Last night, as I tried to fall asleep after a giddy hour on the blogs fantasizing about a Cheney indictment, my thoughts turned to all the people whose lives were in ruins as a result of Plamegate. Not moments before, I was glorying in the demise of my perceived enemies. I had felt that I could sleep soundly, not just last night, but for every night for the rest of my life. All those anxious hours of the last five years had been for naught. Truly, if Fitzgerald continues his courageous path, I could believe that the truth will out. That if you give them enough rope, they will hang themselves. I could rest soundly, always, knowing that the meek do indeed inherit the earth. I suddenly believed again, in Democracy, in God, in the power of Good over Evil, in the Toothfairy, whatever. What a remarkable lesson, I mused, for my youthful soul. The worm turns over and those who appear to triumph at the expense of vast multitudes of poor and disenfranchised will fall. Their lies will be revealed.

Now, I must admit I am new to the blogosphere. My husband didn’t share in my gloating and urged caution. Today, I see why. One un-sourced comment on Arianna’s blog sent the wires atwitter, and I, like many, was drunk on rumors. Today, of course, my heart fell. I jumped from bed to scan the headlines. Where was the WSJ story citing Cheney as the center of the investigation? I spent the day despondent, having gained some stinging perspective. I will have to wait a few more weeks it seems. Fitzgerald is asking for an extension of the grand jury. And I have vowed to stop my obsessive speculation.

But last night, when I should have slept like a lamb, I felt disturbed. I gave my husband a congratulatory high five after our goodnight peck (something that’s never before occurred in our eight years of marriage) and proceeded to toss and turn. As soon as my head settled down, my heart began to hurt. My eyes flew open. I was SAD for Dick Cheney. Even his wife Lynne. If indeed he was indicted, or even implicated in Plamegate, his political career would be shot. Everything he has worked for is coming undone. I began to feel the fear he has felt for the last two years, the fear of being discovered. Maybe even the fear he has always felt. The fear that caused him and his advisors to out Valerie Plame and discredit her husband. I began to hurt for them, too. Where is she now, and Wilson? How has their family been affected? And then the floodgates opened: I felt pain for (God help me!) Judy Miller. And Scooter. Even Rove. Tony Blair. And poor Dr. Kelly and his widow, and their family. The American people and the British too, lied to, intentionally. The folks in Gitmo. And Abu Ghraib. I positively winced for the soldiers who abused the prisoners, themselves victims of a culture of violence, become perpetrators. Naturally, all the people of Iraq rose before me, dead and alive, thousands upon thousands of them. And our soldiers, and their families, of course. But in a new way. These victims were victims not just of a war. We, all of us, are victims and perpetrators of a positively insane worldview. One of institutionalized violence and deception, bred of a deep fear of vulnerability.

I am still waiting for the truth to out, for the rise of the weak, for the end to this corrupt nightmare, for the re-balancing of power in a world gone mad for money and power. But my heart is not gleeful or joyous. As I gaze at what we have wrought, with an eye of hope for what we will learn and become, my heart is no longer hard and small. It is warm and open and aches with longing for healing for us all.

As I skim the blogs and fantasize about the string of possible indictments in the coming weeks, gazing fondly at the web of associations on Think Progress, it occurs to me that I haven’t felt this sort of optimism since Clinton and Co. took to the stage with Fleetwood Mac. True, I was a political ingénue at the time. But lately, that same sense of (dare I say it?) hope is rising like sap in my veins.

It's been a while. Since the stealing of election no. 1 in 2000, I have had an increasing sense of doom. Between 911, endless war, global warming, tsunamis, hurricanes, social security, gas prices, losing jobs, electronic voting, getting chronically ill and worrying about health care, realizing that I no longer live in a democracy with elections, the erosion of civil liberties, an imminent avian bird flu epidemic, peak oil, Abu Ghraib, the steady decline of a free press and investigative journalism, not to mention vacant supreme court justice seats and appointments-- well, lets just say it's been hard to see the silver lining. This is not the America I knew and loved.

