The North Coast times-eagle., August 01, 2005, Image 1

TIM E S
EA G LE
N O RTH
C O A ST
V O L27N O 2 50C E N TS
‘In a dark time the eye begins to see '
AUGTEMBER 2005
-T H E O D O R E ROTHKE
PEDRO MOLINA
THE IMPEACHABLE PRESIDENT
“Immediately the subject ceases to fear the
despotic force, its power is gone, ” Gandhi said.
-MOHANDAS GANDHI
It is time to discuss impeachment. The President has
disgraced the nation and imperiously downsized its reason for
being — outright abrogation of the nation's secular 10 command­
ments (otherwise known as the Bill of Rights), arrogant disregard
for the Constitution,which was conceived by revolutionaries wary
of domestic tyranny; a war deserter who makes war to profit his
benefactors (or as one critic says, he has compelled our country
to be fueled on “miles per soldier.")
And besides all that, he was probably not elected in the
first place, or for that matter, not in the second place either. His
first impeachable offense might very well have been taking the
oath of office without having been elected President.
George W. Bush is a fraud, an instinctively mythomanie
deconstructionist: a swaggering bully who ducked his chance to
put his life where his grossly inarticulate mouth is, who allowed
others to kill and die in a war he claimed to champion but was
not inclined to display the nerve to invest himself personally.
Yet a significant number of Americans are afraid of him,
or worse, claim to worship him, which, paradoxical to his meager
character, makes him the most dangerous and menacing chief
executive in the nation’s history.
He has assumed the mantle of God's chosen man, yet
he baldly pursues Mephistophelean ambitions that threaten to
sell out the nation’s soul. He rips away the fabric of the demo­
cracy he is pledged to uphold and lavishes wealth and power
upon a homegrown aristocracy that is avaricious for world
empire — gained at any cost but their own.
To cyclop his vision with that of the nation’s forepersons
(an inaccurate term intended to embody the full range of founder
ancestry), he is in a sense imitative of them as a traitor to his
country and a terrorist, except they rebelled against tyranny
while he is determined to reimpose it upon the ordinary citizenry
of the nation. Also, the ancestors who created the American
democracy were generally out in front of the storm they conjured
while he is sheltered far behind the battle by layers of publicly
funded safekeeping.
Bush the man is not very much, despite his blustering
ego and aura of self-divinity; he is someone else's fool, in the
words of the infamous V.l. Lenin who said of his more infamous
protégé Stalin, “a useful idiot." His family is tainted with corrupt­
ion and malfeasance. His father is a former President, the first
CIA director in the White House (who knows the shadowy evil
he conveyed with him: the name Noriega and an assault upon
Panama come to mind). One of his brothers is governor of
Florida and surely helped engineer the fraudulent elections in
that state; another brother is perhaps the greatest swindler in
U S history (remember the Savings & Loan disaster?)
It cannot be stressed too often that Bush and his
noveau federalists are exactly the domestic proto-aristocracy
our ancestors most feared would eventually abrogate their
hard-won liberties and civil rights. Benjamin Franklin candidly
predicted that eventually the country would become so lax and
corrupt it would not only allow but embrace for its own selfish
comforts a domestic despotism to more or less absolve their
obligations and responsibilities to be active citizens enlarging
and protecting democracy. And of course the putsch would be
in the name of the sacrosanct names of liberty and justice for
all simultaneous to their subjugation — as well as in the name
of Christianity, in conflict with separation of religion and state
A major notion of the ancestors was for the common
people to be able to censure or remove corrupt or tyrannical
officials without resort to revolution, vigilantism or assassination.
Whenever these rights are plugged, dramatic relief becomes
a conceivable option, which of course the leaders attempt
to forestall and perhaps quell with increasing police powers
to protect their illegal repeal of the rule of law
STEPHEN PEARCY
Conservatives have called for the California Attorney
General to remove Berkeley Lawyer Steven Pearcy’s
depiction of the USA being flushed down a toilet from
a justice department art show. An online petition calls
the painting “ anti-American” and “ a desecration of the
symbol that represents this country.” Pearcy said he
painted the piece on July 4, 2003 because he felt “the
country was going down the toilet.” His inspiration
was aroused “ after seeing American flags everywhere
in a fanatical display of patriotism.” he said the paint­
ing is a "pretty straightforward message.”
This second Bush administration is essentially carrying
out an Orwellian deconstruction of democratic governance.
People are simply denied power as well as any voice in its use
or intent, and if history provides an insight, the majority become
helplessly or angrily apathetic rather than revolt Rearranging
the democracy to suit a small ruling claque will most likely result
in dismantling the democratic process.
Bush has severely curbed American freedoms with the
Patriot Act, which was rammed through Congress just after 9/11,
and is nearly a blueprint of the infamous Huston Plan of Nixon’s
era of surveillance and wiretaps of American citizens. He has
virtually abrogated the Bill of Rights through administrative
policies that avoid Congressional vote or oversight, and has
cloaked the executive branch of government in the deepest
web of secrecy in the nation’s history.
Bush misled the American public about WMDs in Iraq,
manipulated and falsified intelligence to justify invasion of Iraq,
which has caused nearly 2,000 U S. deaths and thousands more
wounded, perhaps 100,000 more innocent civilian deaths (more
than 30 times 9/11 deaths) — by this action has not only created
a quagmire for American tax money, stretched the U S. military
too thin to adequately respond to terrorism but also through
invasion, occupation and usurpation of power in Iraq, tarnished
the concepts of liberation and democracy, words he flogs over
and over as if selling cars.
Bush has escalated nuclear weapons development
in the USA, insisting that ‘Star Wars’ guard the high frontier
of space while so-called low-yield tactical nuclear weapons
are planned for frontline use. Developing new nukes ostensibly
for the war on terrorism while insisting every other country limit
their stockpiles is a dangerous contradiction that brings the world
closer to the long anticipated millennial annihilation
Bush squandered the world's goodwill and sympathy
following 9/11 by his arrogant and bullying bellicosity, using
9/11 to claim himself commander-in-chief of the world (God's
crusader), breaking all major treaties, declaring pre-emptive
right to invade any other country in the world for any reason,
which has made the USA the currently most despised country
in the world — a primary cause of 9/11 in the first place
Even if there is little case for impeachment — standards
of which Republicans lowered considerably in their incessant
campaign to oust Bill Clinton — it is evident that a considerable
number of Americans are beginning to react to the policies of the
Bush administration. However much the GOP believes it has
attained single party rule, it has from the very start imperiled its
position with blatant arrogance and transparent corruption as
well as flagrant disregard for the Constitution, unmindful that
power in this country is ostensibly in the hands of the people
however much that has lately been diverted or disregarded
The thought of impeachment might seem an ineffective
method of removing the President and curb his cabalistic
expropriation of power, but it is something that everyone can
be involved in, which is what power to the people is all about
-M ICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER