August 5, 2008 at 04:05:38

Impeachment Efforts Are Worth It

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You hear it all the time: “What are you wasting your time on Impeachment for? You now it’s not going to get anywhere. You’re just going to make yourself trouble.” So many pundits have cast their negative spin on the idea by asking, “Is it worth it?” that I purposefully titled this piece to answer in the affirmative. It was not an easy yes to get to, but yeah, Neil Young and CSNY, sure, let’s do impeachment the president. Of course, recently, the Impeachment Movement (and me personally, perhaps not coincidentally) have had some hard times and that certainly makes it harder to keep one’s spirits up. Following the Hearings on July 25th many of us who had worked for years to see that moment, leapt up as if our excitements alone could compel Congress through our sheer collective force of will. And it hasn’t happened. So, you see you have to keep working, but eventually, the question comes around: Is This All Worth It? But you push on.

Of course I say push on, not fight on, as if what we do could be called a "fight," next to what actual soldiers have had to go through, but fight on. It has taken a elaborate and enormous machinery to cloud the truth from the public, but I still say that truth, in and of itself needs to be treated as if it were the champion of the people and pushed for at all turns. We who know must work in still more ways and 1 on 1 with even more citizens, until so many are calling for justice the apparatus itself responds, even as the lackeys who work for it continue to drone out their disinformation.

Accept this isn’t going to get easy. Loyal GOP and Fox heads will continue to spout their talk, it's what they're paid for. We just have to talk more and more directly and get the seed of truth spread to the point the people demand to hear it.

So you try to press on. Then on Friday, Aug. 1st in a phone interview I personally was told by an insider at Judiciary nothing’s doing, and nothing’s going to be done. Over this same period of time a reader could readily find massive amounts of new material on how Pelosi’s 2002 involvement in the Congressional “Gang of 8” briefing on torture makes her complicit and so she won’t press for impeachment because she’s an accessory. Of course you know that everything has its tipping point, put enough weight behind an icon and it will topple, but it’s likely to take an immense amount of weight.

Are we there yet? Not even close. And still the question: Worth it? For many of us who have been running this marathon we thought we were entering the homestretch and found out we hadn’t even made it to the starting gate yet. And yet, both on a personal level and as a citizen, I still say yes. To me the Bush administration has grown to such a monstrosity it is every citizen’s duty to resist and work towards awareness and arrest. It is the basic issue of liberty and freedom for America itself. To spend one's time working for the cause, or even merely the call, of freedom is not a waste. Even if you never achieve the freedom yourself, or if the world is not freed from your trying, your soul and the souls of those you touched will be that much freer and that is certainly worth the time.

With a problem the scope of the Bush Dynasty, there are so many disasters it’s occasionally incapacitating just trying to figure out where to start. You’ve got to do something. Of all the different topic to pursue, impeachment ties so many together so beautifully. Like many, many Americans I have strong suspicions on 9/11, am aware of Bilderbergs, Alex Jones, the Federal Reserve, etc. All of it incredibly overwhelming and prima face, undefeatable. That is why I tend to work on more mainstream issues: if we can get the torture to stop then we can do this, if we can unravel the secrecy then we can do that, etc, all of which are handily addressed in impeachment.I will not get my neighbor to accept the network of secret detention facilities around the country waiting for the names on the terrorist watch list until I can get him to see WMDs were a lie, refusing congressional subpoenas is a crime, and war in general, and this war in specific, is an abomination.As Rep. Mel Watt and Ms Holtzman both strongly noted: The American People need to act behind the impeachment for it to work. The public awareness and outcry has increased through our efforts so far, but not enough, until Congress hears Watergate-size thunderous disgust from Americans we need to stay in hard-pressed PR mode and publicize the ambiguity out of this issue. Bush succeeds because though people don't like what he's doing they keep being told, it's OK. Well, what he's done is not OK and it is our job to make sure that everyone knows it.So I call us all back to action. Several writers have urged increased agitation and this sounds great to me. I’ll march for a cause, but I don't like being beaten for a cause, especially if we can outsmart the tyrant. One of the posters on OpEdNews Mr. M is right, outlandish activism in civil disobedience is the key right now. We have to out shout the media, both in spectacle and sincerity. Not just write or call Congress on a regular basis or have gripe sessions with friends. We have to confront the enforced ignorance. Make and hand out flyers yourself. “Street corner” it whenever you have 15 minutes. In addition to occasional street corner standing with protest signs I have also incorporated using disposable "Impeach Bush" signs and stapling them to abandoned buildings with high visibility. One person with a sign on a busy street can affect 100s in an hour. The more the more impact, but ONE alone does make a difference. This is a saturation thing. Why did the Bush admin lie 944 times about WMDs? Because repetition works.

