While Daily Kos conferenced with the candidates, our democracy took a huge step that much closer to totalitarianism.
I pose this question to the netroots: just how influential are we when our democracy can be pulled out from under our feet, at the same time that a huge group of progressive bloggers are holding a celebrated (in some quarters) conference replete with presidential candidates?
Just who is being played here?
And now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with revealing symbolism, cancel their scheduled appearances this morning at Yearly Kos because George Bush ordered them to remain in Washington in order to re-write and expand FISA — a law which he has repeatedly refused to allow to be revised for years and which he has openly and proudly violated. Congressional Democrats know virtually nothing about how the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our conversations because the administration refused to tell them and they passively accepted this state of affairs.
There was a massive collision between illusion and reality yesterday. Certain illusions have been dispelled. For example, yesterday’s vote in the house all but takes impeachment off the table. One wonders if it was ever really on the table.
A Congress that votes sweeping new powers to the executive branch to spy on Americans will not vote to impeach that same president.
We’re all reeling from this. Go here to see who failed us, and test of democracy, in Congress.
If there was an illusion that Congress would save us from Bush and the march of totalitarianism, here is one who is hoping that this illusion is dispelled. We’ve seen it time and again: it is the citizens themselves who must meet this fascist march head-on, and take it on, face to face.
Get ready to take it to the streets. I leave you with Woody Guthrie’s timeless lyrics:
All You Fascists
I’m gonna tell you fascists
You may be surprised
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose
Race hatred cannot stop us
This one thing we know
Your poll tax and Jim Crow
And greed has got to go
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose…
People of every color
Marching side to side
Marching `cross these fields
Where a million fascists dies
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!
