All Hail the Coming Liberal Dictatorship!

If I read the headlines aright, John Conyers really means it this time.

Harriet Meiers, Karl Rove, David Addington, John Ashcroft, David Hasselhoff--all will testify, the truth will out, and there will be hell to pay.

For what we're not exactly sure. The politicized hiring and firing at the justice department? The persecution of Don Siegelman in Alabama? The EPA's willful disregard of a court's mandate to regulate greenhouse gasses? What about all that domestic eavesdropping? The war lies and forgeries? It's a list without end. Trying to find a thread that connects just one person to just one crime is like trying to remove just the shallots from a bisque.

But can you feel it? The pressure is building. The suspense is intolerable.

Buckle up people, we are headed for a shattering anticlimax!

In a normal world, there would be a predictable postscript to such an orgy of malfeasance. One that included resignations, indictments, arraignments, Alberto Gonzalez in an ill-tailored orange jumpsuit, and ultimately, Dick Cheney as the only reliable source for cigarettes at a Maryland Federal prison.

In a normal world.

But in our world, absolutely none of this will happen. Yes, the Democrats will shuttle these investigations hither and thither through committees with all the frenetic purposelessness of a flock of agitated turkeys. But these escalations from suspicions to subpoenas to contempt, these are not the executioner's blade falling in irresistible stages. These are shaggy dog jokes. And, as with all shaggy dog jokes, the punchline is your own slack-jawed gullibility.

You really thought someone was going to go to jail, didn't you?

Sucker.

The Democrats, however, are victims of their own jest as well. Eventually, flushed with a sense of victory, they will retire to their homes to exchange self-congratulatory phone calls. And the perjurers, torturers, profiteers, influence peddlers, and felons miscellaneous will saunter off to empty their Swiss bank accounts, write their best-selling memoirs, or take lucrative yet undemanding positions as lobbyists.

Surely the handful of Republicans who are not yet the subjects of an investigation must feel a little queasy to see such general indifference regarding the enforcement of justice? Isn't the magical deterring power of draconian penalties the only thing preventing us from plunging into anarchy?

But deterrence, in the conservative mindset, is really only an operative concept when applied to the lower classes, who, because they spend so much time in the criminal justice system, know exactly what kinds of sentences they don't want to receive. Lobbyists, legislators, and Presidents Vice- and otherwise can't be held accountable to a code with which they have so little firsthand experience. Nor would it be appropriate to place rigid constraints upon them, for the salubrious functioning of a vibrant kleptocracy such as ours requires that those in command be granted a certain expansive prerogative of conduct. In other words, as long as our government is making a good faith effort to secure the American way of life for future generations, who's to say just how much perjury is too much?

Armed with this enabling perspective, Republicans have worked as mechanically as a colony of ants for eight interminable years to remake government on the model of organized crime. Leveraging a terrorist attack to create war and fear, they manufactured the enormous social and political upheaval required to cleanse America of its quaint expectations of due process, a limited executive, respect for law, transparency, and human rights. The fact that the architects of this madness have been spared all consequence just shows that their success is complete.

Or is it? Perhaps these would-be autocrats have been so intent on the nearness of their prize that they've been blind to the fatal flaw in their plans. Yes, they have created a Franken-government optimized for tyranny. But if my calculations are correct, they will be ready to pull the switch and imbue this horrific creature with Life! Life! right about...

January of 2009. Just in time for Barack Obama to take over the controls.

All hail the coming liberal dictatorship!

Is justice not sweet? Will payback not be a bitch? I know it is unbecoming to savor the discomfiture of others, even one's enemies. But I have not had the opportunity to stretch, and if I were to resist the urge to revel, I might pull a muscle.

So, dear conservatives, let's consider what the next four years hold--besides compulsory abortions, that is.

All food will be locally grown, organic, and vegetarian. French fries will be taxed exorbitantly. Three days after the policy takes effect, fat people will eat fast food wrappers from trash cans in scenes reminiscent of Stalinist collectivization in the Ukraine.

Not only will there be medical marijuana, marijuana will be the only medicine. Cancer patients will eat and go into remission. People suffering from all other illnesses will endure unbearable suffering, but--small mercy--will later have no memory of it.

Everyone will be issued one of those cars so small that it looks like it caught some kind of necrosis of the flesh and had to have its ass amputated. Road rage will become cute. Teenagers will be so mortified that dating will cease. University researchers will compete to successfully miniaturize fuzzy dice.

Hundreds of luxury "Welcome Centers" will receive Mexicans along our southern borders. As part of a new national service program, debutantes will bathe the immigrants and massage their tired calves with scented ointments. The Department of Agriculture will fund the development of new, easy-to-pick varieties of fruit trees.

Each American will be given the names and addresses of 20 people from other countries to whom they must send a sincere-sounding note of apology. Hand written. And on good stationary--not that cheap stuff. That's right. Just like your mother taught you.

The tax rate for people making over $200,000 per year will be 90%. But they can have half of it back if they ask very, VERY nicely. And sign a paper denying Jesus.

That is just a small sampling of what is in store. The complete list of planned decrees is far too voluminous to transcribe here. And of course it is full of the kind of egg-heady, hard-to-read intellectual language that liberals use because they think they're better than everyone else.

But perhaps those of you who have seen it would like to describe some of your favorite provisions?

Republicans are Chickens

Dear Barack,

Your letters are becoming a nuisance.

