Counterveiling Force

OK, so there hasn't been an offering here for awhile. I chalk it up to the principles of counterveiling force.

A great deal of frustration was relieved -- lanced like a boil -- with the 2006 mid-term elections. When one sees a political leadership so blindly beholden to patronage, so seemingly pursuant of theocracy, and so ruthlessly in pursuit of consolidating power in the executive branch under cover of fighting terrorism ... and when mainstream society voices support of this leadership on either religious or patriotic grounds, to the extent that dissent is made to appear disloyal to the country ... well, faith in one's fellow man ebbs and contingencies get considered to relocate to relatively dismal urban areas that at least have free thinkers.

These frustrations also acted as a burr under the personal saddle, prompting me to express my outrage into written opinions on the web and in letters to the editor of several newspapers. It was my way to stand and be counted for rational thinking, for the America I had always known before the current administration. It was my individual attempt at a small bit of counterveiling force.

The 2006 mid-term elections served to change the scenery. Instead of managing to scare the American public into falling back into blind faith, the Bush Administration and its party started to get crushed under the weight of its own hubris. A Congressman from Florida known for his stances on child protection became embroiled in a male page scandal. Combined with a book on how the Administration used the religious right while scoffing at them behind their backs, it made the conservative Christians who re-elected Bush in 2004 stay at home in 2006. Support for the Iraq war melted away as the body count mounted without much progress to show, and Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were seen with a certain disconnect from reality and with a fresh doubting of their competence in prosecuting the war. Democrats narrowly took back the Senate and comfortably captured the House.

There's not the sense in my mind that our country and society are heading down the road to hell without brakes. That is thanks to the counterveiling force of the legislative branch now controlled by Democrats, who now put a check on the executive branch's excesses. The principle of counterveiling force, as I hazily recall it from college, holds that no power will get so great that a counterveiling power will not rise to check it. That principle has been bourne out once again, and while it has made me undermotivated to express opinions at the same rate as before, I rest significantly easier because of it.