The Dem faction

[Hogeye]

Tweedledum elected some folks, but don't expect anything to change much. Defund the occupation? Repeal the Patriot Act? No way the Dem faction of the War Party will do that. Here's an excerpt from an interesting article.

Iraq is a single malignancy in a body riddled with cancer. Bush’s never-ending "War on Terror" is the depleted uranium sparking the tumors.

Yes, on Election Day Americans were demanding an end to the quagmire in Iraq, but Americans were also repudiating everything else about the direction that Bush and the neocons have taken us these last few years – the domestic surveillance, the torture, the Patriot Act, the efforts to label dissenters "unlawful combatants," and so on.

Whether the election results were legitimate or manufactured (and that question will always remain as long as electronic voting machines are used), there’s only one way to interpret such a stark course correction: a rejection of Bush’s police state by someone.

If the Democrats do anything short of repealing the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, it will be a betrayal. If they don’t conduct new investigations into 9/11 and the alleged intelligence "failures" leading to the Iraq war, and if they don’t hold the neocons accountable for all the death and diminishment that they’ve caused, they will prove, once again, how they are effectively no different than the Republicans.

Instead, the Democrats will demonstrate another completely unsurprising natural law: that the establishment protects its own.

Instead of honoring the mandate – and it’s impossible to characterize the results any other way than as a mandate – instead of finishing the job, of utilizing the steam that powered their rise – Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, and John Conyers have instead each assured the American public, preemptively, that impeachment of George W. Bush is off the table.

Suddenly Democrats are interested in national unity, just days after declaring that Bush the unitary decider was destroying the universe? In spite of some polls suggesting that the public would overwhelmingly support impeachment proceedings? (Even mainstream Zogby polling supports this finding.)

Unprincipled, intolerant coffee-house liberals will prove all too willing to concede to the never-ending "War on Terror" and its collateral laws. They’ll now characterize these laws as necessary evils, these pillars of our police state. As long as their team holds the reins, that is.

Democrats are outraged by the 4th amendment abuses built into the Patriot Act only if it’s Bush, a cardboard cutout of a "conservative," whose Justice Department and FBI are abusing the law. But they’re just fine with the thought of Hillary wielding that abuse of power.

For the Democrats to impeach Bush at this point – even though it’s likely that whatever charges that might stick to him would clearly be heaped twofold on Cheney, thereby leapfrogging whomever the Ds choose for their Speaker to the fore – would threaten to topple the entire statist house of cards.

But Democrats have no problem with cards.

Once again we’ll see establishment incumbent protectionism in motion: "No, no, we won’t dismantle the agency/law/policy that you, the public, find so overwhelmingly objectionable – but we will paint it a different color." "Sure, domestic surveillance is bad – unless it’s to root out people engaging in hate speech!" "Sure, sure, the government scrutinizing our financial transactions with a fine-toothed comb seems un-American, but there might be people out there buying unregistered handguns or cheating on their taxes!" And so on.

As the opposite side of the same coin, Democrats are every bit as dependent on government mythology as Republicans.

Sure, each side’s myth has different bogeymen and varying definitions of vice and virtue, but debate between the two is inconsequential by design. It is just that, debate. If a substantive issue quakes the ground beneath their feet, both parties instead happily focus on irrelevant wedge issues like flag burning.

The compromise is always the reality that counts, and when the establishment parties reach compromise over anything, it invariably nurtures the police state.

Has a single government program or law enforcement agency ever been dismantled? Not simply renamed, but removed from the taxpayer overhead – complete with mass layoffs of all the former employees?

Without uncritical reverence to the establishment premise of 9/11, in spite of all of its proven, glaring flaws, the Constitution-destroying Patriot Act – nay, every government action of the last five years – becomes vulnerable to a populist demand for repeal.

Are Democrats now ready to recant every civil rights–based complaint they’ve launched over the last five years? Will they issue a group press release stating that they’ve changed their minds? Or will they just assure everyone that it’s safe to leave the laws in place because they can be trusted not to abuse them?

As for the mythology, without adherence to the groupthink that a few genius Arabs in caves, without any inside help, had the supernatural wherewithal to circumvent the most sophisticated, layered defense system the world has ever seen, NORAD, the Democrats likewise won’t be able to utilize the Patriot Act to root out gun-owning "domestic terrorists."

In other words, the Democrats are fully vested in the police state, too. One need only remember Waco for an example of the damage spawned by their style of zealotry.

We can reasonably expect for them to be just as threatened as Republicans by anyone questioning the legitimacy of our never-ending war. Because just like establishment Republicans, Democrats will be perfectly fine with using both the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act as de-facto law enforcement measures to silence their political enemies. - Will This Democrat Majority Turn the Tide of History? Why Would It?