Like many progressives, I remained unshakable in my resolve to reject the culture of fear propagated by our present administration, a determination not to be bullied by threats of the next terrorist attack, or "red alerts." But in all the ways listed above, I became part of the cowering masses. While soccer moms in the Midwest were slowly convinced that GWB would keep their children safe on game day, we liberals were convinced that no one at all could help us now. Keeping obsessively informed about all the imminent disasters has led me to a dim and dark outlook. Knowledge is still power, but suddenly, it was overpowering. Indeed, I stopped thinking about tomorrow, and when I did, I envisioned war, political unrest, and the supposed unraveling of society that we "saw" in the Superdome and coming off the highways out of Houston. That was the America I felt I was inheriting.

But as Bush’s polls plummet and the corruption becomes apparent and court dates are scheduled and the lawyers begin to parse-- as we slowly but surely as a Nation begin to see these power- mongering, money-loving, self-serving bastards for who they are-- suddenly I am dreaming of a better world again. With a flip of a switch, we all begin to wake up together, and this is what I have been waiting for, and not just since last November. Suddenly the Right is seeing that the only people standing with Bush are folks who think they are part of his posse, or who wish they were. (The average American has about as much reason to swear allegiance to this boys club as they do to p. diddy’s entourage. At least p. diddy believes in democracy and will give you a cool “vote or die” t shirt. These guys won’t even give you shwag. They don’t give a flip about their base, Christ, America, Freedom, Democracy or Moral Values. They serve one lord: the Almighty Dollar.)

Suddenly, with just a few more people putting it together, I can see the other side-- the light at the end of the tunnel-- and I start to think we might make it out of this alive. All the problems still stand, but if we could have someone, anyone other than this guy at the helm, we might make it. I mean, no one else, not even McCain or Giuliani, is going to suggest that the military will be in charge of keeping avian flu victims in their neighborhoods, under quarantine. Or run up this kind of deficit. Or consistently appoint loyal friends with zero qualifications to important posts of national and international significance.

So, I am spending my time envisioning a world with a faceless and nameless president at the helm, helping us navigate these troubled waters, a president who sometimes pisses me off and says the wrong thing, and maybe even makes a couple of bad decisions and doesn’t share my point of view on a lot. As the right wing blogs begin to spring to life with a barbaric yawp of outrage and indignation that their party has been hijacked, my heart sings. It occurs to me: if the Republicans become as disillusioned with their party as we Democrats are of ours, what beauty might spring forth? As gas prices rise and the bird flu mutates and more hurricanes threaten, I am suddenly aware that I am sharing smiles at the gas pump with perfect strangers as we curse the oil men at the White House. I remember that I spend a good part of my week hanging out at a church where people pray daily for a peaceful world and take steps to be of service in this broken globe we have inherited. While the boys at the White House have been driving us over the cliff, the rest of us have been hunkering down at home, trying to figure out how to build a better world when we get through this phase. Despots fall. Empires crumble. Economies collapse. Parties die. We’re going over the edge alright. But who said we’d lie broken and bruised to die a slow death on the rocks below? We could learn how to fly.

Donna Brazille just doesn’t get it. Apparently, Karl Rove doesn’t either. But the rest of us sure do. Bush’s polls fell after his prime time speech last week for good reason. A whole lot of Southerners tuned in to hear what he had to say. And a whole lot of us couldn’t believe our ears. First off, the word “reconstruction” doesn’t set too well with folks in this part of the country. Bush threw it around like a kid with a hand grenade, demonstrating how out of touch he and his administration are with the people they supposedly serve. Down here, reconstruction stirs up unpleasant memories of a raped and pillaged and burned South, descended upon by carpet bagging masses like vultures. It means Yankees making big money off of a land laid waste and a people without hope, not unlike Halliburton today. It means a lot of focus on property and greed and profit over attendance to the needs of people. And that’s exactly what we would have liked to hear in his speech: less talk about the economics of recovery and more about what to do for a million folks who have been unleashed in this country with nothing at all left.

Maybe we’re lucky he didn’t talk about how to help the folks any more than he did. Because when he did unveil his plan, we could see how misguided he really is. He promised an “urban homesteading act”, where folks made homeless by this event in New Orleans could lay claim to federal land parcels and rebuild. Black folks have heard this talk before in this country and are still waiting for reparations now. 40 Acres and a mule is not going to get them out of this mess. Maybe that’s why only 43% of those polled said they would come back to New Orleans.

