THE DEMOCRATIC DERANGEMENT CONTINUES

Julian Bond sees GOP with 'dark underside' (Steve Miller, 7/13/03, THE WASHINGTON TIMES) (via Ed Driscoll)

Republicans appeal "to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality," NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said yesterday at the civil rights group's 94th annual convention.

"They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division ... their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon," Mr. Bond said during his welcoming remarks. "Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side."

AUTHORITARIANS GONE WILD: Whether, Not Who, is the Question About the 2004 Election: Will George W. Bush put the kibosh on elections in the United States next year? (Ted Rall, 7/09/03)

Frightened by Bush's rapidly accruing personal power and the Democrats' inability and/or unwillingness to stand up to him, panicked lefties worry that he might use the "war on terrorism" as an excuse to declare a state of emergency, suspend civil liberties and jail political opponents.

People who have spoken out against Bush are talking exit strategy--not Alec Baldwin style, just to make a statement, but fleeing the U.S. in order to save their skins. "Do you or your spouse have a European-born parent?" is a query making the rounds. (If you do, you can obtain dual nationality and a European Union passport that would allow you to work in any EU member nation.) Those whose lineage is 100 percent American are hoping that nations like Canada and France will admit American political refugees in the event of a Bushite clampdown.

To these people, whether or not the 2004 elections actually take place as scheduled is the ultimate test for American democracy. At Guantanamo Bay the United States is converting a concentration camp into a death camp where inmates will be executed without due process or legal representation. Never before in history has a U.S. president contemplated the denaturalization of native-born citizens-thus far even people executed for treason have died as Americans--but Bush has drafted legislation that would allow him to strip anyone he calls an "enemy combatant" of their citizenship and have them deported. By any objective standard he has already gone way too far, but for many it would take the cancellation or delay of the elections to confirm that we are trading in our wounded democracy for a fascist state. [...]

It's easy to come up with a scenario in which canceling the 2004 election could be made to appear reasonable. Imagine that, a few weeks before Election Day, "dirty bombs" detonate simultaneously in New York and Washington. Government, media and political institutions and personnel lie ruined in smoking rubble and ash; hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered. The economy, already teetering on the precipice, is shoved into depression. How could we conduct elections under such conditions?

Imagine how much hatred you'd have to build up inside yourself to believe these things about your country and fellow citizens? What makes them think people will respond well to this kind of psychotic raving? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 14, 2003 10:49 PM