According to Aristotle, not all problems are capable of rational solution. For example, he said "If you don't believe that snow is white, you need a pair of glasses, not rational argument" (Topics). The current impeachment debate may revolve around a similar problem: using political reasoning when we should be using a medical argument. In fact, many diaries have actually provided clinical evidence that the President's behavior is better understood in medical terms. So on with my argument.
Study of facts and literature indicate that America's current political problem is extraordinary, and without precedent in our military or constitutional history (Nov 06 election, criticism from generals, mind-boggling corruption, foreign war steeped in colossal mismanagement, recklessness, unnecessary slaughter of innocents and our own financial ruin). From writings like The Price of Loyalty, Fiasco, and Nemesis comes an inescapable and damning judgment: America, the political community founded on constitutional principles and beacon of liberty and justice for two hundred years is mortally ill and its institutions, including the media and congress, seem incapable of reviving it. Many historical analogies have been invoked: Greece, Rome, Hitler's Germany and other past tyrannical conditions.
As if to answer for All of these extraordinary events, as if to justify and excuse all the doubts and troubling reports and discomfort for the chattering shoppers, the President offers to the nation and to history one overriding claim: that America faces a new hitherto unknown clandestine evil that threatens not only America but Western Civilization itself. If we do not confront this evil in its lair, at its home base, it will slither and seep under the cover of normality into every corner of the world and especially into the innocent lives of Americans. The borders must be sealed, the peopled searched, the Constitution suspended, and the legionnaires of righteousness sent abroad to flush the enemy out of his hole.
Fortunately for the world, it just so happens that the President, and only he, has the unique ability to detect this evil and therefore only he can be trusted to save us. The President believes that destiny is at work to place him, a man of action like Churchill or Teddy Roosevelt, at the helm of the nation at such a critical time in our history. The President has even compared our current situation with both the Revolutionary War and with World War II.
In this extraordinary moment of great danger, George Bush, the avenger, has appeared to protect the people no matter what judicial or constitutional obstacles are in the way. In normal times it is right and proper that the Constitution function as the foundation of civil life, but in unprecedented times, there are no constitutional principles that outweigh preventive action to protect the people. The President can and must have unfettered power to do his duty and save us. Make no mistake, we are at war to save civilization itself and the President is the Commander and Chief and as such is owed complete unquestioned obedience. Every morning the media, the shepherds of terror, repeat the President's propaganda and every morning the sheep ingest the lie while America continues to die.
But is the President right? Is it true that some existential conditions require that you abandon principle in order to save principle. Do you remove the foundation of the house in order to save the rooms and the furniture? And may we ask is the President's description of events accurate and if so, is the President actually qualified to lead in such a time of grave danger. A look into Bush's education reveals not even a minimal acquaintance with classical art, music, history, or science. He also appears to have no understanding at all of the history of politics, practical or theoretical or the history of theology, practical or theoretical. And yet at this grand moment in history Bush claims that he is the leader, the decider. If Bush is right, this would make him the equivalent of Pericles, or Caesar, or Churchill, or Roosevelt, or the founding fathers. This seems strange since Bush does not have a rudimentary knowledge of the basis and history of a free and noble community. Whence the President's confidence and whence the people's trust? Frankly and finally we must ask after a fair and unbiased examination of all the afore remarked evidence is this a medical crisis rather than a political crisis?
Many Daily Kos diaries point to evidence that President is completely out of touch with reality and poses a danger to himself and others:
Katrina- New Orleans, Illegal war, undermining constitution, corruption at Justice Department, talking to God, directing the military like Hitler at Stalingrad (General Odom NPR interview).
Bush's fantasy of the unitary executive is based on the view that principles of human life are conditional, that life, liberty, freedom and justice are not universal truths of human nature and as such discoverable by each and binding on all (view of human nature found in Declaration of Independence) but rather are derived from power arrangements. Those in power decide who shall receive what and when. Might makes right. Those who shape History cannot be judged by past events or external standards (Suskind NPR interview). Civilization is primarily the possession and creative use of power and not the discovery and cultivation of truth. The Constitution becomes a contract that is trumped by executive privilege.
Bush's fantasy executive theory leads to the notion of selective or pre-emptive justice that is required to protect the basis of power, and by extension the people who benefit from power, and who, by definition, are incapable of protecting themselves: therefore, torture, secret detention, secret trials, spying, and war are necessary to separate the good from the bad.
All these are classic symptoms of a sick society being run by a sociopath. So we must ask the question again, why are the people and the institutions of a free country tolerating this madness? The answer my friends is simple. We all know the President is nuts but we do not possess the honest shame to say it. We are engaged in a pathetic conspiracy of denial about the horrific consequences at home and abroad of an unjust war. We have turned the Department of Homeland Security into the Department of Shame and Irresponsibility, because it is we who, having lost our way, have become the greater danger not only to ourselves but to others as well. Think about it and weep folks. We now care more about our cars and freeways than we do about the women and children being killed in Iraq so that we can maintain a supply of cheap oil. Oh, we who are enablers of this madness, let us speak the truth and conclude from a medical perspective that the great terror, the so-called mushroom cloud that Bush is protecting us from is something that exists only in his mind and needs to be removed surgically before he destroys America. The situation is medical not political and requires medical response.
There is a lawful provision for such a response. The Constitution allows Congress to remove President from office due " to inability to discharge his duties." Nation appears confused by call for impeachment, which signifies a political crisis, when in fact the President needs to be hospitalized for a medical condition.
Amendment XXV, section 4 allows for removal of President when appropriate body selected by Congress gives "their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office..."
It is time to convene medical hearings to require surgery and return to rule of law. Cut it out, folks. Just CUT IT OUT.