Here's an idea I read in an op-ed out of Florida and have adopted: Hand write an Impeach Bush flyer on a sheet of typing paper and tape it to your car. Make it gaudy, let it be ugly. The more of these on the streets the more the general public has to think about impeachment. And this thought that came from our family's discussion of how to best dramatize the impeachment is that instead of, as typical, one large protest in DC, we need 100s of protests at cities around the country. Small ones add up, like yesterday I got contacted about a vacant lot with posts available for activist content. Today by noon on a main thoroughfare in Kingman, AZ is a 4 X 8 sign that reads "Impeach Bush Now! Call Congress." I also have spent a half hour or so a day over the last couple of days sidewalk protesting for impeachment right in front of the local Repug headquarters.

ALSO, harass the press for their lack of accountability. They are less likely to be true believers than GOP politicians and need to be called to account when they propagandize. Here is a link for FAIR's media contact list. They deserve the attention as much as congress.Just be sure: While I am not advocating violence, I believe this is a time for hostility, or at least to push beyond silence even when it’s uncomfortable. This is a time for purposeful confrontation of the Bush propagandists, even when that means one-on-one in the grocery store with someone wearing Bush/GOP propaganda. The people need to confront for themselves what the Bush admin has been proven to stand and what their alliance to the junta says about their personal character. For to endorse Bush is to endorse tyranny, lying, torture, greed, heartlessness, etc., even to the personal level of still having a red white and blue "W '04" sticker on your SUV.

Surely a vast number of the people who once believed in Bush now know the ashes and anger the rest of us have known for years. You could be the one to help them get to that anger and then they could help us get our country back. Without a massive outpouring of public outcry, the kind ImpeachBush.tv calls the “Nixon Flood,” we won’t have an impeachment. And if we don’t do something soon, we won’t have a country. Sure you will get some nasty looks, cuss words and other unpleasantries, you may find yourself having a tense conversation with someone you’ve half known for years or with someone you just met but need to depend on; and you may find yourself out of a job over this. Believe I speak from experience.

But remember this, especially when you contemplate the ever spreading network of detention centers Alex Jones keep trying to warn us about: With the terrorist watch list now spreading to over one million names we have to wonder just how low the standards have gotten to make it on the list? What does it mean to be the eight hundred and seven-five thousand, four hundred and thirty-fifth angriest person at Bush? Do you have to know how to make bombs, some protest you went to, or column you wrote, or is it because of a bumper sticker on your car?

Let’s face it, if the US actually had one million terrorists running around actively working on the destruction of our country, an army of a million fanatics? We’re all screwed. If Al Qaida has secretly infiltrated one million dedicated soldiers inside our borders we are occupied by the sixth largest army on the planet. So who is the enemy Bush is trying to secure America from? Ourselves?

Maybe like Nixon’s Enemies List before, perhaps the majority of those million people aren’t so much enemies of the state as enemies of Bush and Bush is not the state … yet.

Is Impeachment worth it? I say Yes What do you think?

--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona

Born the son of a nightclub singer, Mikel Weisser watched anti-war hippies getting beaten on TV during the Vietnam War and decided to devote his life to protest against unreasoning authority, but not to getting beaten. Though he spent almost two (more...)

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