Whether they decide to go “home” or not, Bush assured us that they would all be out of shelters by mid October and made good on his promise: within hours, the Houston Astrodome had been all but emptied-- leaving many to wonder, where did all those people go?

But why worry our pretty little heads about housing? All those folks will be eligible for $5,000 to get training and education for a “good job”, promised Bush. He made similar promises during his last campaign circuit, and as usual, I am reminded of the thousands of folks out of work in this part of the country, not simply due to lack of education, but because of down-sizing and out-sourcing. In this country, education no longer means you get to work.

Across the country eyebrows raised at the price tags GWB slapped on this disaster, like the one above. And Southern Democrats and Republicans alike share one value for certain: fiscal conservatism. Where exactly does he think the billions of dollars needed to deal with the damage will come from, especially since we are in a costly war abroad? We’re already bleeding our budget dry overseas for Mideast democracy and freedom. How are we supposed to rebuild an area the size of Great Britain? Mr. President, this ain’t a handful of buildings in New York City and we’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t recycle your speeches and high-flown rhetoric.

Speaking of New York and 911, which this administration loves to do, the first we southerners have heard about a number to call to locate lost relatives in this mess was during Bush’s speech last Thursday, three weeks after the actual disaster. The contrast to 911 is remarkable, when, within hours a similar number flashed along the bottom of the television screen on any station one cared to watch. His recitation of the toll free number last Thursday was so bizarre and surreal as to be almost laughable, if the circumstances weren’t so tragic, reminiscent of infomercials and Saturday Night Live skits.

Maybe even stranger was his promise that in the future, we’ll just let the armed forces handle disaster. Terrific. Since our president doesn’t read the newspaper or watch television, he probably isn’t aware that 300 members of the National Guard were present in the convention center, where the worst of the New Orleans debacle took place. Those folks are actually trained in disaster response and they barricaded themselves away from the crowd and hid. I can’t imagine that a national military, with no training in disaster relief could have handled the job better. Let them eat guns, says our fearless leader. We’ve got news for you, George: munitions are not the answer to starving masses; food and water is all that is required.

If only this had been a normal hurricane, than normal disaster relief would have worked, Bush reminded us in his speech. Ah, but that is precisely the point. Disasters are by nature abnormal. Yet on this president’s watch they have become almost expected.

The big uncovered story of Katrina seems to be the amount of missing and dead. If I was an “investigative” journalist, I would get right on it and bust it wide open. In the days after 911, the country was in a frenzy to locate those who were unaccounted for and to pinpoint an approximate death toll. But it seems that American society is quite comfortable with a lot of black people being displaced and separated from their loved ones, and with some of those being dead and rotting out in the open air in putrid water. Maybe our tolerance for such a situation is so high because our country’s history was built on similar circumstances. Two hundred years ago, it was just fine to tear black families apart, and transport them to parts unknown with no explanation. We didn’t seem to have a problem doing it to the Native Americans who lived here before us either.

Every day I anxiously scan the headlines and search the internet, trying to get some hard numbers on exactly how many folks are unaccounted for in this mess. A week ago was the last time it was referenced, and at that time, the Red Cross had about 130,000 folks who were “missing” in their database. With the press refusing to follow the story, its anybody’s guess as to what the number is now. Lower? Higher? It’s a real crap shoot. This is simply unacceptable. Over the last seven days, Louisiana public officials have guessed anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 are dead. The guesses vary wildly, because, as Governor Kathleen Blanco pointed out today, its hard to count the dead when the company hired by FEMA wasn’t hired by FEMA. That’s right. FEMA never signed the contract, so not much body recovery has been done. So the official number stays below 500, and with 40 percent of New Orleans still underwater, the media seems quite happy to move on to economic recovery, while local officials continue to warn that the numbers will climb. Although many of the missing will be reunited with loved ones, we might start to get a clearer picture of just how many folks have been killed if we reconnect the displaced and separated a bit more efficiently. And believe me, I have been to some of the service agencies assisting the refugees this week, and there is nothing efficient going on in those operations.