At some point you will have to learn to formulate your own message. I cannot always be there to whisper in your ear from offstage and to vet your speeches. I have responsibilities of my own. A family to feed and a demanding job in waste management. The waste will not manage itself. Believe me, I have given it every opportunity.

Must I do everything?

Very well then. But listen carefully--I will only say this once.

I can see that you and your democratic co-candidates are showing signs of shaking off the enervating spell cast upon you by the Republicans. The spell that compels you to respond in kind to their message of fear. For too long you've let them frame the debate. All they have to do is say the word "terror" and, like Skinnerian rats eager for a pellet of food, you respond with mechanical bombast and bravado, promising to begin each of your Presidential days by feasting on the still-beating heart of suspected terrorists, relishing the warm infidel blood that runs rich and red down your neck.

It will never work. If the Presidency is to be awarded to the candidate most eager to flay heathens, can any Democrat possibly defeat the holy warrior Huckabee? The bloodthirsty cannibal Giuliani? Romney the Guantanamo doubler? Or that veteran of Vietnamese tiger-cages, Rambo McCain?

You know this. And you are beginning to see that the Republicans are bluffing when they play the fear card, and that each time you respond in kind, you strengthen their hand, validating not only the perceived reality of the danger but also their ham handed, rusty-knife approach to confronting it. You have begun to experiment with a different formulation, nervously watching the polls to see whether the public is open to something other than a vengeance-based policy.

But half measures won't suffice. You can't just say their bluffing. You will have to actually call their bluff.

Edwards can't do it. He's too busy rousing the rabble, invoking the ghosts of the Grange and William Jennings Bryan. Has he been asleep for the last sixty years? Is there anyone left in this country that even knows what a mill is?

Hillary can't do it either. She is a machine. She may, in fact, be the perfect machine for running the country, an unstoppable policy-making leviathan who will vaporize all resistance like some terminator of the French enlightenment. But she has not oratory beyond that suited to automated corporate telephone systems.

For English, press 1.

This message has to be delivered with the clarion call of trumpets, with fatherly assurance, with the easy courage that dispels doubt.

I know Hillary says you get elected with poetry, but must govern with prose. But note that you haven't been elected yet.

Do you have a pencil ready? This is the message:

The lying is going to stop. Now.

Starting today, we are going to live up to our most noble aspirations rather than be slaves to our basest fears.

For seven long years we have been told that if want to remain powerful, we cannot allow our fate to be bound up with the rest of the world's community of nations, but must instead think and act only in our own interests.

For seven long years we have been told that the preservation of liberty in our own land could be assured by achieving military domination in others.

For seven long years we have been told that if we wanted to preserve our system of justice and our freedom from physical threats, we would have to torture people, we would have to wiretap people, we would have to shoot first and ask questions later, we would have to consider people guilty until proven innocent.

In short, we were told that we had to make a choice. If we wanted to have self-determination, safety, and freedom for ourselves, we must deny it to others.

And so, despite the nagging sensation that we were abandoning our commitment to fair play, our compassion and our humanity, we chose the path of safety.

But these policies have failed. In seeking to preserve our power we have been weakened. In seeking to preserve our liberty we have been constrained. In seeking to be safer, we have inflamed and emboldened those who would do us harm.

Today America is in anguish, more fearful than ever, pessimistic about the future, and convinced that our country is headed in the wrong direction. Not because we have failed to achieve the security we sought, but because we forfeited so much of that of which we were justly proud in the process.

I have some good news. The good news is that we don't have to choose between safety on one hand and honor and humanity on the other. There is only one path to a better future, and it will take us to the safety we seek in a manner consistent with our highest ideals.

We can be the first in an international family of nations again, leading by the power of our example rather than the threat of compulsion.

We can be a true advocate of liberty around the globe, and in so doing, pacify the animosity that put us at risk.

We can be guided by law and justice, and we will once again be a beacon to the world, a country that even those from other lands feel is their own.

When I think about what has transpired in the last seven years, I think we have been like survivors in a lifeboat, abandoning a damaged ship, still trembling with the terror of our brush with death. Of course, we didn't tell themselves that it was fear that denied us the will to go back and save others. We told ourselves that it would be hopeless to try, that there was no more room in the lifeboat, that those still on the ship should have gotten off faster, and had only themselves to blame.

That is not cause to be ashamed. I believe with all my heart that we are good people, striving to be the best we can. We are human, and so sometimes we are weak.

But the measure of our mettle comes after the flush of fear subsides and we see ourselves with clear eyes. There are still some in our life boat who are spreading fear, who seek to cultivate all that is mean and cowardly in us. But in most I see a new courage, a new resolve, and new clarity of purpose.

Yes, it is true that we cannot escape the challenges we face. There is nowhere for our little lifeboat to sail where our safety and ease are assured. So perhaps returning to cast our lot with those we left to try to save themselves is our only choice. But we are going back not because we have to, but because we want to. Because this is an act that will be frozen in time, and we will relive it every day for the rest of our lives. And we will not have it be to our shame, but to our renown.

This new course we are on will not be an easy one. Change is never easy, and there are, of necessity, profound changes lying ahead. But this change is coming, whether we will or no. To survive in a storm, a ship must put its prow to the gale. We will go forward, confident that our course is both wise and right, and at peace in the knowledge that our triumph will be all the greater for the trials that lie ahead.

Thank you, and gesundheit.