The Triumph of the One Party System

Do you ever do that thing where you say a word over and over until it becomes just a collection of sounds? Try it with "radiator." Or "apocalypse." Or "tennis ball."

After about the fifth repetition, it ceases to have any meaning.

Any time a word is repeated often enough without careful thought, it loses some of its punch. It's a "free floating signifier" as we say in my line of work. Because I have a silly line of work.

Now, that's not to say that the word can't be reinvigorated with meaning. As soon as it gets cold out, the meaning of "radiator" returns. Or, as much as we throw the word "Nazi" around, so that some soup vendor with strict ordering practices is called one, once we stop to think about Nazism, the meaning returns.

It's time the Democrats on the Senate intelligence committe stop repeating "warrantless, warrantless, warrantless" and think about what it actually means. They voted yesterday on how to regulate warrantless surveillance. I think we're officially down the rabbit hole.

It's been repeated so often, they must think of it as just another category of wiretap. Phone tap. Wireless tap. Warrantless tap.

The so-called opposition party is arguing over the means by which executive power is allowed to run wild. Shouldn't the word "warrantless" clue them in that these wiretaps are a gross overstepping of legal power? And what about the "executive order" that the President says authorizes them? Not only is this effectively an encroachment on legislative power, the details are secret. Shouldn't the Democrats be trying to make government more transparent and the office of the President less authoritarian?

I'm worried that we're not just drifting toward a one party system, we're letting the lines between the legislative, executive, and judicial blur. That can only lead toward totalitarianism, and it's time Congressional Democrats took a stand.

Or maybe they're just counting on getting one of their own in next year and think that warrantless wiretaps might come in handy.