Moderates, Not Moralists, continued

Jazz had a great post here yesterday, Moderates, Not Moralists, where he discussed E.J. Dionne's editorial. MEJ's own Bill in DC responded in the comments section and I think what he said is worth repeating.

E.J. Dionne's analysis of the presidential election is all very accurate. But the real disaster last Tuesday wasn't Bush's reelection: it was the Democrats' defeat in nearly all the Senate races--and not by moderate Republicans, either. We are now at a point where the Democrats are simply no longer a force in national politics. They're so far behind in Congress that there's no chance of their regaining a majority in either house--or maybe even regaining just enough power to play a role in shaping the legislative agenda--for at least a generation.

The fact is, we no longer have a functioning two-party democracy in the United States. Of the array of checks and balances that supposedly undergirded the American system of government and promoted constructive compromise, the only institution still standing is the filibuster, and that's just a Senate rule. There will be no more Watergates because a right-wing Congress will never investigate abuses of power by its own right-wing government. The Supreme Court is about to be reconstituted as a compliant organ of right-wing power and to reinterpret the Constitution along reactionary lines.

And not only have the old checks and balances vanished: a new instrument of repression has been put in place--the Patriot Act--which allows the government to do just about anything it wants to stifle dissent simply by proclaiming its opponents terrorists. At first, of course, the Bush regime will be cautious about using this arrow in its quiver against non-Muslim Americans, but this administration has already shown that it has no qualms about due process when it can get away with trampling on fundamental rights by invoking its "war against terror." And the majority of the population will go along with it. The same majority that believes Sadaam had ties to Al-Qaeda will be brought around to believe that anyone who opposes the Bush regime too agressively does, too.

A slight majority of the electorate has presented a blank check to the extreme right to transform the country radically into a bastion of authoritarian, oppressive laissez-faire capitalism.

We are sliding into a new period in American history, a period that will be like the long, corrupt rule of the PRI in Mexico.

Of course, Americans will go on congratulating themselves on their "freedom" and "democracy."

Bill in DC

Jazz's response says it all.

Wow, Bill. That's a seriously dark, gloomy attitude. I'd take you to task for it if it didn't have such a ring of truth.