Flag Burning

Democrats cornered--again

I don't like to get righteously indignant, Bush, but there seems to be no end to the political cunning of your Rove and his cohorts, and I'm outraged once again. Not that there's any particular orginality to their strategy: they repeat the pattern over and over again, and you'd have thought the electorate might be wise to it by now. Alas, it seems not. Otherwise why would they be doing it once more?

The tactic is simple: pick a red meat issue that's of interest only to that "base" of bigoted, ignorant, belligerent zealots these folks have carefully cultivated through years of tendentious talk-show rhetoric. Gay marriage, say, a few weeks ago. Or, yesterday, flag-burning. Bully it through to the floor of the US House of Representatives or the Senate--or to the forum of public opinion--and force it into a totally unnecessary national debate. In the case of the House or the Senate, you force it to a vote. In so doing, you've created a no-win situation for anyone with the slightest spark of decency or conscience. For a congressperson or a senator, the choice is invidious: vote no, and you've handed opponents a massive club to beat you with at the next election; vote yes, and you've betrayed your own intelligence and your sense of justice, along with the fair-minded majority of your constituents.

I was dismayed, yesterday, Bush, to hear one of my senators whom I would otherwise want to respect--Diane Feinstein--blathering on ridiculously about the flag flying over the Capitol building, the flag flying over her house in Washington, DC, its protection for the future of this country...a stream of shameless rhetorical nonsense uttered with every appearance of sincerity. And then casting her vote for a constitutional amendment to ban the burning of the American flag--a phenomenon, Bush, that has not happened to my knowledge in the past thirty years.

A constitutional amendment! What a sickening spectacle, Bush, to see our country's senators desecrating the floor of their historical chamber with such an absurd and meaningless debate. That in itself would have been bad enough. But to think that this senseless effort was defeated by one single vote!

To what pitiful state have we fallen, Bush, when good government is abandoned to the game of politics? When the efforts of political hacks like your Rove dictate the national agenda? These men and women of the Senate allow themselves to be cornered into casting their votes on such an issue while they surrender their constitutional duties to your aggressive White House on issues of vital interest to the people: the health care crisis, a badly malfunctioning education system, the erosion of civil and human rights, a deteriorating infrastructure, dependence for energy on unfriendly if not overtly hostile nations, the ominous threat of climate change, our national unpreparedness for disaster--whether at nature's hand or the hand of man--not to mention the promulgation of economic policies the drive us ever deeper into debt with countries we once distrusted or despised, a foreign policy that earns us the distrust and scorn of even our traditional allies, and an endless, unnecessary war.

Shame on them, Bush! Shame on us all for allowing our elected representatives to indulge in such a sickening spectacle! And thank God for a growing groundswell of American progressives who have had enough of this drama and are determined to make changes. Sooner or later, Bush--I have to believe this--human decency and sanity will again prevail. Until then, although with much greater sadness than pleasure, I reserve the right to voice my righteous indignation.