Scott Horton: "The curtain continues to fall over American democracy"

i notice that even i, as one who has ranted and raved for nearly three years about the shredding of our constitution, have fallen into a mild torpor over the continuing abuse of our fundamental constitutional principles by the bush administration... maybe i'm just tired of repeating myself... maybe i'm just tired... am i still deeply disturbed over what's happening...? yes, more than i can possibly express, but perhaps most of all by our national denial that a crisis even exists, overlain by our childlike belief that the november election will be our salvation...

scott horton...

[T]he darkness continues to descend in Washington, the powers of the state continue to grow and the mechanisms of accountability rot away unused. Americans are focused on the selection of a new president. Many of them share the naïve assumption that on January 20, 2009, when a new leader takes the oath of office from the south steps of the Capitol Building, the Founders’ constitutional order will once more be set aright and the extra-constitutional excesses of the Bush years will be but a bad memory. But whoever is installed as the new guardian of presidential power will not likely part with many of the rights that Bush claimed and was allowed to use, unchallenged.

[...]

The curtain continues to fall over American democracy. Americans understandably are sickened by the tragi-comedy that spreads itself across this stage. But their faith in another presidential election and another leader is misplaced. They need to reserve their faith not for the new, but for the old: for the constitutional model that the Founders left. It needs to be forced to work. And all those who undermine it must be held to account. That includes the should-be watchdogs, who slobbering at the prospect of a few drug-drenched sirloins hurled their way, are failing in their duty to protect their true masters: the American people.

We live in the age of the Great Betrayal, in an age in which too few are willing to state the obvious. There is still time to check the progress of tyrannical power, but the hour grows late, and the sounds of alarm no longer seem to register with a somnolent populace.

all i can do is keep pounding the drum even when it takes every ounce of strength i have left to keep doing it...

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