FOLEY-GATE JUST THE "TIPPING POINT"

Public Christian shows wisdom in discussing why "Foley-gate" is resonating:

The impact of this “mere sex scandal” as against prior sex problems of this Administration (”Gannon-gate” etc) - and as against other scandals of greater illegality and more far-reaching consequence - means the wheels of democracy have made quite a few turns over the last couple of years. We are in a different place.
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If the chattering class is right, this House sex scandal is going to do a lot of damage to our current regime. If so, that means the ongoing mis-behavior of this Congress and Administration has grown so prominent that great numbers of the American people are powerfully offended by it.

This scandal is not like a new realization. It may be more like a clearly-perceived insult added to prior obvious injuries. And that produces outrage.

Gandhi had said that once people disown the state under which they live they have “nearly” established their own government…

Once the unraveling of the single, indivisible fabric of totalitarianism [”corrupt one-party rule” is our current substitute] began, the rapidity of the disintegration could be startling. In Havel’s prophetic words, “Everything suddenly appears in another light, and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.”

It's not just the offensive sexual advances of one obscure Congressman to underaged House pages. This is the "jumping the shark" moment for the GOP. There is a huge pent-up frustration with the current GOP leadership (or lack of) in so many areas of our lives -- Iraq, Katrina, the economic disparity/deficit explosion, the erosion of our civil liberties, etc. The current "sex scandal" in the Republican Congress is merely a "last straw" exposing, finally, the moral bankruptcy of the past decade's experience with the ascendancy of the Bush administration and its Congressional Republican enablers. It's revealed the "Gingrich revolution" and the Tom DeLay agenda for what it is -- the "greed is good" meme, the ungodly alignment of the Christian right with corporate and uber-wealthy interests, the "war without end" policy that has led to -- I'm too tired to go on.

Yes, certainly, their inept, incompetent, divisive, disastrous foreign and domestic policies should be the death knell of the current U.S. government. But it is, historically, often the case that a single, illustrative (though seemingly innocuous) "tipping point" finally exhausts the electorate's patience and leads to a change in government.

Whatever. I'll accept whatever leads to a change. We can't go on like this, not and remain "America the Beautiful."