91. Seward, Cheney, Rice, and Bush - and McConnell and Reid

About 630 days of the junta known as the George W. Bush administration are left in the schedule. We can only hope. I have mentioned before my concerns that in the name of "homeland security" the president and his dogs, Dick Cheney and Dr. Condoleeza Rice, may declare they simply aren't leaving come January 20, 2009, the day the junta's occupation of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW is supposed to end. Here is some reading matter, historical fiction, on the subject.

As [he] rocked slowly back and forth in the hammock, he thought, longingly, of sending a detachment of troops to surround the Capitol while Congress was in session. There would be a mass arrest. He himself would speak to the assembled members of the two houses. He was seated in the Speaker's Chair, and smoking a cigar as the terrified members of the Congress stood before him, guns trained on them from soldiers in the gallery. Naturally, he would address them pleasantly; he might even make a joke or two. Then he would explain how no state could support, in time of war, the luxury of such a large, unwieldy, and often unpatriotic group of men [and women]. Therefore it was with true sorrow that he was dissolving the legislative branch of government. Most of the members would be allowed to return home. Unfortunately there were a number who would be obliged to stand trial for treasonable activities. [Some] would be given the opportunity to defend themselves before a military court. But should [they] and the other Jacobins be found guilty, they would of course, be hanged - in the front of the Capitol.

The above is some fiction from one of my favorite writers, writing some of the only fiction I read. The passage is from Gore Vidal's 1984 (of course) bestseller Lincoln. The book is a fictional history laced with actual history surrounding the presidential term of Abraham Lincoln. So, one should understand the above words were written during a time of civil war. But could you not hear the current president, or his vice president or secretary of state, making the same declaration as above, as part of an address on the everpresent Homeland Security Department - again recollections of another novel, 1984. In Vidal's work these words are spoken by Lincoln's Secretary of State William Seward. Seward had wanted to be president himself and the words above indicate he may have rather wanted to be dictator - although we must remember, here they are fiction. Nonetheless, his power in the Lincoln administration was well known and included the arrest and imprisonment of those, especially newspaper editors, who did not fully support the administration's execution of the war. Sound familiar?

The war Seward supported of course was America's own civil war, not one on the other side of the globe. But the tactics and language seem to be related. Just last week Cheney attacked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for making "uninformed and misleading" statements and for orchestrating Democrats' "blind opposition" to the Bush administration's latest policy in Iraq. I would not call the Senator's words misleading and the deaths of (as of this writing) 3,351 of America's women and men in uniform is certainly part of the information upon which Senator Reid and the Democrats in Congress (Seward's latter day Jacobins) relied when passing the latest bill to be sent to the president with the necessary funding for our troops overseas, funding the president nonetheless plans to veto given it contains a pullout provision beginning October 1st. I agree with Senator Reid - the president is in a state of denial.

And just as America was at war with itself back in Secretary Seward's day, so it is again, but this time it isn't one region against another (although that is not far off). This time it is the governees against the governors. More and more Americans are expressing their discontent with the direction of the country and, given the election results from last November (when John Yarmuth defeated Anne Northup here along the Left Bank of the Ohio River at Milepost 606), more and more Americans are willing to throw out of office those who continue to blindly support the president and his war of occupation in Iraq. Among his chief supporters is Kentucky's Addison Mitchell McConnell, Jr., the Senate Minority Leader.

The chatter between Kentuckians this fall will be about our new governor, whoever he may be. But soon, very soon, that chatter must be overtaken by new words of support for the election of someone other than Mitch McConnell in the 2008 election.