The State Totters.....

The news is full of the Virginia Tech shootings. Nothing is more horrifying to a parent. Somehow it makes the current state of politics seem less urgent. It's tempting to find a correlation between a corrupt government and an insane person. Thanks to the conservative right-wing we-demand-our-guns culture it's easy to purchase one but I imagine it's far more complicated.

The war rages on, with no one having a solution, Alberto Gonzales is in the death throes of his job, Paul Wolfowitz failed horrifically in designing the war and was then put in charge of world bank whereupon he promoted - along with a huge salary bump - his mistress. Where are the days when miscreants turned in their resignation immediately? Both Gonzales and Wolfowitz should be gone by now. Don Imus, a total jerk to be sure but not killing soldiers, was out in two weeks, because of the public outcry that this time he really had gone too far.

Imus has bosses that answer to the market and advertisers were cancelling in droves. But the government is a different animal. We can't withhold our taxes to protest. We can hold signs, call our reps in Congress, make lots of noise but ultimately we are powerless to change unless those in charge care about our opinions.

The Republicans are not listening, they are fighting back. They took the loss of last November and went on the offensive. A few have said the war is wrong and Gonzales should go but the majority are hanging tight, believing that will salvage what is left of their pathetic reign.

It's a troubled world and what troubles me most is that I think America, who as the lone superpower should be a leader to stand tall and proud, instead has become a bully, preening with might. It's what brought down Greece and Rome and Britain, all who once reigned supreme.

Bush and Rove offend me. They act as if the American people are necesssary but unwanted impediments to their arrogant power-grab. They couldn't win the election on their ideas so they calculated to steal it, by discretionary cleansing of voter rolls, by reworking districts aka gerrymandering, and by placing loyalty above competence. They speak of spreading democracy in the middle east even as they abuse it at home.

Shakespeare in The Tempest had Prospero say, "The state totters." He said it best.