What's the point?

Yeah, I know I've been away from this column for a while now. An abundance of billable work with tight deadlines will do that to a person.

It's not as if I've been completely disassociated from the continuing insanity of domestic and global events. There's been the usual multitude of typically objectionable behavior from the Right crying out for condemnation. It's just that, as I've said repeatedly during the recent months, I can scarcely see the plus side any longer in pointing out the obvious.

I mean (to cite but one example) millions of words have already been written about the blatant politicization of the Justice Department under Mr. "I Can't Recall" and his collection of unqualified subordinates. Yet, with more documented evidence in plain sight than there was when the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death, Alberto Gonzales remains at his post - and has also been bragging privately to associates that he's successfully weathered the storm.

And that doesn't even take into account the reams of evidence already exposing this AG's deplorable - and, in some cases, un-Constitutional - stances on torture, domestic wiretapping, habeas corpus, and the time-honored mission of the very department he heads.

Do I really need to list for the umpteenth time the more-than-egregious acts of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, Karl Rove, and King George himself? Acts which continue to be enabled/excused by equally deplorable Republican lawmakers, spokespersons, pundits and average citizens? Acts which have undermined our system of checks and balances, widened the American income gap, critically destabilized the world, increased the ranks of anti-American terrorists, crippled our military, weakened our actual defenses and ability to respond to domestic disasters, needlessly killed and maimed hundreds of thousands, and just plain broken the law?

There are already legions of true patriots pointing out the malfeasance of this warmongering cabal that's seized our democracy. And to what end? The Bushies continue to call the shots, arrogantly dedicated to charging full-speed ahead with their disastrous policies. They've committed real crimes for which they should have been under indictment years ago.

Yet, they've suffered no consequences. They still have their jobs. And the subtext of everything we read and see and hear is that we might as well resign ourselves to the fact that they'll keep those jobs for the next 20 months.

Frank Rich wrote yesterday in the New York Times:

...it could be argued that the Iraq fiasco, disastrous to American interests as it is, actually masks the magnitude of the destruction this presidency has visited both on the country in general and the G.O.P. in particular.

By my rough, conservative calculation - feel free to add - there have been corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals in these cabinet departments: Defense, Education, Justice, Interior, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. I am not counting State, whose deputy secretary, a champion of abstinence-based international AIDS funding, resigned last month in a prostitution scandal, or the General Services Administration, now being investigated for possibly steering federal favors to Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Or the Office of Management and Budget, whose chief procurement officer was sentenced to prison in the Abramoff fallout. I will, however, toss in a figure that reveals the sheer depth of the overall malfeasance: no fewer than four inspectors general, the official watchdogs charged with investigating improprieties in each department, are themselves under investigation simultaneously - an all-time record.

And yet the Administration responsible for this culture of corruption still enjoys the support of almost a third of our general population - and a nauseating 75 percent of self-identified Republicans!

Is it simply the overwhelming volume of reasons the entire Bush Administration should be drawn-and-quartered that has left us, paradoxically, unable to kick-start any meaningful effort to fire the lot of them? Are we as a citizenry just too desensitized, too numb, too oversaturated with tale after proven tale of the insidious and duplicitous nature of this bunch to take immediate action? Will my recounting and analysis of the latest White House scandal do anything tangible to motivate an obviously lethargic - dare I say apathetic - public?

It would seem not.

So, for the time being, I see no other option than to retreat into the day-to-day struggles of my own little world, and begrudgingly accept (for now) the twin facts that 1) we are a hopelessly fractured society, half-populated by ideological morons, and led by criminally despotic madmen, and 2) we as individual citizens seem powerless to change #1. I've never in my life felt more estranged from my country - or more genuinely homicidal toward its leaders specifically, and Conservatives in general.

Perhaps soon I'll regain a little faith in the importance of at least putting my voice on the record, adding my public displeasure to the chorus of opposition against the monsters who've kidnapped our nation. Perhaps. I know in my heart that every one of us who speaks out against the Bush Administration and the "champions" of the GOP, no matter who's really listening, is performing an essential civic duty - and we must, for the sake of our own integrity, continue to hope that a tidal wave of common sense will suddenly overtake those with the actual power to end the insanity.

But with each additional day that the criminals controlling our government not only go unpunished, but remain in their dangerously powerful offices, one thought overrides all others, and burns deeper and deeper into my incredulous brain:

What's the point?

- - -

(Please, feel free to try and drag me out of this funk, to reassure me that what we're doing in the Liberal blogosphere somehow offsets the inexcusable fact that Georgie and Dickie and their pals haven't already been ridden out of town on a rail. Explain to me why, with all we know, Americans haven't already taken to the streets with torches and pitchforks. I'd love to believe once again that we're making a difference...)