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I have written this many times and won't repeat it all here, but the fundamental divide between the concept of a government "of the people" and an oligarchy goes back to long before the American Revolution. There have been a succession of battles, an ebb-and-flow of the actual implementation of the concept laid out in the Constitution. In the mid-fifties the oligarchs realized that they needed to subvert the entire system, because those pesky concepts like "checks and balances" and "congressional oversight" kept getting in the way. Eisenhower saw what was coming and warned of it in his last address as President.
A coordinated multi-decade effort ensued, including acquiring all the major news media, "dumbing down" education to de-emphasize critical thinking, deregulation of most industries, penetrating the election process (eg, Diebold), etc to create what some of the Founders like Hamilton wanted all along - an updated version of medieval feudalism, in which the big business tycoons are the "nobility" and the rest of us are the serfs.
They might as well have used Orwell's "1984" as a blueprint. They aren't quite there, but well on their way. A state of perpetual war is part of the formula. Keeps cash flowing, keeps people afraid, keeps the serfs in line.
McCarthyism was in the 50's what the so-called terrorist witch hunt is today. Sure, there were Communists, and they wanted to bury us. And sure, there are terrorists and they want to harm us and our way of life. But in neither case is re-invoking the Alien and Sedition Act (an early-19th century version of the exact same thing, for the same reasons) justified.
Cheney is one of the true believers, along with the rest of the PNAC and its supporters. Bush is just a patsy.
The Constitution provides NO REMEDY. Impeachment is pointless - it would just be whack-a-mole. Once the SCOTUS, the Federal Courts, and the Congress have been taken over, we live in a world like the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The checks and balances don't work, because, like in the movie when you call on the authorities because you discover your neighbor is a "pod person", but the cop is a pod person too, the Constitution has been usurped.
To fix it would require drastic means that go outside what is defined in the Constitution.
It COULD be that a popular movement of enlightened people could use the system to fix the system - that is, elect their own people, clean house (and senate), and start once again abiding by the Constitution. But that is a real long shot. As long as only a few humans are elected every two years, they turn into pod people before more can be sent to join them.
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