By Electing GWB, We Have Crossed The Rubicon?

[Spiffarino]

Remembering the Rubicon

An article by Chalmers Johnson --

The Rubicon is a small stream in northern Italy just south of the city of Ravenna. During the prime of the Roman Republic, roughly the last two centuries B.C., it served as a northern boundary protecting the heartland of Italy and the city of Rome from its own imperial armies. An ancient Roman law made it treason for any general to cross the Rubicon and enter Italy proper with a standing army. In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar, Rome’s most brilliant and successful general, stopped with his army at the Rubicon, contemplated what he was about to do, and then plunged south. The Republic exploded in civil war, Caesar became dictator and then in 44 B.C. was assassinated in the Roman Senate by politicians who saw themselves as ridding the Republic of a tyrant. However, Caesar’s death generated even more civil war, which ended only in 27 B.C. when his grand nephew, Octavian, took the title Augustus Caesar, abolished the Republic and established a military dictatorship with himself as “emperor” for life. Thus ended the great Roman experiment with democracy. Ever since, the phrase “to cross the Rubicon” has been a metaphor for starting on a course of action from which there is no turning back. It refers to the taking of an irrevocable step.

I believe that on November 2, 2004, the United States crossed its own Rubicon. Until last year’s presidential election, ordinary citizens could claim that our foreign policy, including the invasion of Iraq, was George Bush’s doing and that we had not voted for him. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote and was appointed president by the Supreme Court. In 2004, he garnered 3.5 million more votes than John Kerry. The result is that Bush’s war changed into America’s war and his conduct of international relations became our own.

This is important because it raises the question of whether restoring sanity and prudence to American foreign policy is still possible. During the Watergate scandal of the early ’70s, the president’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, once reproved White House counsel John Dean for speaking too frankly to Congress about the felonies President Nixon had ordered. “John,” he said, “once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s very hard to get it back in.” This homely warning by a former advertising executive who was to spend 18 months in prison for his own role in Watergate fairly accurately describes the situation of the United States after the reelection of George W. Bush.

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[In Truth We Trust]

1. He was NEVER elected...... He is a fraWd!

[Spiffarino]

3. I agree, but how we are now perceived in the world has changed

...because the Chimperor was reSelected without a real fight. Had we all gone into the streets as they did in the Ukraine, maybe things would be different. However, we didn't, and the sad truth is that, in the eyes of the rest of the world, we are now responsible for his behavior.

[vince3]

10. Well said.

[AndyTiedye]

2. "Crossing the Rubicon" Refers to Bringing About The Death of the Republic

Julius Caesar destroyed the Roman Republic with a military coup.

Carrying out electoral fraud on the massive scale that was done in 2004
may have been the crossing of our Rubicon. If they can steal that many
votes, is there still a Republic at all?

[Spiffarino]

5. Julius Caesar had the support of many of Rome's citizens

I think Johnson's Rubicon analogy works on several levels.

Plenty of Americans support Bush and have no problem with his undemocratic tendencies. On the contrary, they celebrate him for it. In their minds, Bush is just a "clear thinker" who "sticks to his guns." Never mind that what he does and what he advocates are totally out of step with a constitutional system. These are people who want to be led by a strongman.

The election was a fraud. Some of us knew it. Lots of us felt it in our hearts. Hardly anyone did anything about it. We will get what we deserve.

[AndyTiedye]

12. We Deserve to Get Robbed????

The election was a fraud. Some of us knew it. Lots of us felt it in our hearts. Hardly anyone did anything about it. We will get what we deserve.

That's like saying someone deserved to get robbed or swindled.

[Spiffarino]

14. If you have the power to hold the robber to account

...but don't take the opportunity to use it then yes, you get what you deserve.

Yuschenko in the Ukraine stole the election. Big story. He was held to account by throngs of people who rallied against the fraud, and the votes were recast.

Bush stole the election. A couple of people showed up. No story. Now we're stuck with him.

[AndyTiedye]

15. I Have No Idea HOW to Hold Them To Account

Massive demonstrations? Those sure stopped them from attacking Iraq (NOT).
Most people were barely even aware that we were out there, due to the
lack of media converage. There was even less coverage of all the
irregularities, voter intimidation, and violations of the legally-prescribed
procedures during the 2004 elections, let alone the allegations of
electoral fraud. Nearly all of the coverage was adulation of ** and
attempting to explain away the red shift and blame it on gays an abortion. Most Americans get their news from the Repub media, so
they believe all this.

