I had originally intended 'America's Future' to be two linked posts, with the previous being the first. A sort of Good News/Bad News joke. Then eRobin stole some of my thunder in a comment to it, and I almost decided to bail on the second since her impassioned response and eerily unerring eye for the flaws in any argument said a good deal of what needed to be said on the other side, and much more concisely than I would ever have been able to manage it. But then on reflection I decided to plow ahead anyway and, as we used to do on the playground when I was a kid, pretend she didn't say that.

You will note that the title of the previous post ends 'As Told By Tom DeLay', and there's a reason for that. I wanted to lay out the real radcon Pub agenda--as they envision it--in all its stark anti-democratic, pro-Roman, Robber-Baron-worshipping glory, everything they fully intend to 'create' ('re-create' is more like it) absent--or in spite of--opposition. That's the Bad News half: at root, they're autocratic believers in a monolithic Christianist theocracy, and they're going to use all their considerable power to make that vision a reality.

What I had not yet said, as Rob so astutely rapped my knuckles for, was this: What they intend to do is one thing; what they will actually be able to pull off is something else again, for two reasons (neither of which relies on a response by the Democrats, thank god).

1. Greed (Or As the Greeks Called It, Hubris)

Rob rightly points out the Biblical injunction that 'Pride goeth before a fall', jamming her finger in the general direction of Trent Lott as a case for consideration. Riding high, one of the Big Three Power Brokers in the GOP, Lott was nevertheless knocked off his pedestal when he over-reached himself a couple of years too early and tried to sanctify arch-racist Strom Thurmond's late and unlamented Segregation Party by saying (in public, the idiot) that 'If Strom had won [the presidency] we wouldn't be having the problems we're having now.'--an encomium on Strom's retirement that brought the underlying racism in the Republican agenda to the surface where everybody could see it.

Unfortunately, Lott's not a good example. He wasn't brought down by the opposition but by his own party, and his crime wasn't championing racism, it was championing racism two months before the mid-term elections when the Pubs were concentrating on regaining the majority they had lost when they drove moderate Jim Jeffords from their midst and forced him to declare as an Independent and caucus with the Dems. As we are seeing right now with DeLay, that would never happen today. If Lott had kept his mouth shut, he'd be Bill Frist and the Senate would be doing what the House is doing: defying convention, tradition, ethics, common sense, and even the law to protect him from the consequences of his mouth. Much less serious irregularities than DeLay's felonies forced them to dump Newty in an earlier time, and look at the difference: today, with prison sentences hanging over his head, they re-write the rules to make Tom immune from censure should the worst happen. We now face the possible spectacle of a US House Majority Leader running the country from his jail cell.

Times, you see, have changed. DeLay, as he so famously said a while back when asked to put out his cigar by a waiter who mentioned that smoking in the Senate Dining Room was forbidden by govt rules, is the govt; then it was hyperbole, now it's fact. They will simply ignore the kinds of issues that might have caused them problems before the Emperor Georgius stole his squeaker of a mandate using crooked election officials and rigged voting machines. The law is what they say it is, and they will bend it to accomodate theft, corruption, bribery, possibly murder for all I know, whenever the perps are Pubs.

That sounds bad, but contained within it, just as Rob said, is the seed of their destruction: Greed, and the arrogance that comes with the power to feed that greed as often and as deeply as they want, always--ALWAYS--carries a stiff price tag on its left sleeve.

Long-time reader eagle2 calls the BA 'Rocco's Gang'. It's a reference to a character in a Bogart move called Key Largo played by Eddie Robinson. Rocco is a gangster, and his motto is 'Enough Is Never Enough'. It's an apt description of the radcon Pubs' dominant attitude now that they are in charge of all three branches of the national govt and are bidding fair to extend that control--by hook or by crook--down to the local level. They believe, as all such people do, that they are immune from consequences, that they are invulnerable, that they are immortal.

