The Skin of Our Teeth

In his seminal work, "The Rise and fall of the Third Reich,” William Shirer makes obvious the banal nature of evil and shows us how it festers in a warm mire of indifference and resignation. Nazi German just didn't occur overnight, he explains; the roots were growing for ten years prior to the beer hall putsch that put Hitler into power.

Often, the most ominous noise is silence. In this regard, a recent non-speech of Dubya is most revealing, both in the lack of significant content of the message, and in the relative indifference with which it was greeted. In that speech, Bush had no dramatic commentary on the state of the Iraq quagmire, nor any specific insights to reinforce commitment to that unholy effort.

What is equally disturbing is the resounding lassitude with which his non-message was greeted. Where was the outrage? Where was the determined effort on the part of good people to drive a stake through the heart of this obscene tragedy? The Democrats have nothing to say, and have largely abandoned the field of battle. Even the normally outspoken John Edwards has been inordinately quiescent. The only sane people appear to be William Rivers Pitt of Truthout, John Connyers, and Maxine Waters of Los Angeles.

The overwhelming lack of content of Bush's speech was made more disturbing by the fact that it is difficult to say at this juncture whether this reflects caution born out of acknowledgment that there is nothing encouraging to say, or whether this represents confidence born out of a conviction that the country will very shortly be disarmed, literally and figuratively, in the very near future. Armed with the Patriot Act, the detention and torture camps, the rapid advance of surreptitious domestic spying made legal, and with the imposition of leaders such as John Bolton, John Negroponte, Alberto Gonzalez, Carl Rove, this republic is on the verge of a total takeover.

If history is any measure--and it is--then hopefully the sheer conceit and its attendant recklessness of these leaders will lead to their inevitable downfall. The problem lies in the fact that a repressive regime may be in power for a considerable time for such downfall to occur. Julius Cesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and a host of tyrants--all--did not foresee the cataclysmic consequences of their actions. We would like to believe that "this can't happen here" because of the principles upon which this glorious republic was founded. And therein lies the sixty-four thousand dollar question: Will this republic, by its very nature and that of the people that it engenders, be sufficient to turn the tide before the worst befalls us?

What is so vexing about this all is that inherent in the structure of our government lays the pathetically simple answer to our problem: the decisive action on the part of its citizenry. Yet our people have been dumbed-down by that atrocity known as the educational "system," aided and abetted by a cowardly and kowtowing press. To make matters worse, there appears to be an insidious and extremely effective encroachment on our privacy by police agencies:

It is nothing less than terrifying to learn that the California National Guard is developing an extensive "anti-terrorist" plan, which has as its base the legally permissibility of spying, following, and tapping the lives of our people. The Posse Commutates Act forbids the military from ever being used against any insurrection of the people. How ingenious it was for the government to use the technical distinction between the National Guard and the military so as to allow the former to act with impunity in a manner, which is expressly forbidden, to the latter.

In his play, "The Skin of our Teeth," Thornton Wilder, through the use of a metaphor, brings the issue into sharp focus: Time and time again civilization itself has been brought to brink of destruction, and each time we have been saved, by the skin of our teeth. Once again, civilization itself has been brought to a critical pass. Only a free America can save us now. Will we win the war against the people?

Don Quixote, where are you now when we need you most?