Imagine...

Today the GOPer Senate laid a smackdown on GWBush - no way will we approve your drumhead tribunals that deny the accused the right to see all the evidence against him, that accept "coerced" (read "alternative interrogation techniques" or "torture") evidence or even hearsay before declaring summarily that the poor guilty bastard is indeed guilty. Firing squad tomorrow at dawn. No, they said, asserting for the first time in five years Congress's place as a co-equal branch of the Federal government. Imagine if it had been that way all along.

No Patriot Act and its incredible internal espionage provisions. There would have been action taken to break down the walls around the intelligence community, walls that should remain in place if for no other reason than to provide checks and balances and to prevent groupthink on a national scale, but civil liberties would have remained in place. Guantanamo and the CIA's black prisons and their incredible harm to the U. S.'s reputation in the world would have been shut down before it could have become operational. The rich would be paying for the war in Afghanistan, a war we should have fought to win, with their fair share of taxes.

We would not be in Iraq.

Abu Ghraib would never have happened.

The President would be on the Hill explaining why he considered it necessary to break the law and end-run Congress with his illegal wiretapping operation.

It would be different. The world I imagine is no fairyland, no eutopia but a far cry from the budding dystopia of the Bush administration. It will be nice to, once again, assert our rights and change the balance of power from one-party dystopia to the messiness of a semblance of balance of power. I am looking forward to November 8th, the start of the U. S.'s rebirth as a just nation and a good citizen of the world.