With the House voting to approve subpeonas in "purgegate", we have entered a new phase in constitutional crisis. What had been a rolling absence of boundaries, and a series of failures of checks and balances, is now a specific conflict, similar to the moment when hearings on Watergate began. This is the bottom of the curve that leads to a general repudiation of Bushism by the American public, backed by specific acts that show that the people who have implemented the latest wave of the neo-conservative state have been disgraced.

As Churchill reminded us, it is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it may well mark the end of the beginning. The point where the initiatve has shifted, not between mere partisan forces, but between different views of society. Views that have ben in increasing conflict since the 1930's.

The moment of action is upon us. This is an impeachment in absentia of George Bush, and cannot be allowed to let pass.

The broad reality is that the world economy depends on oil. However, leveraging one vital commodity into more general control is not inevitable – it requires that there be a web of people who come to see that control as being in their interests. The rise of the neo-conservative, defined broadly, and not specifically, state is the gradual constriction of control of oil, combined with a class of people in America who mediate turning oil into more general value. This class – the beneficiaries of the sprawlconomy and the "pink collar" franchise system – represent the basic bone of support for the Republican Party in its current incarnation.

This means that the paradigm of the Republican coalition as being a mirror image of the liberal coalition – that is composed of two wings, economic and conservative – is incorrect. Instead, as Kevin Phillips and Joe Conason, among others, have written in their books, and many have in shorter forms, it is a single movement devoted to the concept of a hierarchical society, based on clear lines of authority. The economic conservatives wanted an economic hierarchy of wealth, and the social conservatives a cultural hierarchy of theocratic moralizing.

The decay of a party of authority, to a party of authoritarianism, is the process of the last 15 years. The physical objective reality driving this is found in American Thermidor constricted control of oil led to a vicious cycle where each group passed its ruin on to the next, leading to a spiral of deficits.

The cultural apparatus of an imperial America is the subject of Kevin Phillips' work for the last 10 years, and culminates with his book American Theocracy - to control the oil requires social control at home to promote land and social ossification, and control of the military apparatus to reach the oil. Micro-media such as cable both profit from the first, and promote the social conditions which allows a society devoted to supporting the military apparatus. Wesley Clark in his work Winning Modern Wars pointed out that this was in contradiction, the very freedom and vitality needed to create the economy that supports the military, is strangled by the costs, social, military, and economic, of empire.

This structure was supported by a broad majority of Americans when its costs were in the future, and the protection of land values and suburban tranquility were in the present. The "law and order" coalition gave the Republicans a massive series of Presidential landslides, first to protect the liberal order from its own attendant urbanized effects, and then to overturn that order in favor of a conservative one. The Republican dominance of the Presidency in the 19th century was far more precarious than the Republican run of landslides in the late 20th century.

The defect was not in creating a wedge between economic and social conservatives, because there was no such wedge in the large scale, social conservatives were willing to have their elites violate the publicly declared morality, for example, it is well known in many Republican districts that their Republican representative is homosexual – but between those who wanted authority, and those who wanted, as Conason made the watch word of his book, authoritarianism.

The long term physical defect in this system is the supply, sink and demand limits of the petroleum economy. The cultural problem was that once there was a vast concentration of wealth, it became more important to control that wealth from the inside, than to run the system. Once being in the right place at the right time became the only important criterion for wealth, the fundamental bargain of the pyramid world was broken. It offered to people who would support it a chance to be wealthy in the future, if only they would support exorbitant privilege in the present.

This is why the political apparatus described by Conason in It Can Happen Hear is an essential breakdown. When the majority thought that they could one day enter the privileged minority, they supported the existence of a privileged minority. However, once the privileged minority became more and more closed, that support collapsed. Today Bush has averaged under 40% approval for exactly a year, with only a brief spike in September of last year when conflict and falling gas prices pushed a few people back into his camp.

The cleavage of a quasi-monarchical system then, is not when the wings of the monarchy fall off, but when the base which supports it falls away.

A relative of mine wrote a very foolish book, entitled "The True Law of Free Monarchy". It is an idea that Bush subscribes to – that when there is an unlimted freedom of the powerful, society is best. "So long as I am the dictator". "I am the decider". The cult of authority – economic and social – thought of membership in the top as being broad. However, over the last 5 years, it has come to realize that the top must, by definition, be very small.

