November 21, 1920 will live forever in Irish history as "Bloody Sunday." The Brits opened up with machine guns on a football crowd in Croke Park, as retaliation for Michael Collins' "night of the long knives" the previous evening.
Irish Republican Brotherhood leader Collins, convinced that a group of British spies called "the Cairo Gang" were responsible for the escalating murders of Irish revolutionaries, signed off on the political killings of ten British officers that night; all known spies.
On Tuesday, November 7th, almost eighty-six years since Bloody Sunday, the American people conducted their own night of the long knives. Thank god there were no deaths, at least not in a physical sense.
Disgusted with the incompetence, arrogance, and corruption of an administration and a governing party, Americans decided to eliminate the source of the problem, and gave the other party an opportunity to see what they could do.
The victims on Dublin's Bloody Sunday had names like Colonel Aimes, Major Bennett, Captain Baggily, and Major King.
Last week, the names were Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Libby... Kristol, Wolfowitz, Perle, Ledeen, Shrum, Bolton... Hastert, DeLay, Santorum, Allen, Foley, Burns, Frist... Abramoff, Reed, Norquist, Ney... Brownie, Chertoff...Robertson, Falwell, Haggard, Dobson...get the drift?
Thankfully there were no real deaths, but there were very certain political, ideological, and Christian fundamentalist deaths.
Considered by some to be the political guru of the ages, the Machiavellian Rove proved utterly fallible. Once the American people finally got over the constant fear foisted upon them by these creeps, Rove proved disastrously wrong about his philosophy that independents simply don't count.
There is little need to comment on the gross incompetence of Rumsfeld. As for Cheney, perhaps the president has finally realized that it was he, and not Cheney, who was elected Commander-in-Chief. Perhaps he'll begin acting like one.
The neo-cons who captured the minds and hearts of Cheney and Rumsfeld, who in turn manipulated Mr. Bush's incurious mind with their irrational philosophy of world hegemony, have proved completely and utterly wrong on virtually every position they have taken. If Rupert Murdoch had any compassion, he would instantly close the doors of his Bill Kristol-managed Weekly Standard neo-con rag. Please Rupert, ---save the guy any additional embarrassment!
Brownie and Chertoff need neither an introduction nor explanation. Suffice it to say, they were the poster boys of political patronage. It's as simple as that.
As for the fall of both Hastert and DeLay, in a just world they'd be getting fitted for prison suits. Hastert might actually appear better, as he currently resembles nothing so much as a stuffed Peking duck in a Wal-Mart suit.
Santorum and George Allan finally ran out of cover, and their constituents out of patience. In much of America, religious and racial bigotry is simply unacceptable.
The Abramoff, Reed Norquist and Ney crown will be considered unusually lucky if they don't spend some time as guests of the government.
Finally, it looks like the vulnerable evangelicals, who've been completely suckered by this administration, perhaps awakened to the fact that they've been shamelessly manipulated. While these religious hucksters will undoubtedly continue to enrich themselves at the cost of the naïve, they'll no longer be able to do it on the backs of the taxpayer.
Thomas L. Walsh graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Communications/Journalism degree in 1962. Following a successful business career, he retired to Idaho's Teton Valley in 1999, where he works as a free-lance writer. Walsh and his (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
My old shot-up US Marine Corps vet from Vietnam years friend, Mel King, would observe, if he was still alive, that there's plenty of blood being spilled. Plenty spilled on election day, as well.
It was just the wrong people being shot, Mel would say.
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Jack Purcell (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 102 comments) on Saturday, Nov 11, 2006 at 11:02:31 AM
However, unlike the first "Night of the Long Knives" those involved in the election day losses are still around and can certainly bide their time and resume power, if indeed they really lost any.
Those who were elected to take the place of the neoconservatives are not a heck of a lot of an improvement frankly, though among them are some well intentioned folks to be certain. My problem with this election is that it has further entrenched, even mired, the Democratic Party in its resolve to move to the right while actually believing it is centrist.
Governing from the middle may be fine and dandy in philosophical debate but, after six years of Bush and a history of rightward swinging starting with the execrable Reagan years what is needed is a return to that almost mythic center, which calls for a leftward turn. We aint gonna see it......
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ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments) on Sunday, Nov 12, 2006 at 9:55:35 AM
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