flimsy rationale for supporting the war.
Anyways, I gotta go buy the new White Stripes record before my lunch hour is over…hell of a game last night too, by the way.
They played the whole album on WDET. It’s not too bad…
I like both theories. No matter what the issue (lack of backbones, buried skeletons) Congress is not living up to their responsibility.
to clarify, i do think both theories apply…and yeah, the ball is being dropped by someone…
…not by Chauncey though. awww yeah!!! Pistons in 7!!
Alright, now your completely wrong. Try, Pistons in 6!
screw that! pistons in 3!!
I suppose… If they killed the entire Spurs team?…
exactly
Tony, are you seriously saying that you have no personal experience, nothing that shaped you as a person that involves adultery or the consequences thereof? Really?
When i was about 10, the pastor at my Presbyterian church, a man whom i totally adored (& i adored his wife too, although their three sons were sometimes my friends & sometimes a pain in my ass) had an affair w/ a woman at our church. She was a friend of my moms, married w/ five kids, though there was definitely something trampy about her (& i say that as someone who was utterly fascinated by the art of being a woman as a kid, so i was studying this broad, taking notes). i knew, i mean as a little fucking FOURTH GRADER i KNEW, that there was some shit up between those two. Maybe all of the grown ups thought it was impossible, that they were both married, that he was a reverend for heaven’s sake, so they didn’t see it. But the day my family had a pool party & she “lost” something in my pool & for some reason everyone but the two of them cleared out of the pool while they searched for it, i totally knew what was going on. That all ended up about as disasterously as this sort of thing can. He knocked her up, had to leave our church, divorced his wife… it was traumatic to ME, & i was pretty far removed from what anyone would consider the wake of destruction from all of this, but i’m pretty certain an awful lot of my conflicting feelings about religion, about church, about all of that stuff come from that experience.
But i don’t know anyone who has been to Iraq, this time or the first time. & i’m an ex-Air Force wife & military brat!
I disagreed with Cas because of his statement that the American people could get on the “let’s impeach Clinton due to the Lewinsky scandal” bandwagon, but not the “let’s impeach Bush due to the Iraq War” bandwagon because they don’t “get” the war and it’s consequences in the same way they understand adultery. I don’t think that’s true. You pointed out that you have been deeply affected on a personal level by an instance of marital infidelity, but that you don’t know anyone who has been to Iraq. I’m not sure what you’re saying…if I combine Cas’s argument with your comment, logic would dictate that you would have been all for impeaching Clinton but indifferent or opposed towards an impeachment of Bush because of your personal experiences…something tells me that’s not how you feel.
Since you asked, I have opinions based on some personal knowledge/experience, but I have not been affected to the extent that you were by anything involving adultery. Also, I know one guy who was in Iraq for a long time. We exchanged a couple emails while he was there. So based on these limited exposures, I would say that I don’t have a built-in bias towards one issue or the other.
People were fascinated w/ the Clinton/Lewinsky thing because 1) Americans have a bizarre purient interest in everyone else’s shit & 2) because everyone brings their own issues into things. i thought the entire thing was a passing curiousity (why HER?), but man, could you see the evil inner workings of the collective American psyche. Puritanical, fat-phobic, misogynistic, totally hypocritical (thanks Larry Flynt for revealing the full extent of the hypocrisy!)… our coverage & fascination w/ all of that was America-on-the-couch, & man, do we have some issues.
It’s pathetic, but a far away war that doesn’t directly effect many of us (war bonds? rationing? draft?) is much harder to relate to than sex. Even though one is effecting millions of people, & the other was just a really terrible ordeal for four (Bill, Hillary, Monica, & Chelsea).
Hey, don’t forget Linda Tripp.
True, the war hasn’t directly affected many Americans yet. Maybe I’m overestimating our ability or willingness to relate to or have empathy for other people on the other side of the world. The honest people who are just trying to make a living and whose loved ones are killed when our attacks go awry, or when we bomb large areas in search on a smaller target we think is there or by their fanatical countrymen who kill indiscriminantly. Like Randy said before, I think both of the aforementioned theories hold true. I think people in support of the war make an effort to avoid many of the effects the war is having.
Linda Tripp. i forgot about her. What a cunt.