[Peace-discuss] A terrific polemic by Robert Freeman

[Morton K. Brussel]

It starts off…

In the Sherlock Holmes mystery, Silver Blade, it was the dog that  
didn't bark that fingered the killer. As Holmes explained to Watson,  
the reason for the silence, even as the victim was being murdered,  
was that the dog must have known the killer - its own master. Voilà!  
Mystery solved.

In a similar fashion, amidst the most catastrophic presidency in the  
history of the country, it is the donkey that doesn't bray that  
identifies the culprit. And the culprit, of course, is the donkey's  
master. It is a who-dunnit of Olympian proportions, for the fate of  
the country hangs on its solution.

The extent of the disaster of the Bush presidency is almost beyond  
cataloguing. But it is worth trying in order to comprehend the  
stunning impotence of the Democrats in offering any meaningful  
opposition. …


It ends:


They are Potempkin "leaders", hired and sired from the same bank  
accounts as their Republican "adversaries," empty suits propped up by  
their corporate masters for the sole purpose of sustaining the  
illusion of opposition, but without any real intent to actually  
exercise it. They are political entrepreneurs, hawking their ability  
to round up the constituents and deliver the votes that will cheerily  
sell their own people down the drain. Their function in the political  
food chain is to occlude the fact of corporate takeover of  
government, to pacify a restive public into quiescence that their  
democracy remains vital, that their interests are being looked out  
for, that their country remains their own.

In the waning years of the Roman Republic, as the nation was wracked  
by civil war within and by attack from without, Cicero wrote,  
"Anything more corrupt than the men and times of today cannot be  
conceived." Perhaps he was too peremptory. He then wrote to Julius  
Caesar, "The fate of the Republic hangs on the honor and  
steadfastness of a single man." There is no such man of honor, no  
such party of steadfastness in America today. Certainly not among the  
Democrats. The dogs are not barking. The donkeys are not braying.  
They know their masters. They know their place. We must look  
elsewhere for saviors.

Robert Freeman writes about economics, history, and education.


For the rest, see:  http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0329-22.htm



--mkb




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