SENATORS, HAVE YOU NO DECENCY?

I've been waiting for so long to have the, "Senator, have you no decency?" moment with this administration, this congress, this Republican Media Complex.

But sometimes irony, that no script writer could devise, stands up and takes control of the national debate. Could it be happening here?

Here is the irony of ironies.

We have been looking for intelligent, reasoned leaders to emerge and wake middle America from their slumber. We have waited for the pithy argument, the devastating hypocritical moment, the unarguable financial facts pointing toward doom to stir Mr. & Mrs. Kansas Red-Stater and make them see the misguided man behind the curtain.

We've lived through Deans, Kerrys, Kenny Boys, TANG Memos, Armstrongs, Richard Clarkes, Torture Memos, Clear Channels, Gannons and Unfound WMDs. Nothing, but nothing seemed to shake them out of their slumber. As SusanG has said (and I've heard her say it) "the country's outrage meters are broken."

And then what happens? The Gods of Irony strike.

Who is the messenger who pulls back the curtain? The one person who has succeeded where the best political minds and millions of dollars haven't? A woman who hasn't been able to utter a word for the past fifteen years. A woman who, when she could speak, wasn't political. A woman who doesn't even realize the stakes involved in her situation or isn't aware on any level of the issues of the day in America or around the world.
A total innocent who made no choice by her own will to even involve in the debate.

Yet her fate has brought a savage backlash against those who have attempted to use her as a political football and struck at the overreaching core of power in Florida, Washington and congressional districts around the country. The power centers are shaking and soon riding stationary, back-peddling bicycles will be the exercise of choice among GOP blabberheads.

Why did this happen? I think it's because she is the essence of innocence. She has no agenda. She has no political ideology. She is clearly the victim of political power gone mad...not unlike the soldier many years ago in front of McCarthy's hearings. Then, too, America had had enough. Then, too, an apparent innocent was dragged in front of a power-hungry, fear driven arm of government oppression and asked to account for himself, and it was one act of inhumanity too many and the house came crumbling down.

Am I sorry that it has come to this? You bet. Do I see Ms. Schiavo as a hero? Certainly not. Is her role in all this a willing one? No. Is it really any of my business? None. I'm just watching.

But irony has stepped in. Fate is writing the script. History may look back on this awful week and marvel at the political power offered up by someone who can't raise her hand to scratch her nose, or tell the world how silly it's behaving.

Yes. I have been waiting for this moment, but it's difficult to relish. If I could, I would exchange the possibility that this moment could be the beginning of the end for an oppressive, inhuman administration for Ms. Schiavo to be given the ability to sit up in her bed, smile at her husband and parents and say, "Good morning."

But irony doesn't work that way, I'm afraid.