The Anti-Impeachment People

The Bush-Cheney Administration is the most secretive, blatantly corrupt, lawless administration the U.S. has ever created, tolerated and perpetuated. The damage it has done to The Republic and the world is incalculable, and every single person reading this - and many who aren't, like, say, your kids and grandkids and their progeny - will live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

Agitating against impeachment, we have "conservatives" contending The Unitary Executive has done nothing wrong, or, if he did, certainly nothing which rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors." Other conservatives - many of whom occupy powerful positions in government and media - are fully cognizant of the extent to which they are supporting a rogue administration which operates as it desires with impunity, free from the problematic confines of the rule of law. They personally benefit from a culture in which there is no law, only the politics of power and perception. No accountability. Their world has no yesterday and no tomorrow.

Together, this group runs the country however it pleases. It controls the terms of debate. Decides who is on the receiving end our bombs. Decides who goes without healthcare. Decides who gets on television and how they are characterized. Decides who goes to jail. Decides who gets a profession and who gets a job. Decides who gets rich, who stays rich and who stays poor. Decides who lives and dies. They are the creators of Consensus Reality - the reality their idealogical enemies, liberals, claim doesn't really exist because it isn't Reality at all.

Everybody else agitating against impeachment falls into the second category. Liberals. The odd "centrist" or "independent" or Green known to throw a bone to Democrats occasionally. And people who never give politics a thought, but can always be counted upon to hold an opinion. They all blow around from issue to issue like tumbleweeds in the wind, always reacting to the former group's cues. This group is a World Wrestling Federation audience booing the bad guy they're paying to see.

The intellectuals in this group, the vast majority of whom can always be counted on to pull the lever or push the button for Democrats, believe that not having the votes is, in and of itself, ample reason to not to impeach. Principle is for suckers.

For them - these knowledgeable, educated, and often charming pragmatists who pride themselves on their critical thinking, facility with language, reverence for history and, yes, ideals (checked by a Real World View, of course) - there can be no risks. No Big Ideas. They talk loudly and walk softly. Always. Their biggest fear is not terrorism or their fellow citizens dying from lack of healthcare. Certainly not homelessness. Not the unfathomable violence in some distant, foreign part of the world they'll never see where their tax dollars make orphans, widows, beggars, prostitutes, criminals, cripples, and irradiated soil & water.

No, the biggest fear of The American Intellectual - and those who want so desperately to belong to that group - is the fear of being perceived as granola-eating, drug-addled Chomskyites by peers, opponents and an indifferent public. Dirty hippies spitting on Veterans. Naive idealists. Symbionese Liberation Army. Some loser who shares an opinion - any opinion - with a kid holding a sign that says "Free Mumia."

Humiliation is their biggest fear. They will do anything - pay any price - to avoid it.

They convince themselves Fascism is a threat, not a reality. Convince themselves The Republic is endangered, not extinct. Convince themselves there is a magical pendulum that - any day now - will begin to swing back in their direction, thereby relieving them of any responsibility to stick their necks out like the coal miners and factory workers and suffragists and civil rights marchers and the regular people - nameless and faceless and forgotten - who risked their lives, and often lost them, in the pursuit of a scrap of human dignity for themselves, their families, their neighbors.

The intellectual's greatest possession is his or her own head. As long as their heads survive, the world is okay. Flawed, but okay. Things will get better.

Justice is a concept. The Constitution is a history lesson. The Republic is a rhetorical device to employ in lofty arguments. Oppression is the suspicion that someone is looking at their email. Struggle is the long wait for Democrats to "grow a spine" or "frame their arguments" or "stand up to the media." Leadership is a word they applaud at the convention. They expect the Democrats they elect to uphold their oaths to protect and defend The Constitution - but only when victory is a certainty; when they can be assured the media they routinely and justifiably condemn, and the power structure it represents, acquiesces.

Contrary to what passes for conventional wisdom in liberal circles, The Democratic Party is the mirror image of its base - conflicted, uncertain, unprincipled and terrified of looking foolish to each other and the very people whose boots rest on their gelatinous spines.

Power does not acquiesce.

Power does not surrender.

Power is not threatened by righteousness or morality or indignation.

Power doesn't care how its subjects feel.

Who, then, will challenge it?