New Age stuff aside, it has long been my belief that this country is in one long existential funk due to the lawless didoes of the Bush administration. It's also my belief that Nancy Pelosi's stonewalling of impeachment proceedings has exacerbated things to a degree that may become irreversible if not checked by a new administration.
Our laws apply only to regular citizens, not the wealthy and powerful. Our White House has become a symbol for unbridled hubris. Effective legislation to correct existing problems is all but impossible given the current party makeup of Congress; there is a Democratic majority, but it is too slender to fight back against the Rethugs and Bush's vetoes very much.
Because of our partisan, dysfunctional government, we cannot render effective aid when a major American city is all but destroyed. We cannot get American automakers to deliver a high-quality, more energy-efficient product. We cannot stop our jobs from going overseas, we cannot stop our pension funds from being raped, we cannot get fair mortgages. Health care is out of the question for many of us, and food is becoming more of a problem than many people admit.
In my opinion- which, God knows, is anything but humble- we need somehow to break past the barriers imposed by Chancy Nancy Pelosi and impeach this President and bring him to trial. It is the one action that would tell everyone- including ourselves- that America is back in business. We need to go through this administration like a dose of salts, investigating, trying, bringing perpetrators to justice, putting those found guilty in prison. Pelosi's various stymies of those processes accomplish only one thing- to make everyone feel like due process and law don't matter any more. If we cannot restore the confidence in this nation's institutions that has been so woefully undermined by DubyaCo, we are, in my opinion, doomed.
One of the things I'm most worried about at this point is that there has not been a word from Obama about what needs to be done to jump-start confidence in America's political and legal systems. Unless that man can come up with a plan to clean up the Bush mess, electing him will accomplish nothing beyond a few celebratory parties. If he's elected, he'll go into office on January 20th. If there is no hard news about investigations and real, hard-ass change- not speechifying- by April of next year, that's it for Obama. The loss of confidence in America's institutions will continue unchecked, and as everyone who's been at a company in trouble knows, after a certain point, the word on the street becomes grim, unalterable reality.
Impeach. Impeach. Beginning with Pelosi. It is the only way to get this country truly back on track.