Compare that to the *massive* coverage of the Ukranian fraud in our own
press and the international press as well.
Ukranians have good access to all that foreign media, and are used to
seeking it out.



Our hopes for holding them to account for what they have already done
largely depended on Kerry getting too far ahead for them to steal it.

With the Repub control of the voting machinez and the media, I am not
even sure that there is any such thing as too far ahead to steal.
They'd just flash up that scene of the whole Boosh Family sitting
around the fire, and then all the numbers will start changing.

A couple of people showed up.

Were you at that demonstration too?
I'll keep demonstrating, of course. It might help a little and it
at least makes me feel better for a while.

I gave heavily to Kerry's campaign and the DNC. We were giving them
money faster than they could spend it, evidently, and it is likely
that most of the money I gave went unspent :wtf:

Boycotts may work. Walmart just had another miserable quarter,
which they attributed to bad times in the discount sector (which
seem to have passed by rigehteously-blue Costco somehow -- their
sales are up 8%). If there is a financially-significant boycott
of Walmart going on, you won't hear about it on the evening news
any time soon. They don't want that sort of thing to take off.

Most of us can't really boycott the oil companies (is there such
a thing as a blue oil company?), but we can buy less of their
products. We can assume that the surge in hybrid sales mostly
reflects this (given the high cost of hybrids).

[Spiffarino]

18. That was excellent

Great rant. That kind of pent up frustration churns inside most of us.

What.can.we.do??

You're right that the media don't give marches and protests air time, and that's why we didn't see many people marching after the fake election. Thousands marched on NY during the Repub convention, but only the foreign press paid attention, and what good came from it? The idiot still took the White House.

Obviously ordinary civil disobedience does nothing. Signs and marches do nothing. Will it take bloodshed before we see an end to this madness? It did before America woke up from the Vietnam era, and I fear that's what may be coming next.

What will it take before America wakes up?


BTW, Hess Oil contributed to 97% to Democrats. Try buying your gas there whenever you can. I do and, FWIW, it makes me feel a little better.


Edit: Yes, I attended one fraud protest. Four people showed up. It was disheartening. I also gave heavily to Kerry and other Dems. And phone banked. And went door to door. And listened to reports of exit polls that showed Dems taking most of the races only to have it reversed on the 11:00 news.

[AndyTiedye]

19. Alas -- Hess Only Sells Gas on the East Coast

If they sold gas in the Bay Area they'd do a lot of business.
A lot of people out here are looking for a blue oil company.

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. I reject the idea that we brought this on ourselves. He was DEFEATED

in the election. There is more coverage of the fact that the election was stolen in the rest of the world than there has been in this country.

[Spiffarino]

6. I hope people around the world see it that way

I don't think they will. Not as long as we continue to put up with the Chimp. Hell must be raised. The RW neocon agenda must be rejected loudly and publically by the people or we own it. Pure and simple.

Ahaj Raj has the right idea:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3597897

[Skink]

7. Crossing the Rubicon....

A teacher of mine sent me this. He get's to Caesar about halfway.

Dear Senator Leahy,

I write to you in hopes that the reception you gave to the
proposed appointment of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General
in your usual courteous and civil manner in no way indicates
that you, and I hope your Senatorial colleagues, will not go
to the greatest possible lengths to reveal to the American
public the nature of the Bush administration's contempt for
the rule of law.

As I am sure you know, this proposed appointment is a direct
shot across the bow, an 'in-your-face' political move to
carry out smoothly the program of secrecy- in-the- name of
security that Ashcroft began and that is the hallmark of an
administration that believes its mission, its existence, is
co-extensive with what is right for America. By nominating a
man who has asserted that the President has the power to
suspend the rule of law whenever he --and he alone -- claims
national security demands it, he throws us back beyond all
that the Declaration of Independence and its legal ancestors
brought to America. To make this nomination immediately
after an electoral victory but after a Supreme Court's
recent rejection of this view should be astounding. By now,
however, no one should have any illusions that this
administration believes that its ends justify any means to
achieve them. I need not rehearse the actions and character
of the Bush administration: you know them, Senator Jeffords
knew them, your fellow Democrats and a few Republicans know
them. The question is when and where to draw the line.

