Sunday morning rhetorical question on FISA and the Democrats caving in when they didn't need to.

Do the Democrats really have something to hide, some complicity in dirty deeds that we don’t know about, and that is why they capitulated on the FISA bill and gave Bush pretty much everything he wanted, including retroactive telecom immunity? That is about the only reason what they did this week makes sense. See Glenn Greenwald, Hullabaloo or Balloon Juice for the story. I’m not going to bother here.

I find it amazing that the Dems would cave on this issue, after standing up to Bushco at least twice in the past. What is the possible motivation here? Why give in now? I am very ashamed of Steney Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi right now. Barack Obama, I am just confused about. Maybe the Democrats still think that they only way they can win elections is to show they are “tough as Republicans” on terrorists.

Just when I was starting to get a bit hopeful that maybe, just maybe, our country could change and actually be the country we like to believe we are, something like this happens. Maybe human beings can’t help themselves. Maybe when we get into a position of power, it is impossible for us to stay relatively uncorrupted. It is physiologically and/or psychologically impossible for us to actually do what everyone in politics likes to pretend they are doing. O.K., I admit that most people who go into politics in the first place are rarely totally selfless, moral and have only the purest of motivations. That’s a given. But still, after the last seven years of all the B.S., the lying and immoral behavior of Bush, the neocons and all the Rethugs (not all Republicans are “Rethugs”), why would the Democrats, who have really been pushed by a very committed electorate to actually clean this mess up, why do they do the same old stuff that everyone was upset about in the first place?

I wish I had some high-sounding flourish that I could wrap this up with. But I don’t. Just the deep disappointment that comes with allowing oneself to hope and then finding out that it was all an illusion. It might not be that bad in the end, and I am still wanting Barack Obama and the Democratic candidates out there to not only win in November, but to win huge. I want no single Republican running for office to win, that’s how I feel about the last seven years. But I harbor no illusions that the Democrats will provide an instant moral compass to a country that has lost its way. I suppose that’s the “glass half full” way of thinking about this.

I’m still hugely disappointed and very empty.