The state of political discourse and the cost of empire

The specter of another day of voting is rapidly approaching, and the rhetoric has become particularly vile. Even our great "Uniter" George W. Bush came out less than a month after telling the country that we must work together "to meet the test that history has given us," and intimated that anyone who disagrees with his policies or doubts his wisdom is a traitor of the highest order. Of course, that includes anyone who is not fully invested in perpetual military folly.

The Republicans have been in charge for nearly six years, and despite all the scary rhetoric coming from the Republican National Committee, there is no threat to security if non-Republicans somehow wrestle a branch of government away this November. On the contrary, if the Democrats somehow win the House there may still be hope to turn the ship of state around, even if that hope only exists in the Republican-lite 21st century version of the Democratic party.

Republican political strategists are lying when they say that Democrats are soft on national security. After 9/11, no one will ever be soft on national security again, even if it means destroying our democracy out of a paranoid sense of fear.

Our government-led by Democrats and Republicans-has turned our tax dollars into a slush fund for the Department of Defense, and the Military Industrial Complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned against in 1961 as he handed the presidency over to John F. Kennedy.

"We yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment," Ike said.

Our folly in Iraq is but the latest example of the way in which we have wasted our material progress on vague foreign military adventures that serve merely to redistribute the wealth of the nation into the coffers of the über-rich. War profiteers and Bush administration corporate cronies have used the war as a vehicle for theft, leaving generations of American children with the butcher's bill and the debt payment.There is no interest in world peace or human betterment, only empty patriotic rhetoric and fear of vague and shadowy threats to our stuff.

Under the "leadership" of the Republican Party in the past five years, our national debt has ballooned to $8.5 trillion dollars-that's trillion, with a "T"-and every man, woman, and child in this country owes $28,531.74 as of Oct. 15. Military spending has ballooned from $296.8 billion to $401 billion since the Bush cabal took over in 2001, and that doesn't even include the $300 billion that has evaporated in Iraq. The lion's share of that rise in defense costs has not gone to "supporting the troops," but to Research and Development which means defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin or Halliburton. To all the young Republicans out there who fear that there may not be enough debt and death if the Democrats somehow manage to take a sliver of power away from the corrupt and bloated GOP, fear not. There will be plenty to go around for you, your children, and your grandchildren. It is unfortunate that the rest of us will have to pay as well.

It will be easy for those who disagree with me to reduce my argument to partisan hackery, but the constitutional crisis we face today is no longer a partisan issue.

Please, spare me the letters about how it's all Clinton's fault or, "Time of war…etc." Terrorism may be real, but the "war on terr'" is a political strategist's creation used to divide this nation and justify the incremental theft of our civil rights, as the treasury is plundered in the name of national security.

The Constitution is under attack and the Executive Branch has made an unprecedented power grab that is threatening our stability as a nation. If we continue on our present course, we will become as fiscally impoverished as we have become morally bankrupt under a single-party system.

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we are stuck with our existing political parties, comprised of moneyed elites who ultimately only care about reelection. It seems as if the only reason the Democratic Party is in existence anymore is to preserve the power of the Republicans and to provide an additional bogeyman to the dual threat of terrorism.

"As we peer into society's future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow," Ike continued on that long-ago January day.

"We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

It is long past the time for the adults to take back our government. I wonder if there are any left anywhere who may be able to save us.