God Bless Us, Every One

Jack Lessenberry writes for the Metro Times and he believes Democrats should try to impeach Bush so there's a historical record of his actions, especially in lieu of the latest wiretapping revelations. He's convinced things are a little crazy and sick in this country today.

Some weeks ago, I suggested that we were like frogs in a pot. The temperature that leads to fascism gets slowly turned up, degree by degree, until before you know it, we’ve lost our freedoms and didn’t even notice.

In my opinion, the entire “terrorist threat” is the most overblown political tactic in the world. Four years ago, a cunning and ruthless gang pulled one spectacular stunt, which we know as Sept. 11.

But since then, they haven’t done very much, certainly not here. Some day, there may be a terrorist named Maureen O’Riley. Hard to say; but some act of terror is bound to occur, if only by a raving nut. If that happens, do you suppose we’ll start wiretapping every Irish-American?

Or how about this: Suppose a Polish guy from Detroit was secretly an anarchist and plotted — successfully — to assassinate the president of the United States. Caught, he gleefully admitted it, saying the president was evil. And when they dragged him off to be executed, he said, “I’m not sorry!”

Well, guess what. That really happened, in 1901, when Leon Czolgosz murdered William McKinley for political reasons. They tried and executed him in a few weeks, and then spitefully poured sulfuric acid on his face after he was dead. But nobody suggested we spy on Polish America, or build secret prisons in other countries to hold people with suspicious Polish names.

Maybe that‘s because, for all our racism and faults and mean-spiritedness, we knew better who we were then.

We have a leader now who’s forgotten what being an American is all about — or more likely, the spoiled rich man’s son never really knew.

Some weeks ago I also dismissed any thoughts that we ought to consider impeaching this president. Now I think I may have been wrong about that too.

Democrats should try to impeach this fool who is responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths and the trampling of our basic rights. They can make a run at that, if they should win back one house of Congress next year.

They’d likely fail, but they could make a record for history and show what the nature of this administration was. They might even make future leaders hesitate to violate our rights and freedoms.