"Americans cannot acknowledge their 'complicity' " in the crimes of the Bush administration

gary kamiya in salon makes a case for why we are not already impeaching our president...

"To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness -- come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we're not ready to do that."

Analogizing the relationship between President Bush and the American people to a failed marriage that is fighting against the inevitability of divorce, Kamiya says that most Americans cannot acknowledge their 'complicity' in the policies of the Bush administration.

i think it's more than that... from the time we were all little nippers, we've been soaked in a belief of united states exceptionalism*, that the u.s. is something unique and special in history, that we are on the side of goodness and truth, and, most importantly, that our elected and governmental officials are dedicated to the common good... beyond facing what kamiya believes we are avoiding - "our national core of violent self-righteousness" - we will also have to face that we are no longer the "shining city on the hill," nor have we been for quite some time...

otoh, kamiya gives voice to what i quietly pray for every day...

The culture of spin is also the culture of spectacle, and a sudden, theatrical event -- a lurid accusation made by a former official, a colorful revelation of a very specific and memorable Bush lie -- could start the scandal machine going full speed," Kamiya writes. "If everything happens just so, the downfall of the House of Bush could be shocking in its swiftness.

(thanks to raw story...)

* American exceptionalism (cf. "exceptionalism") has been historically referred to as the perception that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its unique origins, national credo, historical evolution, or distinctive political and religious institutions. The difference is typically expressed as some categorical superiority, to which is usually attached some rationalization or explanation that may vary greatly depending on the historical period and the political context. As Ross (1991) has argued, there are three generic varieties of American exceptionalism:

1. supernaturalist explanations which emphasize the causal potency of God in selecting America as a "city on a hill" to serve as an example for the rest of the world,
2. genetic interpretations which emphasize racial traits, ethnicity, or gender, and
3. environmental explanations such as geography, climate, availability of natural resources, social structure, and type of political economy.

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