Is This The Way The Republic Ends?

It was supposed to be where the issue, not to mention the outrage, of the cheerful assertion of dictatorship was going to be focused. The Alito hearings, whatever they would mean for the eventual acceptance of the nominee to the Supreme Court, would serve notice that Democrats and even some Republicans weren't going to stand for Constitutional democracy being dismantled before their eyes by a government headed by an embarrassing self-parody in the Oval Office.

Well, it was an awfully good idea. Too bad the Senators on the committee were so lame, and so easily flummoxed by a nominee who failed to dramatically screw up, mostly by sitting utterly still and saying as little as possible with as many words as possible.

And of course the media utterly fell for the only not entirely boring photo op, which was the nominee's wife in tears, after a question by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham. Graham, sitting in judgment on the judge, was also the guy who helped prepare him for testimony, and was he ever prepared. Most Little Leagues don't let coaches umpire, but Congress is apparently different.

Maybe that should be their motto: Congress: always a lower standard.

Could it be that the tears were also coached? The woman could have been an actor playing Alito's wife and our ace investigative newshounds would never know it. They're too busy, getting the money shot, doing inserts for teasers and interviews for other shows on their network, and bantering with pundits and drive-time djs, then rushing back to the office to read the blogs so they can find out what's going on.

The anti-dictatorship crowd hasn't run out of opportunities yet--it's said that Al Gore will shout about constitutional crisis in a speech on Monday, though the drama is a bit diluted by this being known several days in advance, so the speech itself may be old news before it happens.

And some anti-dictatorship folks are trying their own pr campaign, like the series of town meetings which are laudable in themselves, but to puff them up as "impeachment talk is growing" and "350 people are packed into the hall" is pushing it. Yes, maybe they were packed, but they were still just 350 people.

I've been thinking about a short email I got at Christmastime by an old friend from the 70s, which referred to these as "the worst of times." She and I lived through Civil Rights and Vietnam, assassinations, Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran-Contra, and Bush War I. She may even remember aspects of the Blacklist---after all, her father was I.F. Stone, one of the few wholly admirable men of our time, whose courage is partially measured in his lack of company as a voice of informed dissent. Yet she called these the worst of times, and she may well be right.

But they may not be the worst of times to come, if this pale slide into dictatorship isn't halted. It's not the wiretaps themselves, not even Alito, that make it so terrible. But the confidence that Bushcorpse has in asserting their evil ways, in destroying this nation's economy, its natural environment and the world's, sending poor young men and women to their deaths, justifying torture and continuing cruel and unusual punishment without even charges, leading a system in which medical care is denied to the non-wealthy, and public health is falling apart, and in Bush's obscenely and absurdly cheerful blather about the ruins of New Orleans...what word is there for this but decay?

Is this how the Republic will end, not with a bang but a simper? Or a smirk?