Crossposted from Liberal Street Fighter

"How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right." Black Hawk - Sauk

Do you ever think about how much of your life depends on faith? No, not the Hairy-Thunderer-in-the-Sky kind of faith. The faith that your green light means it's safe to proceed, and that the man in the car ahead waiting at the intersection knows that his red light means wait. The paycheck that lands on your desk, or appears in your bank account ... how much do you COUNT on it happening, and for the printing on that check to actually MEAN something? For that matter, pull a dollar bill out of your wallet. There is no gold, no silver, no firm asset or physical collateral behind that dollar. It has worth because an entire global economy made up of people have DECIDED and AGREE it has worth. This is a fundamental kind of faith.

You go through life believing that the people around you will follow a web of laws based upon other laws and court cases and a Constitution that were established by people long dead after arguments that might mean nothing to us now. A gossamer web we walk upon, every day, with little thought but abundant faith. Well, more and more, that faith is based upon a chimera. It is a phantom who's ectoplasm is being shredded by the winds of war and greed and lies. Soon, in the chamber of the institution that is sometimes described as the World's Greatest Deliberative Body (you have to say it capitalized and bolded ... it's a rule) a man who doesn't believe in that web of laws and court cases and Constitution will be confirmed to sit upon the Supreme Court. There has been precious little deliberation, just mostly empty postering.

Senator Robert C. Byrd, the old coot who proudly waves his little pocket Constitution around, said today:

"I make up my own mind," He said he had become convinced that Judge Alito was "an honorable man who loves his country and loves his Constitution. Can we really ask for more?"

Wow, he does? This man who worships at the feet of the Executive and law enforcement "loves the Constitution"? Strip Search Sammy "loves the Constitution"? Well, maybe if we forget about that pesky Fourth Amendment he does.

This past ... hell, why narrow it down to a week or month or year or decade? This past generation of political "leaders", feckless office holders borne aloft on the campaign contributions of corporations and the wealthy, have steadily and I believe deliberately let us down. Hell, even that's not right. Let those few of us down who think we can do better. Most Americans are just fine with cops kicking people's teeth in. Some of us love when our military slaughters the savage du jour. We can be a cold, nasty and brutish people, and the most brutish among us, afraid that the howling demons in their own angry heads are in everybody else's heads too, want so very badly for the hammer to come down, for the locks to shut and the stocks to come back to the village square. A punitive people, locking people away forever for victimless crime, locking children away in grinding poverty, locking women into unwanted pregancies because we want to punish them for being "sluts". A very nice man said to me that he didn't oppose abortion for RELIGIOUS reasons. No, no, he opposed it because people should have to LIVE WITH THEIR MISTAKES. Punishment must be meted out for life's misjudgements. Cold, hard, angry, judgemental people, we Americans.

Perhaps those of us who believe in civil government will be able to win back what is being so blithely given away, but I fear that the slender faith that held this country together is in as much or more danger than it was in the years leading up to the Civil War. Maybe there ain't no comin' back.

As that faith, under assault from the right for so many years, does come apart, what else goes with it? Will you be so confident at that next red light? Feel quite as secure walking down the street, or unconcerned when you walk past a police officer in full martial kit? Oh, and that dollar ... it's value rests on a web of financial transactions, of interest owed and the full faith and credit of the government that prints it. When faith in that government goes, what else goes with it?