Editor,
As usual, the Democratic Party is playing it criminally safe. And as usual they've got their same old tiresome and cowardly rationalizations.
The Bush administration and its fellow Republicans are a moral abomination. This is obvious to barnyard animals, and it's been obvious for the last five years.
So why are our elected Democratic representatives - what a laugh - so afraid to morally confront these heartless hypocrites about anything?
Here's the deal. We've got the gutter Republican Party on the one side and the spineless Democratic Party on the other side. Not too many options, right?
And this is particularly painful for those of us who are determined to never get "Naderized" again. No more blindsiding from the political fairy tale folk. Lyndon Johnson, for all his foibles, had it right: Politics is the art of the possible.
Reality means beginning where we are and that means somehow infusing truckloads of grit into the Democratic Party.
For example, why is the Democratic National Committee sucking its thumb while billionaire Saudi princes and Texas-based oil companies are drinking the blood of our anemic economy? And while the newly passed Republican energy bill is literally paying the corporate cronies of George Bush to rape Mother Nature at will? And while Cheney and Halliburton make billions off of the horror of Iraq?
No question, Bush basically killed New Orleans. He destroyed the protective wetlands and underfunded the levees and the present agony was the inevitable result. Everyone in New Orleans knew they were doomed months before Katrina.
And if anyone had the slightest doubt about where Louisiana Democrats and disadvantaged blacks rated in Bush's self-righteous evangelical hypocrisies, the criminal sluggishness of his response reveals all.
So where is the Democratic party? Enough already with the rationalizations - it's time to confront. It's time to accuse the Bush evangelicals and Cheney and the Halliburtons of selfishness, dishonesty and treason.
These people are killing us. They're killing Mother Nature, they're killing our children - and all Condoleezza Rice can do is go out and buy thousands of dollars of shoes.
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God in heaven, isn't it time for the Democratic Party to finally start speaking out?
But more importantly, it's time for all ethical, rational Americans of good will to take responsibility for our country. The neoconservatives are killing America, and we have precious few advocates.
But isn't that what it always comes down to? When life hits the fan, it's always up to each of us, one individual at a time, to rise to the challenge.
We can do it - and if we don't do it, it won't get done. God bless America.
W. Christopher Epler
UNM staff
