Be Prepared

In the ugly aftermath of World War II the German citizenry was forced to acknowledge the atrocities of the Third Reich. While not on the scale of Nazi Germany, the criminal acts of the Bush Administration coming to light are going to be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow. Just as the Germans were not innocently ignorant of what was going on right under their noses, neither will we Americans be able to claim impunity for the despicable erosion of civil and human rights methodically perpetrated by the neoconservatives who have all but brought the Constitution to its knees. We’ve known. We just haven’t wanted to admit. With not just a new administration, but with the clamor of the public who voted it in, there is the promise of transparency (apparently a more palatable euphemism for the truth) which is going to expose just how depraved we let ourselves become in the years since Nixon. The first step toward recovery is admitting that we have sinned. I sense that no one is eager to prosecute the wrongdoers, and that may be just as well. The American equivalent to a Nuremburg-like trial of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld…the list is so long that we could easily spend the next eight years attempting to adjudicate the last…will likely not serve well the imminent need for progressive reform for the future. But we need to look at ourselves in the national mirror, accept what we have either through submission or omission allowed to happen in the name of democracy, and swear to never, ever let it happen again.