When the Hammer Falls Everywhere, Hammer Back

A funny thing happened on the evening of Dec. 1, after the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act with amendments allowing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by military authorities. Conservative groups, including both Tea Party and Libertarian factions, reached out to Occupy and progressive groups to suggest joint efforts to work for the impeachment of every senator who had signed on to the so-called "Levin-McCain Compromise," which really was a blanket surrender to military law-enforcement power. The movement is like a miniature, grassroots version of the wider "Kick Them All Out" campaign, to simply remove everyone from Congress and start over.

If the end-of-year exasperation begins to sound like nihilism at its least useful, there's a reason for that. The wheels have fallen off the great machine of empire, and there is simply nowhere left to go but dissolve the body-politic of the great republic.

This past week, we lived through an example of that when the Occupy Colorado Springs movement-in-exile went to Venetucci Farms to challenge Gov. Hickenlooper while he dedicated a solar farm. Now, don't misinterpret this, SunShare is a great little startup that is encouraging cooperative solar gardens for shared photovoltaic electricity use, and Colorado Springs Utilities is to be commended for signing up to the concept. The intent of the mic-check was not to pick on Venetucci or the solar garden, but to chase down a governor who has been denying his partial responsibility at unleashing the goons of the Denver Police Department on state-land encampments. (Even former city employees now charge the DPD with having a culture of violence). The mayors of Colorado Springs and Denver, Republican Steve Bach and Democrat Michael Hancock, are equally to blame for being just like the mayors and city councils of most major U.S. cities who are quashing dissent.

In fact, I lost a few friends at Venetucci when I said that in 2011, liberal Democrats have been as much to blame for repression as conservative Republicans. Too bad if they don't get it. It's time to bring the system down.