What Makes the Democrats So Gutless?

George W. Bush is the most vulnerable president in my lifetime (over half a century, if you must know). When he speaks publicly, as with Tony Blair this last week, one gets the impression of a cartoon character who has been shot full of holes who insists that he's fine. Then, when he drinks a glass of water, it comes streaming out of him in all directions. This presidency is like a sieve when it comes to truth or integrity or faithfulness to the American people--it doesn't hold water. The question is, then, why the fuck don't the Democrats make hay and start taking back our government?

We've had to watch Dems like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who should be leading the assault, backing away from the only Democrat who seems to understand that attacking means being aggressive instead of assuming the kneeling position with hands held up in contrition. It's disgusting. So why are the Dems so weak-kneed?

They're in the club, that's why.

One of the interesting things about colonialism was the fact that after the European powers left Africa, for example, many leaders who emerged in those countries were horribly corrupt and bad news for their people, which seems puzzling, particularly when many of these leaders had come through oppressive colonial experience themselves. But what had happened to too many of them was that by the time they had gained power, they identified more with their elite white European counterparts than with the common people who they claimed to represent. Emperor Bokassa, Idi Amin and Sese Seko Mobutu are a few prime examples of this.

Now the Democratic Party in the United States once may have really been the party of the working class, but that was long ago. Now that someone like Howard Dean has the courage to go after the Republicans for the disaster that they are for this country, for the bigotry that grows from the extreme right-wing theological fanatics who have seized control, and for the corruption, cronyism and lies that this administration have made standard operating procedure, we can see the Democratic Party "leadership" for what it is--just another face of the elite class that runs this country and identifies with the working people only when they can be exploited for money or votes, but who have otherwise been abandoned in favor of the inside-the-beltway daisy chain that constitutes the ruling class in this country. Like the post-colonial leaders who had had too much of the good life under their masters, these folks, while mouthing words to soothe their betrayed constituency, are more frightened of losing the key to the executive washroom that the theo-fascists now control than they are of upholding the traditions and responsibilities of an opposition party.

They're traitors to their class. They disgust me.