SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI

The saddest thing for me about the ascendancy of the radical right in the past two decades and the neocons in the last few years is the popping of another bubble--the dream of at least one nation on our small planet living up to its own credos and the expectations of its citizenry created by those credos.

For all its many transgressions and flaws, America had the most potential to live up to those expectations. We are incredibly lucky that our founders were able to codify the collective wisdom of a group of unusually enlightened people. It wasn't a gimme. The Bill of Rights was, as I noted below, only passed because of horseflies. It could have gone the other way.

With those first 10 amendments as a basis, grudgingly and painfully this nation expanded upon them to create the Constitution as we know it now, with subsequent amendments codifying further rights and freedoms won over much bloodshed and misery. The post-industrial revolution demands for women's and workers' rights and safety, the expansiveness of the New Deal, and the civil rights era Supreme Court decisions have helped to create a body of law that is nothing short of a miracle in a world that has rarely valued the wisdom it contains.

And it was not yet finished. Even in the height of the Reagan 80's, I had hopes that the slow but steady progression towards further institutional wisdom would prevail. The gradual shift of the country rightward year after year, while certainly cause for concern and much wringing of hands, didn't really diminish those hopes.

Now, Bush has.

It feels like the damage he and his cabal have done to our body politic cannot be turned around in my lifetime, and maybe not at all. America as the Country of Great Potential, the one most likely to pass the litmus tests of furthering the cause of human dignity and protecting us from our own worst instincts, is gone.

Billions of words have been written even now about how and why the theft of the dream has come about and who else was complicit in the crime, and I have contributed a few thousand myself. I am sure I will continue to add to that eulogy.

Maybe we'll be lucky again, and kick that cabal out of office. But the empowerment of the forces of contraction and reaction has become entrenched.

Sic transit gloria America--thus passes the glory of America.