August 28, 2005
Pull It
What do citizens of the world's model democracy do when its leaders will not leave even when they lose elections? It's been clearly established by anyone who wants to honestly look at all the facts that Bush didn't win in 2000 or in 2004, without massive, well organized, blanket voter suppression in strategic places. That's a fact that doesn't have to be established, but is a valid premise for further reasoning. In the USA we now have leaders we did not elect, who will not leave even if you mount a majority in the polling places.Americans are used to politicians at least affecting respect, if not reverence for the democratic process. Here are leaders who are unpopular, who force unpopular policies on the people and lie to them about virtually everything. A few months after having supposedly won an election (based, we re told, on the sudden arousal of a passionate movement over "moral issues," meaning not mass murder and plunder, which the Bush administration was carrying out with gay abandon, but on gay marriage and abortion) are now as unpopular as any president in the history of approval ratings. By their past behavior there is no reason to think they will bow to any legal processes in the future that seeks to depose them.
So what is a democratic society to do? Americans have never been confronted with such a situation before, and they are really unequipped to deal with it. But it's time to change our minds. It's the only thing you can do when your situation changes. Those who don't adapt don't survive. Now it is time to set our minds to the task of how to re-establish some semblance of democracy in federal government. In so doing there are things we can draw on. It has been done many times before, people have thrown over tyrants, and they always will.
There are historical precedents. The American Revolution seems such a long time ago, but we don't have to go back very far in history to see the fall of the last Evil Empire. In the histories of the revolutions of eastern Europe as the Soviet Bloc collapsed, in which the fallen dominoes all stood back up, there are modern examples of how populations overthrow illegitimate power.
The power is latent in the people. This is no wishful thinking, this is reality. We are starting to see that potential energy become kinetic. People do not have to accept illegitimate leaders. Even the greatest force will eventually cave in to awareness.
Now we are living in this history and it is time to catalyze this event, which is just waiting to happen, which is historical inevitability. It is for us to take action to manifest this eventuality.