Stoopid Stuff

A Nation gets the Government it Deserves

Sure. There's a lot of hooting as Bush and Cheney slink away, leaving us to try to repair the damage that, at this point, we still cannot even triage. Comedians make jokes, fake news anchors sneer, events and days are counted down, and the calendar pages flip inexorably toward the changing of leadership.

Bush's farewell speech was a travesty, and tantrum demanding respect for actions and events that can only be ridiculed. He took no responsibility for the harm, indeed, he claimed to have done well, and appealed only to time to recognize the quality of his leadership. While we all languish in the disaster that was his domestic policy, his foreign policy, his hubris, his stupidity.

Yes. We GET that Bush and Cheney, along with a large number of their staffs, have committed crime after crime, murdering, torturing, renditioning, spying, lying, even shooting their FRIENDS. But it must never be forgotten. No matter how you decide to come down on the 2000 election and the criminal fraud perpetrated by the Bush cronies on the Supreme Court, ultimately, it should never have come to that.

At the end of the day, a nation gets the leadership it seeks. It follows the ideology it deserves. It offers power to those it would follow. And enough Americans chose to follow these ignorant thugs. Enough Americans were afraid, enough Americans viewed the world with fear and hatred, enough Americans wanted an autocracy to eliminate this scary democracy and all those people we hate.

We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are also the ones who bear responsibility for the actions of our nation over the last 8 year. We need to do (at least) two things. We need to accept that AMERICA did these things, not George Bush, not Dick Cheney, but OUR tribe. We need to own that, accept that, and forgive ourselves. And we need to begin to hold the responsible individuals accountable. We have to accept our responsibility, but that doesn't mean we have the option not to purge this demon. We are the criminals, and we somebody has to pay.

We can't even begin to turn the page until we accept, understand and embrace two things. First, we are also culpable, and in that context, it can happen again. We have to take much more seriously how people become our leaders. We have to recognize the inherent risks in the system, that we can make very large mistakes that we can't find an easy way to reverse. And second, people who have done this to us, even if in our names, must have accountability. If nobody pays a price, there will be no disincentive to the next kleptomaniac thug criminal ignorant incompetent prettyboy who wants power and can't come up with a downside to its pursuit.

posted by mikey @ 6:23 PM