Trick or Treat Democracy

Here in blue state America, in the last weeks before the November election, there is premature elation, regime change is in the air. Panic among Republicans is palpable as they sink in the polls and face the fury of hometown constituents disgusted that a now-disgraced ex-congressman was protected by a Republican leadership who put a sexual predator in charge of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. The same moral majority who recently tried to impeach a Democratic president for consensual sex with a more-than-willing adult, are now shaken to the core of their Christian family values.

Didn't they just win an election using gay marriage as a wedge issue, manufactured by their strategist Karl Rove? Rove, according to James Moore and Wayne Slater's new book "The Architect", hit the 2004 campaign trail with a vengeance after privately burying his gay stepfather who ran off with another man when Karl was about to graduate from high school, abandoning Karl's mother who later committed suicide.

If all politics are local, perhaps they're personal too, driven by demons that deliberately separate one American from another. We alone among the democracies decide our elections on social issues that have little to do with politics. We render unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is God's as well. The pulpit is in the parliament here. Unlike citizens who "suffer" a higher standard of living in "socialist" Canada and Europe, who pay their taxes and expect their representatives to actually deliver services, we in America fret over other women's wombs, gays at the alter, flags aflame, school kids persecuted for praying, Mexicans stealing our jobs and liberal judges coddling terrorists.

Lately elections have become a choice between fear and fecklessness, so as Halloween approaches be afraid, be very afraid. This is because Republican dirty tricksters have 60 million dollars to dump into negative advertising and untold amounts for voter suppression. But this time, reality is beginning to bite back.

According to Bob Woodward's explosive new book, "State of Denial", Iraq is the last thing President Bush wants the American people to know about. Although in the real world Iraq is over and lost, and apart from Henry Kissinger, most Americans want the agony to end. Yet the Democrats, including prominent presidential hopefuls who voted for Bush's war, have somehow allowed Bush's blunder to become their problem. They vaguely talk of alternative strategies, as if we had any options.

So who is listening as the White House shrieks and scares, whistling past the graveyard, and castigating those who would "cut n' run"? This, while our boys and girls lose life and limbs for a cause their Commander-in-chief can't explain. Maybe, Mister President, name-calling won't cut it this time. Iraq is toast and so are you if it stays in the headlines. That's why W is up there on the political front line, he can't lose one or both houses in November because the Democrats would have subpoena power. And Bush has something to hide.

Instead of investigating steroids in sports, a new Congress would exercise checks and balances and go after the contractors and cronies who alone profited from W's trillion dollar disaster that has undermined our security, divided us from our friends, rewarded and emboldened our enemies, broken our Army, Marines and Reserves, moved a renewed Al Qaeda a thousand miles closer and put the world's energy lifeline in jeopardy.

Little wonder the President wants to change the subject to the war on terror, but again Woodward's book exposes the other big lie. The second to last thing the White House wants the American people to look at is the White House's culpability for 9/11, how they brushed off repeated dire warnings.

But here the White House is rescued by our country's growing and pervasive ignorance, paranoia and superstition, both on the left and the right. On the right, 60 million evangelicals welcomed 9/11, they want our world to end in burning flesh so that their world can begin. They don't just want a clash of civilizations, they pray for the big one, Armageddon and the rapture, and they expect their leader who talks to their God, to deliver.

Meanwhile, largely on the navel-gazing left, 36% of Americans believe Bush had a hidden hand in 9/11. In other words, the incompetents who brought you Iraq and Katrina, pulled off the greatest conspiracy of all time. Who shot JFK, RFK and MLK pales beside this clever cabal's coup in plain sight.

But, on the other hand, conspiracies do happen, and I'm told by sources involved that our Special Forces are already in Iran preparing for a pre-emptive strike, not against nuclear targets, but against the mullahs and their Revolutionary Guards. Trick or treat? Regime decapitation from invisible B2's, with smart bombs sent by dumb leaders, surgically guided by lasers on the ground to smite evil in an October surprise. Another quick victory followed by a slow defeat from our wartime president who wins elections but loses wars.