[Peace-discuss] Words from David Swanson

[Morton K. Brussel]

David Swanson writes to the UFPJ email list,  often critically of UFPJ.

  http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29076:

…Why is Congress so scared to act against the least popular project  
in many years by confronting the least popular president and vice  
president this country has ever seen? Why do some in Congress choose  
to fund the occupation precisely because Bush would fund it anyway?  
Why does the House Judiciary Committee allow open crimes to be  
publicly announced with signing statements posted on the White House  
website, and not stir? Why has Congress allowed executive refusal to  
comply with subpoenas to become routine, after the precedent of  
passing an article of impeachment against Nixon for a similar refusal?

I think, fairly clearly, the primary reason for all of this is Nancy  
Pelosi's unconstitutional, unconscionable, and even politically  
unjustifiable, aversion to impeachment. Her arguments have, however,  
long since been answered.  [I think it runs deeper than this--mkb]

But what about peace activist organizations? Why do they go along  
with the pretense of supporting bills destined to be vetoed rather  
than demanding a cut off of funds or - what is ultimately required -  
impeachment? I don't have a good answer, but part of he answer is the  
influence on activists of politicians who tell them that they are  
friends, who make them feel powerful, and who echo what everyone  
hears on their televisions about the Democrats' inability to act no  
matter how much they supposedly want to, and about the supposedly all- 
important elections 12 months away.

The other of the two biggest public secrets in U.S. politics is that  
you, dear reader, are not a freak. You imagine that you are in a  
minority wanting to end the occupation, and so you worry about  
persuading your neighbors rather than forcing your congress members  
to act. You suppose that only a handful of people want impeachment or  
single-payer health care or green energy, even though these are all  
majority positions. And, most dramatically, you imagine that because  
you are a freak, the candidates you feel inclined to support for  
public office must be different from the candidates you should, as an  
educated TV viewer, actually support.

But this is how democracy dies. This is democracy stripped from our  
souls, where Walt Whitman tried to plant it, and installed in the  
machinations of corporate pundits and corrupt parties. Until we can  
believe that who we like and what we want of them are things that  
others share, until we define our personal preferences as precisely  
what is most "viable", we can have no growing democracy. We are  
currently keeping secret from ourselves the idea that we even want it.



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