You Have the Right to Remain Silent

By Nancy Greggs
Sun Jan 14th 2007
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/150

Yes, elected Republicans, you have the right to remain silent. But at this juncture, I believe it is beyond a right – it is an obligation.

Within minutes of the Democrats assuming their role as the majority, the inevitable criticism of their every action, every word, every plan or idea began, delivered in the whining tone you are now famous for, and continues unabated.

Not only is this detrimental to the spirit of bipartisanship you became so enamored of in the wee hours of November 8th, it is childish, hypocritical and, more often than not, downright silly – but alas, completely expected. Such are the times we live in; such are the morals of your party.

One finds it hard to understand why you would have trouble reverting to your normal acquiescent silence, a state in which you have lived for years while allegedly performing the responsibilities of your office. You sat silent as the president’s reasons for invading Iraq became exposed, one after the other, as lies. You sat silent as this administration rode roughshod over the Constitution and the laws of our nation. You sat silent as the nation’s debt grew to unprecedented levels.

You asked no questions; you pursued no investigation into the facts underlying the conduct of the War in Iraq, or its inevitable consequences. You quietly accepted spying on American citizens, illegal wiretaps, illegal warrantless searches, rendition, secret prisons – and eventually sanctioned the use of torture.

In fact, the only time you opened your mouths was to stand and vote “yea” on every bill that stripped the citizenry of its fundamental rights, turned our country into what has become a democracy in name only, and to support every scatterbrained idea put forward by the oh-so-obviously incompetent idiot you elevated to the presidency.

And now, after years of sitting back and doing nothing to improve the country or the lives of its citizens, you have the unmitigated gall to criticize others as they strive to undo the damage you have done, as they attempt to put this nation back on-track, as they act upon the needs and wants of the constituents they were elected to serve.

Your feigned outrage is, of course, understandable. It’s not easy to sit on the sidelines and watch the party you have criticized for years take the reins of power, and actually accomplish the very things you ignored on behalf of the American people. A raise in the minimum wage, adopting the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission, taking steps to ensure necessary oversight and ethical behavior – your rancor at seeing these things not just talked about but actually acted upon must stick in your craw like a rotten pretzel.

But the truth of the matter is simply this: You lost your right to criticize a long time ago, and it’s about time you woke up to that fact.

As the Democrats adopted the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission, you said, “Where will the money come from?” Don’t you think that’s pretty rich coming from people who have sanctioned the expenditure of billions of dollars in Iraq, without even a modicum of fiscal oversight, and without a single positive thing to show for it?

Don’t you think that’s an almost humorous reaction from the same people who gave tax-cuts to billionaires, and corporations making record profits? Don’t you think that is an amusing retort from a party that exercised no oversight when it came to no-bid contracts to Halliburton and other administration-connected war-profiteers?

Don’t you think it is downright laughable that the same people who have plunged us into unprecedented debt, while screaming from the rooftops about their unique ability to safeguard the nation, now ask where the funds will come from to inspect cargo at our ports?

Let me break this to you gently: Nobody’s laughing, least of all the hard-working middle-class who, along with their children and their grandchildren, will be paying off the money you handed over to Big Oil and Big Pharma without so much as blinking an eye.

Some of you are still, and unbelievably so, persistent in reiterating the worn-out talking points that have already been proven to be as baseless as they are ridiculous.

You sit in your comfortable chairs on the TV talk shows and rail about the Democrats’ position on winding-down our military presence in Iraq as “not supporting the troops”. Yet again we hear the rusty rhetoric of the same people who voted for cutting the benefits and pensions of our men and women in uniform, the same people who sent them into combat without body or vehicle armor, the same people who agreed to stretch our military to the breaking point while their own children attended expensive private schools funded by the raises they voted for themselves time and again.

But we as a nation have sadly come to expect your hypocrisy in all matters. While you babbled incessantly about winning the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq, you appropriated billions to build an embassy in Baghdad, complete with generators and water-filtration systems, right in the middle of a populace that has to forage for clean drinking water on streets so wracked with violence, it is a task that may cost them their lives.

While you praised the Mission Accomplished of a delusional, incompetent Commander-in-Chief, suited-up in the military gear he eschewed when it was his time to serve, you looked the other way as “liberated” Iraqis were arrested without cause, detained without charge, and tortured. While American citizens in New Orleans were left to drown or die from lack of food and water, you extolled the virtues of a president who left the oversight of that disaster to the incompetent cronies he’d appointed, as he continued the vacation he’s been on since the day he took office.

To be perfectly blunt, the only explanation for your behavior while in office is the fact that the vast majority of you are blatantly stupid. Too stupid to know that voters would find a raise in the minimum wage more to their liking than the Bankruptcy Bill. Too stupid to comprehend that the outsourcing of jobs would not find its way into the hearts-and-minds of out-of-work Americans. Too stupid to realize that when you questioned the patriotism of those who oppose your policies, you just might be insulting the voters on whom your job depends. And way too stupid to have the foresight to know that the monster you have created, George W. Bush, would hang around your necks like an anchor as you struggled to keep afloat, totally uninterested in the political survival of yourselves or your party as he arrogantly played the role of omnipotent emperor – a title that you, yourselves, conferred.

So now as the Democrats do what you could have done but wouldn’t, and achieve what you should have achieved but didn’t, you sit and whine like shocked-and-awed school children, outraged as the teacher awards gold stars to the students who did their homework, while you are relegated to the back of the classroom, dismissed as too lazy and ignorant to deserve attention.

In view of all of the above, I would think it obvious that it is time for all Republicans to remain silent – except, of course, when it comes to praying, something you all allegedly do every day. When asking forgiveness of the Almighty for what you have done to your fellow citizens, your country, and the world at large, you might want to pray fervently and frequently – and by all means, do it loudly, because between you and me, I don’t think God is in a listening mood when it comes to people who wrapped themselves in Christianity as they sanctioned torture and the deaths of innocent women and children, while at the same time ignoring the plight of the homeless, the hungry, the sick and the dying.

You have the right to remain silent. It is a right you would be well advised to exercise in the coming months, along with an invocation of the Fifth Amendment as you are asked, under oath, to explain your complicity in crimes against the citizens of this country, and against the citizens of the world.

Or, to put it in terms even the dumbest Republican can understand, it’s time to shut the fuck up. And if you take umbrage at that expression, remember that you found that four-letter expletive perfectly acceptable when your vice president used it on the Senate floor.

Yes, shut the fuck up. It is an expression that is crude and distasteful, and denotes a total lack of respect for those who it is aimed at – and I cannot think of a more appropriate time to use it, nor a more deserving group of people to say it to.