What prevented concerted political action against Bush, was that many elites did not feel the same noose constricting around their own necks. They voted for power for Bush, hoping that one day they would have that power themselves.

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This is why purgegate is crucial – it lays plain to elected officials that they are no different from the protester herded into the "First Amendment Zone", the national guardsman subject to back door draft, or the homeowner watching a sluggish economy obliterate their equity – in short, they may be big little people, but they are still little people. They thought that they would have, if not a level playing field, at least one which was manageably unequal. The corruption of power for partisan ends to the extent it destroys their vital interests, makes their interests align with the public.

The general conflict then, has been between a democratic view of society, and an authoritarian one. The authoritarian system, because it had claimed all of the surplus value in the system, had to not only support the continuation of the system, but the continuation of the people who were in power in the system – since there was no particular competence required. Indeed, the state is a work of art, and the authoritarian party could not find people who could enact its policies in Iraq.

The authoritarian party had to claim, then, an unlimited reserve of extra-constitutional power. All societies, Democracies or otherwise, must make this claim. There are certain fundamental requirements for the continuation of society – stable order, peaceful commerce and polity. As Washington claimed this power to put down rebellion, Lincoln to remake the Union so that it could endure, and FDR to combat the depression – so have others claimed it. Even in the best of times, not all such claims have been wise, and the power has often been abused. The suspicion of power is deep in the liberal society – knowing that it must also be a necessary evil.

The usual test of such power is a two thirds super-majority, sustained over time. That is, when the super-majority comes in conflict with the violent minority, the super-majority must find a way to prevail, and yet also disencumber the very power it takes to deal with crisis when the crisis is over. The Western Democracies, to no small extent because of the deep commitment to Democracy by leaders such as FDR and Winston Churchill, have gone down this road. Not always well or wisely, but very different from totalitarian states.

The authoritarian claim is the reverse – that when the privileges of the violent minority are threatened, that they have an intrinsic and extra-constitutional power to force the super-majority to comply. As the slave owners of the South demanded that the constitution be reduced to a protection of the past, present and future of the "peculiar institution", so too have the stake holders in the oilarchy demanded the powers of permanent war and a permanently militarized society to go with it. The authoritarian state must not only have extra constittuional power to deal with clear and present danger, but every phantom and paranoia of the leadership. Many have wondered how far down the slippery slope we have slid.

As we all know, 9/11 was used as the excuse to fool the super-majority into believing that the interests of the few, were the interests of the many.

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However, Lincoln noted that you can only fool all of the people some of the time. In 2004 former Senator George McGovern published The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition and in an interview I did with him, admitted that he had seen how the collegial conflict between parties had been swamped by a corrosive movement to unlimited power. This was not President versus Legislative conflict – but instead a movement that claimed unlimited power for whatever levers it held at the time. If only the public had listened in 2004. But by 2006 they had.

However, many in power disliked Bush not because he acted like a king, but because he was a bad king. Many in power hoped, not to end the cult of authority, but merely to replace those who ran it. This was a vain hope, as Marcy Wheeler's study The Anatomy of Deceit showed in the Plame case, while authoritarians do not require total control over the entire resources of the state, they do require the ability to corrupt any particular action at any time. There are no sparrows safe in the forest.

Americans have had bouts of the disease before – it was called "Ceaserism" in Grant's time when he tried for a third term, and monarchism when even the hallowed George Washington over reached in the early days of the Republic. What Jennifer Mercieca has called "the tragic narrative" is always pressing for excessive control, until it reaches a moment of republican, with a small "r", backlash.

But to become a specific political fight, the general backdrop of creating a more and more pyramid society must manifest itself in terms that even would be elites understand as a threat to their interests. This was inevitable, democracies survive because the outs hope to be the ins. Monarchies, on the other hand, must keep the outs, down. Kings do not wish to be toppled, even by other kings, and their courtiers know that they can be replaced by others of loose moral fabric.