Let me say what motivates this letter, what depths of
feeling lead me to fear for the Republic. A life-long
Democrat, I spent the Sixties in Ann Arbor and Cambridge, a
fervent opponent of the Viet Nam War. Yet in those hotbeds
of cultural and political upheaval I never once uttered the
word
'fascist.' I thought my friends who did were callow and
ahistorical. And today I do not believe that Bush and the
cabal that controls him think of themselves as in any way as
incipiently fascistic, though I have no doubt that the
Oliver Norths and other bully boys would quickly come
forward if
the times 'demanded' it. What I do believe is that the
Administration in conscious and unconscious ways has been
laying the groundwork for the kind of authoritarian society
it may honestly believe is in our interests. Again, you know
what's happening is wrong, and the question becomes, when
does the noble art of compromise in politics have to give
way to a stand on principle? Bush, a hollow man into whom
has been poured every dark and poisonous strain in American
culture, has not hesitated to make everything he wants a
'principle.' He has pursued these things far past the point
of civility, yet we liberals have gone along: we survived
Reagan didn't we? He will not be stopped by asking, as
Joseph Welch did with McCarthy, Have you no shame? He has
none, he has been assured of his righteousness.

I do believe this nomination is as deliberate in its shape
and timing as Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon. Caesar
believed he was about to assert an illegitimate but
necessary power to save the Roman Republic. Indeed, he did,
by becoming the lawful Dictator Perpetuus. Likewise the
Weimar Republic was saved by utilizing its emergency powers
for the executive in a time of crisis. One hesitates to be
apocalyptic I this manner: who wants to be called paranoid?
But, again, you know by now that nothing is beyond the
dreams of this Administration. How and where to stop it? If
we had a
responsible press we might get a nightly television
juxtaposition of the Gonzales torture letter and the
resultant Abu Graib photos, say as many as we had of
Monica-at-the-rope every time Clinton's name was mentioned
for a year (10,000 times?). Failing that, it seems to me
that the Judiciary Committee and the Senate floor are being
called to account. It is with great sorrow that I say that
if this man's views are allowed to prevail due to some sort
'courtesy' to a President's wishes, or worse, that maybe
all will come out right, or we need to compromise yet
again..., then when, if ever again, will history say we had
the statesmanship we needed when we needed it? America had a
Know Nothing Party more than a century ago. After the 2004
election I think we have a majority that could be called the
I Don't Want to Know Nothin's. Who is going to stand up for
those who believe that it's only the truth, and the
knowledge of it that will us free?

Ruefully, but sincerely yours,

[Spiffarino]

8. Great letter - succinctly sums up what we are facing n/t

[tom_paine]

9. Powerful letter. A shame no Free Americans are left in power to read it

What we have now is the Soviet Duma under Stalin, and if the Busheviks decide to close their fists, the parallels would become so obvious as to be undeniable.

Now they are masked, but still their like a neon sign, pijnting at the Rubcion long ago crossed.

I think it was crossed on 12-12-2000, and no mistake.

[teryang]

17. Agree with your choice of the date

There hasn't really been a legitimate national election since.

[Selatius]

11. It's hard to assign blame for what happened on Nov. 2nd

The Republicans would never have gotten this far had Americans simply not fallen back asleep after the 1970s. Of course, this probably is aided by the fact that the corporate news media has pretty much been able to control discourse and thus change people's minds over time. Longer hours at work also deprived people of the time necessary to research issues and become better informed.

The only thing that is certain is that the Republic is rotting away from the inside out.

[indepat]

13. We the people, in numbers too large to fathom, did indeed ratify all W's

deeds and policies. A local journalist's screed in my RW Scripps-Howard rag today proclaimed the Iraqi war was part of the larger war on terrorism, no matter what W's detractors say. So there you have it.

[Robeson]

16. He was not elected. I agree with Gore Vidal, in that the election was a..

...fraud, and fixed. The crime with the American people, is that they don't care about elections being fixed. But, they probably can't help it, since they are conditioned into thinking this is the greatest system of government known to man. If they knew their history - or cared - they would know that fixing or arranging elections are as part of our history as "mom and apple pie". But because they are conditioned to believe that this is the "best" system, they simply don't believe that we have had fixed elections recently, or in the past. I'm not sure it will ever change, and I'm not sure that America was ever really a Democracy in the idealistic sense that many think it was/is. Thats as much a myth, as "mom and apple pie".