Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, August 28, 2010

GOP Salivating At the Prospect of Witch-Hunts and Acrimony to Come

Politico:
Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority. Everything from the microscopic -- the New Black Panther party -- to the massive -- think bailouts -- is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO…. [A]ggressive would-be committee chairmen -- led by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) -- are… gearing up for a… season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s. Issa would like Obama’s cooperation, says Kurt Bardella, spokesman for the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But it’s not essential. “How acrimonious things get really depend on how willing the administration is in accepting our findings." … “I actually think it will be even worse than what happened to Bill Clinton because of the animosity they already feel for President Obama,” says Lanny Davis, a deputy White House counsel who lived through Clinton’s trials.

When people who hate the very idea of good government find their way to government it isn't exactly surprising to find that they have nothing better to do than paralyze those who are struggling in government to solve shared problems with endless stalling tactics, procedural quicksand, fishing-expeditions, frivolous lawsuits, acrimonious squabbles.

Through their endless acts of sabotage and bad faith dirty-dealing, Republican succeed in rendering government comparatively non-functional and darken America's civic life with ugly clouds of bad feeling. In this way, the Republicans fabricate the very evidence without which they could not make their case that government of by and for the people is inherently and inevitably ineffective and corrupt and out-of-touch.

Thus they rob us of hope, thus they shackle our collective effort and intelligence, thus they destroy the only place we have to come together as peers and solve our shared problems and ensure that no one is left behind.

Do not be surprised to find that those who hate democracy make our government hateful to our eyes whenever they manage to wrest control of government from democratic hands. This is what they must do, this is what they have promised to do, this is what they are smacking their lips in anticipation of doing, this is what they most certainly will do if we let them.

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