March 26, 2004
It's Midnight in America

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

We have moved from Reagan's "Morning in America" to Bush's "Midnight in America" in less than 20 years.

This is the darkest hour for our nation, when lies, deception and political vengeance -- at the expense of our national security -- are the primary skill set of the executive branch and its subsidiaries: a Republican controlled Congress and an increasingly Republican controlled judiciary, with five Supreme Court votes lined up to side with the GOP on important partisan issues, like the theft of a presidency.

What happens during this midnight hour will determine if democracy continues to exist in our country. It will determine if we will survive as a nation of laws -- based on our Constitution -- or become a nation ruled by an extremist, elitist, dishonest one-party system, whose brazen arrogance is the veil that is used by them to conceal their chronic incompetence.

The brutal attacks on the character of Richard Clarke represent the standard Bush defense against the truth: assassinate and undermine the character of the truth teller. In so doing, the Bush Cartel has generally been successful in diverting the media from analyzing the facts and details of the Bush Administration's betrayal of America -- and of their incompetence -- by questioning the motives of the truth tellers, as they emerge one by one.

As a result, the mainstream media, generally echoing the White House character assassination message points, has betrayed America too. It has forgotten that this was an administration that outed a CIA operative who specialized in the tracking of illicit WMDs, just to wreak vengeance on her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, because he had the temerity to tell the truth about a Bush lie. This is a mainstream media that has, just within weeks, forgotten that the recollections of the former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, corroborate the gist of Clarke's memories about the White House's obsession with Iraq at the expense of preventing 9/11 and fighting Al-Qaeda. This is a media that has forgotten John DiIulio, who wrote a scathing letter detailing that the Bush Administration was solely a cynical political administration, run by "Mayberry Machiavellis," until the White House junkyard dog squad slimed him into submission. And others who have dared stand up for the truth have shared similar fates. These are tactics worthy of Stalin, not an American president.

Shortly before the Iraq War we wrote this about the Bush Administration:

In the end the Bush Cartel is banking on making the kind of impression on the world that a thug makes with a baseball bat on a car.

It's all about image and firepower. It's how the playground bully establishes himself. Pick the weakest guy in the school -- the one nobody likes much anyway -- and beat the living daylights out of him. Keep all the kids nervous and on edge. Let them think that you are a little bit mad and might just beat up on them for the fun of it. Tell them that you will protect them from the gang that lives in the next neighborhood in return for their loyalty. Make an example of anyone who challenges your leadership by denouncing them and bloodying them up. Establish a system of stool pigeons. Rummage through lockers, at your will, for any signs of betrayal. Issue warnings from time-to-time about how you have information that the other gang has plans to rape your mothers and sisters, and lay waste to your homes -- and that is why you need to trust in the playground bully from your school, because he will protect your mothers and sisters from the gang that few have ever actually encountered.

It's governance by brazen muscle power, by unfailing commitment to picking a target to destroy as an example of your ruthlessness, and your will to use any means necessary to establish and preserve your leadership. And if your attack is successful, you will enjoy the spoils of war -- the second largest oil reserves in the world. This is all the better, because you double up your goal of displaying raw, harsh military power, by combining it with additional natural resources that reinforce your dominance. You will be sitting on top of the world, masters of the universe, controlling almost everything on the Monopoly board.

And to accomplish this goal, you never blink, you never apologize, you never let facts get in the way of your mission. You remain steadfast and focused. Getting distracted by truth and ethics is a sign of weakness. And weakness is something you can smell and feel in a man. [LINK]

The mainstream press is still playing the Clarke story, for the most part, as if it is a game of whose spin will prevail -- Clarke's or the White House's -- rather than exploring the validity of Clarke's charges that the Bush White House failed to seriously try to prevent 9/11 from occurring. The media covers the issue as if it is some sort of sporting event.

But it is not. It is a battle for our nation's security. It is a battle over whether we will be ruled by a dishonest, deceiving anti-democracy executive branch of thugs. It is a battle for the truth and for the preservation of our Constitutional democracy.

At least this battle is out in the open now. The Democratic nominee for President of the United States is now challenging the mob-like tactics, credibility and competence of the Bush Cartel. In what could have been a BuzzFlash quotation, Kerry charged this weekend: "It's interesting, every time somebody comes up and says something that this White House doesn't like, they don't answer the questions about it or show the truth about it. They go into character assassination mode," Kerry said. [The Buffalo News]

Kerry is bringing out in the open the Karl Rove/Lee Atwater school of gangland political tactics. That, for the Democrats, counts as a major breakthrough during this hour of darkness for our Constitutional democracy. In the same week, Tom Daschle, marking a milestone, emerged from a record of timid political leadership to call the Bush administration to account for its tactics and record -- in three separate speeches. And West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller apologized for voting to allow Bush to go to war with Iraq -- and revealed that Cheney had put pressure on three senate committee chairmen not to investigate the Bush administration.

Kerry, Daschle and Rockefeller follow belatedly in the foot steps of Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Dick Durbin and a handful of other Democratic Senators -- along with the likes of people like Henry Waxman, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich and Jan Schakowsky (to name a few) in the House of Representatives -- who have led a valiant, lonely effort to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its brutal anti-democracy actions and for its core ineptitude in governing and in combating terror.

But BuzzFlash holds no grudges. Kerry has broken through the threshold that leaders of the Democratic Party previously would not cross. He has publicly reprimanded the Bush Administration for its gutter political tactics. He has drawn attention to the gap between Bush's supposed morality and the actual immorality of an administration that builds its governance on a pyramid of lies, deception and zealous ideology.

Karl Rove knows that the American media lives and dies by sensational headlines and patriotic visual images, not details. But it is the details that make up the foundation of democracy.

Rove knows that truth tellers such as Richard Clarke are a danger because they shed light on the activities of betrayal that occur in the dark spider hole from which Dick Cheney rules -- sending instructions by courier to our dauphin prince, George W. Bush.

It is the midnight hour for America. The battle over Richard Clarke represents the battle for the future of majority rule in America, for the right of American citizens to receive the truth from their government, and for the right of Americans to have a government that defends them from external and internal threats.

It is time for America to wake up to a future where democracy, majority rule, honesty, integrity and reverence for the Constitution are restored to the White House.

God knows we deserve it, but it will only be achieved by increasing the intensity of our efforts. The backbone of the Bush Cartel's dishonest and cynical rule must be broken.

The barbarians are no longer at the gates. They are in the White House.


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