Political Prophecy

                                                                                                        Earth Manifesto Insights

                                                                                                              Dr. Tiffany B. Twain  

                                                                                                             January 2006

Politics --- the plot thickens!  It’s a curious situation, and quite the mystery to me …

I’m a slender gal with a passion for life, and nature, and beauty.  I love aesthetics, creativity, nobility of intention, perspicacity, philosophy, and knowledge.  I have no desire to stoop to the debased level of politic intrigue and corruption and ego-driven power mongering.  And yet here it is, early in the 21st century, and the need is growing for us to make dramatic reform, and achieve positive social change, and make the government more accountable.  We need our public servants to be more honest and civic–minded. 

It is self-evident that we need extensive change in our economic and political systems to make them fairer and more sustainable.  Our great Constitution is being subverted by Congressional and corporate corruption and Executive abuses of power.  The threat to citizens’ rights is approaching an extreme similar to that which pertained during the Revolutionary War of 1776, when our forefathers were driven to demand independence from England and to courageously throw off the yoke of King George’s oppressive colonial government.

It is both ironic to see arrogant U.S economic exploitation and military aggression abroad that is resulting in increased terrorism and growing movements towards Islamic extremism in the Middle East.  It is sad to see international alienation and leftist opposition in such places as Latin America.  John Fowles, in his enlightening book The Aristos, observes that extremism “countersupports” what it opposes, meaning that what we unjustly oppose actually strengthens that which we ostensibly intend to diminish. 

A strong argument can be made that the United States is stimulating social and political instability worldwide.  It appears that we are dangerously strengthening Islamic religious extremism and terrorism in such places as Iran and Egypt and Pakistan.  The election of Hamas by the Palestinian people highlights the shortsighted impact of our American strategy to used hard-nosed foreign policies to control and dominate the world.  At the same time, our leaders are acting to reduce the rights and privacy of citizens at home, diminishing our democracy.

I have been predicting for years that Republican authoritarianism was probably too extreme for our democratic form of government, and that George Bush and Dick Cheney would end up being impeached.  There wasn’t much enthusiasm in my prediction because Congress is, after all, extremely partisan and negatively dominated by Republicans and Special Interests that are powerfully vested in defending the Status Quo.

The Republican party of the 1950’s had an image of supposedly being characterized by decency, honesty, pragmatism, good citizenship, fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, spending discipline, and commitments to fairness, integrity, and limited government.  I picture Republicans in the good old days as honoring family values that included simple faith, social responsibility, trust, charity, tolerance, empathy, respect for diversity, and a generosity of spirit.

How times change!

Power corrupts, and the more absolute the power, the greater the probability that abuses of power will occur.  For the past five years, the Senate and the House of Representatives and the White House have all been dominated by one political party.  This is the first time in 50 years that voters have not had the common sense, or sheer good luck, to have chosen a president to preside over the Executive Branch whose power is not balanced by an opposition majority in Congress. 

The result?  Abuses of power!  We now have corruption scandals galore, blatant cronyism, systemic institutionalized bribery, no-bid government contracts, prisoner torture, spying on citizens, and inept governance that has given us such things as a stupid new Medicare/ Prescription Drug plan that is not only a complicated and poorly designed new entitlement, but an extraordinarily expensive one.  The plan was written by industry lobbyists, which helps explain why it is a program that seriously and cynically exploits society’s good intentions towards people in need.  Instead of being designed to primarily help people, it was designed to maximize the profits to be made by drug companies, insurance companies, and businesses that seek to foist employee benefit costs onto society.

The Republican majority seem to have gotten away so far with these abuses of power.  They have been able to do this by using slick promotion, deceptive spin, fostered fear, social divisiveness, media manipulation, suppression of dissenting opinions, and dirty-trick strategies.  They even seem to have convinced 40% of the people that they are doing the right thing, as opposed to merely the far right thing.  They have started illegal wars abroad under false pretexts, amorally prostituted themselves to the super rich and giant corporations, supported a concerted assault on environmental protection laws and public lands, and pandered to religious fundamentalists.  They have done this all to the detriment of the social good.  But like a fossil-fuel-oriented National Energy Policy in the face of inevitable resource depletion, such blatant wrong-headedness simply cannot be sustained.

