The Buzz Blog

While flying back from Boston on Friday, we watched a documentary on our laptop called "Hijacking Catastrophe," and were struck by the closing quotation from Kevin Danaher (of an advocacy organization called "Global Exchange").

Danaher noted that the Bush Cartel wants to subjugate Americans through fear. But this patriot isn't buying it. When he visits Washington, D.C., he often goes to the Jefferson Memorial, where Danaher is inspired by these words that ring the top of the memorial rotunda: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

"We were the first nation state to establish the principle that sovereignty and the ultimate political power resides in we the people," Danaher says to close the documentary. "That's a fundamentally radical concept. These guys [the Bush Cartel] don't like the implications of this for the maintenance of their minority wealth and power."

It reminded us that the 2004 election is about more than issues that separate one party from another: it is about the very continuation of the great experiment in democracy that began in Massachusetts with the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord.

Ultimately, in 2004, we are up against an elitist group of megalomaniacs who believe that they are divinely chosen to rule, whatever the will of the people. The basic political philosophy of the Bush Cartel is that the people cannot be trusted with choosing a government, only God can. That is what George W. Bush thinks; that is what Antonin Scalia thinks; that is what Bush military appointees like General Boykin think; that is what Tom DeLay thinks.

The Bush Administration represents the most radical threat to democracy since the Civil War. In fact, the Bush Administration represents the losing side in the Civil War.

Remember that most plantation owners thought themselves good Christian men. They believed that they were fighting the Civil War to restore a Christian sense of order to the world, one in which they argued God stood behind slavery.

Today, we are faced with a group of Neo-Confederacy elitists who have contempt for democracy. They believe in one party rule mandated by God.

Government is too serious to be left to the masses, as far as they are concerned. That is why Antonin Scalia could feel he was doing divinely heroic duty in stealing the election for Bush, because, in his mind, it is God who chooses the ruler of America, not the people. And he believes, like Bush, that God's will is transmitted through him.

Scalia, Bush and Ashcroft have said that they see the Constitution as a divine document, and that their goal is to restore America to God's intentions. They won't let the will of the people get in their way.

Paul Krugman quotes Grover Norquist, the Svengali of the public policy arm of the vast right wing anti-democracy conspiracy, as saying that he will drown government through permanent one-party rule: "One of the steps for getting there is a permanent Republican government, in the sense of fifty-five Republican senators and a thirty-vote margin in the House and a Republican president for twenty years in a row."

The Bush Cartel and the vast right wing conspiracy are so blatant and open in their objectives to crush democracy that many pundits and Democratic leaders can't believe that they really mean what they are saying.

But they do. You don't casually steal an election. You mug democracy because you think that you are entitled to rule because you represent an elitist group privy to divine intention.

Krugman points out that he used to be considered radical for simply accepting the words of the people behind the Bush Cartel at face value. Other journalists and pundits would say to him, things like, "But they don't really mean that; it's just rhetoric." And Krugman would respond, in essence, "But they do mean it. They believe in what they are saying."

During breaks in the convention last week, the song "We are family" would often be turned on and the delegates would start to shake and wiggle around in front of their seats. The song is a popular affirmation of one the themes of the convention: We are one American family.

The Bush Cartel thinks otherwise. It believes in the model of government that prevailed for most of the history of the world -- that there are the divinely inspired rulers and there are the ruled, who do not have enough wisdom to choose their leadership.

Oh, yes, the Bush Cartel knows it must go through the motions of acting like it believes in the Constitutional process that underwrites American democracy, while it does everything possible to undercut our revolutionary heritage.

Right now, Jeb Bush is taking the same steps -- and more -- that he took to steal the Florida vote for George W. Bush, his brother, in 2000. Only now, he is armed with the block box burglary kit of electronic voting. Almost daily, Jeb is defiantly signaling that he will work from the same thief's playbook as 2000 -- and them some.

The same 5-vote majority that stole the election from Al Gore, by usurping state's rights and the will of the voters, sits on the Supreme Court.

The same pro-Bush television news media is in place, but even more partisan than it was in 2000.

Just remember this. The 2004 election is not primarily about public policy.

It is a referendum on the form of government created in 1776.

Your choice is between pulling the lever for democracy, or pulling the level for a self-appointed theocracy/plutocracy.

Tom DeLay says that it his mission as de facto controller of the House of Representatives to ensure that his Biblical worldview becomes reality in the United States.

Will the vision of democracy our founding fathers fought for survive the 2004 election?

Only if we can stop a broad daylight robbery in progress.

The revolution of 1776 was founded on this fundamental revolutionary thought: democracy is the sum of our votes. God has made no choices, or given any individual more divinity than another. Elitists shall not rule by self-appointment or bloodline.

The creation of this nation was a radical, revolutionary concept -- and it scares the heck out of the people in the White House.

For the sake of democracy, and in honor of those who fought to create and preserve democracy, we cannot let the neo-monarchy notions of the Bush Cartel and its supporters prevail.