Guarding the Secrets

I may have to rethink my earlier theory about Republican Congressional members’ display of “fake outrage” over the FBI raid of Congressman William Jefferson’s Capitol Hill office. If it had been simply a grandstand performance, the story would have died down by now. But Congress seems genuinely outraged, threatened and angry about the FBI’s ballsy (and questionably legal) invasion of the Legislative inner sanctum.

Pardon me if I don’t find this fact particularly redeeming. What it indicates to me is, our Republican Congressional delegation finds a turn in the tide of control of one or both Houses all too likely an event, perhaps as soon as January 2007. And there are some daggers of partisan skullduggery that you definitely do not want twisted out of your grasp and held at your own throat. The power-drunk executive GOP leadership has vastly overstepped its bounds, creating a situation that could be very bad for Congressional Republicans when “payback time” comes around. After all, what Capitol Hill dweller does not conceal a bleached bone or two in the back of a locked desk drawer?

Our honest, hard-working government representatives have their fingers in all kinds of pies they don’t want us to know about. And frankly, maybe they have a point. What would happen if the public suddenly became aware of the wheeling, dealing, blackmail and arm-twisting that is part and parcel of our democratic system of government? In a perfect world, we would use that knowledge to refine and rebuild our government to a higher standard. In twenty-first century America, I’m afraid we would descend straight into hell: television schedules full to bursting with juicy scandal trials for the next hundred years. Year upon year of Simpson/Clintonesque drama piped directly into American living rooms. The country grinds to a halt as the citizens are drawn in and glued to their television screens, 24/7/365. A more thorough destruction of American culture than Osama bin Laden could ever concoct in his wildest dreams…

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