I have to chuckle in agreement with readers who say or think that my predictions cannot be trusted:  after all, I predicted that the Bush/Cheney regime would be turned out of office in November 2004, and boy, was I wrong about that!   (Er … maybe … I mean, wouldn’t one have to be a conspiracy theorist to think that the election results were marred by fraudulent disenfranchisement of many voters --- again! --- and that there is something fishy about Ohio’s Diebold owner guaranteeing the Bush/Cheney team in advance that their party would win the Ohio vote using Diebold’s no-audit-trail voting machines?)

Yet here’s the thing:  I had an epiphany the other day, and realized that my impeachment prediction could actually come true.  The Republicans will continue to arrogantly abuse power and mismanage the nation.  They will stay-the-course in foreign occupations, and lie and cheat and figuratively shoot themselves in the foot even more than they are already doing.  By Election Day in November 2006, so many serious failings and abuses of power will have slid out of the closet that the clamor against the “culture of corruption” and against Big Brother government intrusiveness will have grown deafening.  And PRESTO!, on November 7, 2006 the ruling regime in Congress will lose its majority.  The new leadership in the House of Representatives will press for impeachment hearings, followed by impeachment proceedings in the Senate. 

The checks and balances built into our Constitution will thus rescue us from the negative impacts of neoconservatism, and we can get on with trying to make the world a better place, redefining progressive values to be indisputably concerned with fairness, citizen rights, the social good, peace, far-sightedness, and a legacy of sustainable activities.

It would be a significant misapprehension to suppose that my perspective is an endorsement of establishment Democrats.  Although the Democratic Party is far more empathetic than neoconservative Republicans on issues that affect the majority of Americans, it does not yet in practical fact represent sustainable, long-term oriented, ecologically sound, truly peaceful, and intelligent planning policies that are so desperately required.  Different special interests, and many of the same, dictate to the Democratic Party.  The progressive transformation we need is one that will extensively change both political parties.

It is amazing that only three presidents have had to face impeachment hearings:  Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, both of whom were both eventually acquitted, and Richard Nixon in 1974, who resigned before impeachment proceedings began.  No president in American history has yet been convicted! 

But don’t count out this possibility.  Federal impeachment applies to those accused of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”   Impeachment provisions are an aspect of the Constitution designed to prevent abuses of power and to keep the Executive and Legislative branches of government accountable for misdeeds.  High crimes and misdemeanors surely include the defying of our Constitution and rules of law, as well as widespread abuses of power.  Such activities are occurring aplenty, let me assure you of that!

 Impeachment actions, in fact, have already begun:

    “There are serious and well substantiated allegations that the Executive Branch

       has usurped the sole power of the Congress to declare war by deceiving the  

Congress about the evidence for war.”

     “There are serious and well-substantiated allegations that the Executive Branch

        has deceived the American people to manufacture the people’s consent for war.”

The Constitution in Crisis:  The Downing Street Minutes and Deception,  

  Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Cover-ups in the Iraq War

                                                             --- Representative  John Conyers

Visionary voices sing their truths:  We must build a sustainable society, with a fair concern for American citizens, for the mutual security and sovereignty of people of other nations, and for the integrity of ecological systems on our beautiful home planet.  We must start by throwing the rascals out of office, especially the staunchly recalcitrant and corrupt Bush/Cheney defenders!! 

Help save the world!   Read more at www.EarthManifesto.com!   The Evolutionary Understanding #19, “The True State of the Union”, is particularly apropos.

      Truly,

         Dr. Tiffany Twain 

            January 30, 2006

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“We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore”

               By Garrison Keillor, author    (Excerpts from an August 2004 article)

“Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party.”

“Rich ironies abound!  Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest!  Wild swine crowd round the public trough!  Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale!  Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight!  O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour?  Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.”

“Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy — the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.”

“The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours.  The omens are not good.”

“Our beloved land has been fogged with fear — fear, the greatest political strategy ever.  An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition.  And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, and lavish generous tax breaks on the rich.”

“The Union is what needs defending this year.  Government of Enron, and by Halliburton, and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of.  This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves, and to hell with anybody who opposes them.”

“This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it.  We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger.”

“Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader.  It’s a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning.”

                                                                          --- Dr. Tiffany Twain