A Declaration of Impeachment

As anyone who has read this blog over the last couple years knows, I used to be fairly prolific, then came back from NOLA and pretty much bowed out. Sometimes I'd hit the keyboard again on the occasion of this or that outrage, but I was in a car accident, lost it for awhile, and since then have been pretty overwhelmed with anger and misery everytime I turn on the radio, or read a mag or newspaper, so much so that I usually find myself muffled with unmanageable, untranslateable feelings hopelessly beyond my capacities to tell. Then something comes along that puts it in a nutshell so nicely it's a simple matter of just copying and pasting it whole cloth, then enjoying it.

As above, so below. On the occasion of our nation's birthday, everyone likes to talk about freedom, but we know freedom these days doesn't have anything to do with freedom from tyranny, unless you're an investment banker or other capitalistic moneybags. It's feedom to make a buck on the backs of any poor schmoe you can exploit, and the devil (and the IRS) take the hindmost. It's certainly not freedom to enjoy private conversations and access to your bank account while out of the country, not freedom to live without your demographics and buying habits and bedroom manners and social networks and reading materials being subject to government analysis.

Even as the gates open and oceanic opportunity is granted to plutocrats and aristocrats, they slam down tight on the little guy and gal, and all we get in return is a lot of cant about "freedom", while they steal it away. So here's to the Untited States of America, this rather unperfect union, rather shaky right now, but here's to its ideals and its dreams and to the hope that one day its people will awaken from this horrific dream, from their opiated consumerism, to see things with clear eyes and unshaken determination: the determination to put an end to tyrants as our ancestors did.

Thanks to afterdowningstreet.com and David Swanson for pointing me to this updated Declaration of Impeachment on the Veterans for Peace website, taken nearly verbatim from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Swanson gives it some eloquent context. But it holds its own alone:

"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are instituted to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But

…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations…design(s) to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

…The history of the present King (George) of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absoluteTyranny.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

§ He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to
harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

§ He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

§ He has…deprive(ed) us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury…transport(ed)
us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

§ He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging
War against us…

§ He is at this time transporting large Armies…to compleat the works of death,
desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely
paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

§ He has constrained our fellow Citizens…to become the executioners of their friends
and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

A (President) whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant,
is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

We, therefore…do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People…solemnly
publish and declare, That these…Free and Independent (People)…are Absolved from
all Allegiance to the (Bush Administration), and that all political connection between them and (this Administration), is and ought to be totally dissolved…And for the support of this Declaration…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Read it at your picnic. Then ask yourself whether one more patriot life is worth allowing these cowardly half men to remain in their stolen offices.