Omertå

I'll admit my bias. Steven Weber is a friend of mine and I've always found him to be extremely passionate and articulate. He's also a great actor and a funny funny guy. His post today in The Huffington Post is worth a read. I'm giving you the whole thing cuz it's just that good:

Omertå: A code of silence, a refusal to give evidence to authorities.

Watching the latest hearings and the standard administration responses one sees what and who they really are and what they've always been: this White House makes the Sopranos look like the Little Rascals. Their spokemen take their orders without question and eat the paper it's written on.

They spout identically metered bullet points with the same dread filled intonations. They stand as an immovable wall of scowling muscle, the blue-suited, flag-on-the-lapel sporting E Ring protecting the seething inner core from which their ideology of greed emanates. They divide and conquer, deride and sneer and of course they are cold-blooded killers. They kill hope, they kill diversity, they kill science, they kill logic. And they occasionally kill people, too. Sure, brown people, poor people, people who sometimes wear camouflage uniforms who have an unflinching commitment to the idea of protecting their mother nation. But still, people. And all these murders performed with their trademark plausible deniability. No transcripts, no oaths, no witnesses. And this nation, utterly gobsmacked at the mob's hubris, is itself shocked into silence and inaction because of the sheer brazenness of such behavior, the lack of care as to its appearance, the daring with which it carries out its mission even as its term may very well be coming to a close. Dons Bush and Cheney, their various consiglieri, capos, soldiers, bought-and-sold judges, street corner dealers, fencers and bag men have virtually rubbed out the very idea of a democratic society and erected in its place a cheaply made (outsourced, naturally) two dimensional proxy, complete with undulating red white and blue backdrop.

For millennia thugs have employed as motivators Fear and Profit to gain dominion over those who just want to live in peace and security and who, at the end of the day, just want to be left alone. We continue our fealty to Omertå at our peril because---make no mistake---the thugs mean to scuttle this country. That's their plan. It's no accidental result of well intentioned but poor planning. Because while they say they do, they actually have no political affiliation, they worship no god, they respect no law, they hold no love for America land of the free home of the brave. They saw an opportunity and, planning very carefully, seized it.

What do we do? Should we just get out of the way of the inexorable tide of corporate-fascist greed that controls the ebb and flow of what we used to call a free society and continue to be scared into paying for protection from the very thing that is killing us? We've been sold out by ruthless Men Without a Country. They are neither patriots, nationalists nor Christians. They are businessmen, pure and simple. The lore and allure of America are but weapons they wield in their war on democracy.

And will our own reluctance to admit all this, that we have been highjacked by the current incarnation of small, petty crooks who think big, be the straw that breaks the back of America's promise of a future of peace and freedom?