Lewis Lapham Wrecks Headz

Former Harper's editor Lewis Lapham walks slowly to the stage. The mic droops not quite near his mouth, and his gravelly voice is hushed. Everyone holds their breath and lean forwards. Lapham speaks. He is not going to sing. It's hard to imagine him singing.

Lapham invites us to consider that John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked his staff to prepare a document explaining why Bush should be impeached. The 182-page report convinced the doubting Lapham of the need to investigate Bush's crimes via impeachment. In his words, why we would run the risk of not impeaching them?

Bush and crew have conspired to commit fraud (to misuse the money we have invested in the executive on what Lapham calls a "frivolous" war). Double-L:

"We have before us in the White House a thief... A liar, who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear. A televangelist... A wastrel... In a word, a criminal - known to be armed, shown to be dangerous." He mentions the regime's "pet Bismarcks and bibles in closed rooms."

Lapham's perfect. The fire in his voice is strangled down to embers by his steely, editorial look and snappy rhythm. His face betrays nothing as he excoriates "the fiction of permanent war" in the name of national security. This is the meat of the impeachment cause: Bush has created war and will keep us mired in war indefinitely in order to preserve broad-ranging powers and ensure his own imperial impunity.

We must stop him. Or rather, we must pressure Congress to do so.

The problems with impeachment are, as Lapham states, "romanticism" - the general American notion that our own president would never perpetrate so great a fraud as a straight-up Wag the Dog, Downing Street, needless war - and "apathy," which should be self-explanatory.

Are we "a public unwilling to recognize the President of the United States as a felon," or a public unwilling to persecute felonies?

(Lapham speaks to us as if we are a congressional investigatory committee, which is flattering but slightly confusing. Given that the stage is full of empty chairs, I believe the trope might be that we are listening in on such. It doesn't matter.)

Lapham winds down. To paraphrase his final point: It isn't the business of Congress to punish the President, but to correct his mistakes and remove him from power. "To cauterize the wound," as it were.

Sounds good to me.

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P.S. - Here are more impeachment links. A wealth of places to get involved, if you dig through the links to congressional sites and related movements.