Is it any wonder some black folks in this country wonder if this is a race issue? It is two weeks after the disaster and NOONE is much interested in publishing how many people haven’t been located. And the area that flooded the deepest and is yet to be uncovered was the place where poor black folks lived and were unable to evacuate from. Meanwhile the politicians and press talk of rebuilding and property recovery and how soon the power will come on, while dead folks rot in the hot September sun. If this had been the case two weeks after 911, you better believe there would have been a public outcry. One of the most vivid memories I have of the days immediately after 911 is the missing posters and bulletin boards and the people standing in endless crowds, crying out for information on their lost relatives. The 911 dead weren’t all white; it was certainly a non-discriminating event and those killed were of many differing ethnicities. But paint the dead largely black and we can see the results. Is our country racist? Heck yeah. I guess I am one of the six white people polled who doesn’t mind saying so.

Today on Meet the Press, Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, appeared composed as he simply and coherently outlined where the federal government had failed the people of Louisiana over the last week. But when Tim Russert asked the following question, President Broussard broke down, dissolving into tears of despair as he told one of the most heart wrenching stories I've heard this week.

The question Russert asked was, "Shouldn’t the Mayor and Governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility for the relief efforts?," a position that the Bush administration is actively promoting. President Broussard’s response, gut-wrenchingly honest, should lay the question to rest. He enumerated and defended all the ways that everyone he knew on a local level had given all they had for the last week, and closed by saying that the mother of one of the emergency relief staffers in his building had been trapped in a nursing home. Every day, she would call and ask when help would be coming. And everyday, her son would tell her, “Momma, they’re comin’ today.” And they told her that on Tuesday, and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. And Friday night she drowned, President Broussard said, Friday night she drowned. He wept. And he closed with, through his sobs, “Nobody is coming to get us, nobody is coming to get us.” As he put it, the Calvary did not come.

What’s shameful, is that not only did the Calvary not come, but it is blaming the people left behind in the wake of the storm. I have written before about the present administration’s penchant for behaving like a batterer. But on top of it all, we now seem to have a batterer that says it’s not his fault his wife just got hit by a bus as she backed out of the front drive. It’s not his fault she has a black eye, a punctured rib, some broken bones, a concussion. His wife should have seen the bus coming(evacuated) and now the batterer would like to sit on the couch (stay on vacation, go shopping, get a good night’s rest), on top of the car keys (disaster relief, food, water, counseling, shelter, medicine) and drink a cold beer, preventing the victim from getting to the hospital. Some will say that the administration didn’t create the hurricane. True. But as Broussard so poignantly pointed out, "bureaucracy is committing murder here." And that’s even worse.

Something else that occurs to me is that our batterer in question doesn’t seem to want to do his job either. I am starting to wonder just what the federal government thinks it is supposed to do. We hear a lot about what the federal government’s job is not, even as they label the democrats and progressives in this country “pessimists”. The federal government doesn’t want to give us health care. Or Social Security. Or any social welfare programs if at all possible. They don’t give us jobs. Or make a better economy. Or balance the budget. Or give us reasonable gas prices. What is this better America that these yahoos are promising us? What is their optimistic picture of a better America? I have yet to see it. From here, and you better believe, from much of the South, it appears that life today is much worse than it was a year ago. And now, we learn that it's not their job to help out in times of national crisis, either. Disaster relief is not really their responsibility. It’s the local government’s job.

What exactly is this president’s job description? What exactly is a federal government for? Why are we "married" to this man? This man who threatens us, bullies us, beats us down, sends our sons and daughters off to die in far away lands, who keeps us from meaningful work, who makes our lives worse every day, and who takes endless vacations and when he does go to work, shirks his responsibility all day long, and tells us really we are to blame for his incompetence? The country weeps with you, President Broussard. It is not your fault.

[Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some parallels between her work and the reaction of many Democrats to the election.-- Mathew Gross]

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did they beat me?”

And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.

They will tell you, every single day.

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.

Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will never be worthy).

And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.
How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.

First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don’t do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don’t do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don’t resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you’ve learned, and that you aren’t going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it’s better than the abuse.

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don’t know how.

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.