None of which is, of course, true. They are not immune, and sooner or later all the Roccos cross that invisible line between what even the blindest of us will tolerate and what we won't. When that finally happens--and it will--the backlash will be severe. Think 'French Revolution'. Think 'Toussaint L'Overture'. Think tumbrils and guillotines and swords and firing squads. Even if it doesn't go that far, it won't be pretty and there won't be any Scarlet Pimpernel to save their sorry asses from the wrath of the 'mob'.

DeLay's statement was an announcement that the over-reaching has already begun, that opposition will be pushed ruthlessly aside no matter where it comes from--and that includes other Pubs....

2. Power Corrupts (Ouroboros Lives)

The, um, 'ambitious' radcon agenda is already making a lot of Pubs nervous. The Emperor Georgius' second term hasn't even officially started yet and still cracks are appearing everywhere in the Pub facade. Denny Hastert, the ex-wrestling coach who is now the Speaker of the House (what a good choice, ay?), has had his hands full since the election keeping those Nervous Nellies in line, spectacularly failing to prevent open rebellion on at least two occasions and facing the prospect of far more serious dissension in the ranks as the core of the radcon agenda reaches the House floor.

Democrats are promising a fight over Social Security, and some Republicans, fearful that upending such a popular program will hurt them at the polls, are grousing. Cantankerous conservatives nearly killed the measure overhauling the nation's intelligence agencies, and a bill providing prescription drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries before that. It will be up to Mr. Hastert to corral his fractious caucus - quickly, because both sides know Mr. Bush's sway over Congress will erode as the 2006 midterm elections draw near.

Screw 2006--Congress can read the polls and they know the Emperor's popularity is sinking into the cellar mere weeks after the election he 'won' by the width of the proverbial hair. They're sensing the danger in the radcons' attempts to turn back the clock and they're skittish as hell. If the mob doesn't like the Emperor's programs, it will be them that get the brush, not him.

But the argument over programming is the least of Hastert's problems. Buried under the current focus on permanent tax cuts for the rich and the gutting of Social Security to provide a $$$BILLION$$$ windfall for Wall Street and all the rest of it is a simmering, smoldering rag waiting to ignite an explosion: the radcon WH and Congress are as crooked as the Fifth Hole at Pebble Beach, riddled with corruption. The stealing is becoming more open, and the thieves don't even apologize any more. The govt is for sale to the highest bidders.

From the Inauguration to the writing of laws, corporations pay for access to The Halls of Power, and then they pay more for control. Industry flacks from PR hacks to corporate lawyers to corporate lobbyists to the members of corporate BoDs are running virtually every govt agency, having bought their way in with contributions from their corporate employers. The Vice President, for example, is the de facto Halliburton representative in the WH, arranging $$BILLIONS$$ in govt contracts for them, contracts they win without bidding, open-ended contracts with lots of room for automatic approval of cost over-runs and new, extra charges.

The Emperor's House has become a cesspool of bribery, secret deals, stock manipulation, extortion, and outright theft. That's what excessive power does: it takes the binders off. Anything goes.

These two flies in the ointment work together: the hubris increases the level of corruption by creating the illusion that there's no price to pay, and the corruption feeds the natural greed of Rocco's Gang--the more they get away with, the more they want to get away with. It's the Nature of the Greed Breed: Enough is never enough.

The Good News is that, together, Greed and Corruption at that level make the urge to brag about what a hot-shot you are and how much you're getting away with almost irresistable. The worse it grows, the harder it is to hide, and while the greed may be forgiven by the populace (who share it, after all), the corruption will not, and bragging about it will make them positively livid.

Self-destruction is a beautiful thing when it's done by criminals and bastards like these. There's something primal about it, something of the inevitable justice that reality always exacts and always has--eventually--from the caves to the board rooms. If they just knew when to quit, could tell when enough was enough and learned to accept it, they could probably go on stealing and looting and lording it over the plebes indefinitely. But they don't. They can't. And they won't.

And that is where our most genuine and realistic hope lies: not with the Democrats whose courage and willingness to scrap for what they supposedly believe is, let's face it, less than overwhelming. No, we are counting on the Pubs themselves to screw it up. The have in the past and as long as they remain in thrall to their own insufferable egos, they will do so again in the not too distant future.

I live for that day.

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