Thus "purgegate", which has shown those in Washington that they are merely little people with a few more perks, and not some other issue, has been the spark that ignites the powder keg. Let us not fool ourselves, Gonzales is Bush's tool, and one of his many hands. An investigation into Gonzales is an investigation into Bush, and unlike Bush, no one is heavily invested in him. As Open Source Radio drills into the wall: patronage is not new but purges are:

But the Bush Department of Justice fired its own appointees — Republicans — allegedly because they failed to prosecute Democrats aggressively enough. Which makes the DOJ look like a political arm of the Republican Party, and not a federal agency. This is not the first time this has happened. What we’ve learned about Justice this week can be seen consistently over Bush’s two terms: federal agencies are valuable less as a reserve of professional expertise, and more as a means to advance the White House’s chosen policies.

What makes the problem acute is that Gonzales sits atop the actual dirty details of the rat fucking that Bush and Rove required. Thus Bush must defend this line, because on the other side of it is a moment, like the White House tapes that led to US v Nixon, where the public can see how executive power has become a tool of "The Party". This is similar ot the moment where the hearings began in 1973, and somewhere there is the detail that will turn a collection of grievances and accusations, into a cold naked case for criminal activity by the executive with no other purpose than his own power. Thus despite their own previous positions the Bushites cannot testify under oath.

Thus the Congress must subpeona, and will, to defend the interests of its members, and Gonzales must refuse. Since the Department of Justice is the body that is supposed to enforce the subpeonas of Congress, as with Nixon, the Attorney General lies at a nexus of the conflict – Gonzales can quash the attempt to subpeona himself. Under the "unitary executive" no other body may force any part of the executive to act without the President's consent, and no other body may direct the President in the use of his powers.

Thus the road leads through the Supreme Court, which, if it follows the clear precedent of US v Nixon, must side with Congress. If Gonzales refuses, as he must, the Congress has only one power left to him.

Impeachment.

Because impeachment is the unilateral power of the Congress.

In American Constitutional government, impeachment is a conflict between a determined executive and a politically unified legislative leadership. Four times there have been serious drives to impeach – with articles being referred to the floor of the House. Tyler, Johnson – twice, Nixon and Clinton have all faced legislative claims of power. While the legislature is not always wise or right to do this, it is the power granted in our Constitutional architecture to make these claims. If one looks at the causes for impeachment, all have been over the conflict between executive and legislative prerogatives: the veto, removal of cabinet officials, executive privilege, civil prosecution of the President.

An impeachment of Gonzales is an impeachment then, of Bush's own management of government, and the beginning of the repudiation of Bush's claim of a "unitary executive" – that is one which can decide in all cases whether or not to act on legislative instruction.

The time to act then, is now – because the public demand for an end to the imperial presidency, and in a larger sense, the entire imperial American system, has now been exposed to be unworkable as a state. That is, the basic check and balance of a Democracy, the ability to throw the bums out, has been corrupted. We knew this in Florida in 2000, and have seen various attempts to erode it at the ballot box, in the media system and in economic egalitarianism, but now elites understand that even they must be under the thumb of an executive that has claimed to be the law, not even merely above the law.

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The world of the blogs has long embraced the paradigm that Bush is not merely the right swing of a pendulum, someone who we could do business with, and the representative of a coalition, but an authoritarian who represented a minority seeking a radically undemocratic and unegalitarian society. It has been the subject of JC Christian's comic barbs, Sidney Blumenthal's poetic essays, Barbara O'Brien's impassioned polemics, Chris Bower's numbers driven analysis, Ian Welsh's historical tracts – among countless others. It is the cultural wisdom of an entire people, a people who, for years, were pushed aside and attacked. And yet, the evidence is in, absolute power not only corrupts absolutely, but the society of extreme wealth must congeal towards absolute power, because no one is capable of making clear decisions when the balance of future public good, and extreme personal gain, is endemic.

This universe has been the wellspring of a more democratic society, not merely a reassertion of the consumer democracy of 1965, but of a participant democracy. While representatives are imperfect tools to that Democracy, this is a moment where it has a chance to show that the road ahead is one that runs directly away from the ever heavier pyramid, with its ever more lavish golden pharonic delusions.