The acrid smoke had barely cleared the Manhattan skyline when the facists who composed the American government began tightening the screws that would replace The Rule of Law with The Rule of the Unitarity Executive.

Not that the Executive acted alone. A Republican legislature passed the USAPATRIOT Act with full cooperation from its Democratic lackeys. Then it passed the Military Commissions Act. Then, as the Cheney Administration accelerated its campaign of political repression, a Democratic Congress voted to indemnify the corporate partners of the usurpers. In the meantime, habeas corpus was fatally wounded and personal privacy faded while government secrecy bloomed in darkness.

The current administration stands firmly in support of the new American political paradigm. Even its token gesture of closing the torture camp in Cuba shows signs of falling by the wayside. When this happens, President Obama will express his unhappiness, but he will do so with a smile on his face.

Most sadly, the whole anti-civil-liberties program has been accomplished with the active and overwhelming support of its victims. The American public, the modern counterparts of the Tories during the Revolution, loves the fact that people can be thrown in jail for life without charges -- provided of course that the prisoners' names have a Middle-Eastern sound to them. The people whose homes can now be broken into by government agents on a whim and without a writ are pleased to accept torture as an "effective" means of gathering information. They are happy to have their phones tapped, to have their protests restricted to the ironically-labed "free-speech zones," to have their "safety" enhanced through the process of exiling their fellow American citizens.

Fear of tiny groups of extremists is the factor that drives this seizure of power from the people and to the already-powerful. Fear is carefully nutured and tended by those who benefit from the power transfer, of course, but that is no excuse. The people need to put aside their fear and require their government to safeguard their ability to be politically free. But we are soft now, and unwilling to require our public "servants" to safeguard anything but our cozy, little, meaningless lives, our iPhones, and our 56-inch HDTVs.

If one needs a an amplifier to hear the sound of liberty's death-knell in the once-proud United States of America, one needs only listen to the stridency of self-proclaimed liberals and progressives right here on one of the most liberal and progressive blogs in the world. These defenders of freedom are in full voice pleading at the top of their lungs for their guardians to protect them by further eroding the right to free speech in America. "Make the right-winger talk shows stop being mean," they snivel. "Make the 'hate-speech' go away." Liberals. Ha! Progressives? Only in America.

The Bill of Rights is Dead. It died of neglect. Long live the Unitary Executive.

Finally, the numbers are in and we have determined which American political brouhaha wins the trophy as the most tiresome, predictable, and ultimately unproductive. It wasn't really close. Let's review the finalists:

The most obvious contender, of course, is the battle of the extreme right wing -- that is to say, the Republican Party -- versus the Democrats who attempt to hide the fact that their constituency is Big Money . From the right, we hear  incessant mindless chanting about sacred Market while the right-of-center Dems discuss Social Justice while supporting legislation to cripple the Bill of Rights. If this "debate" weren't so infuriating, it would induce more somnolence than opium (while still being far less addictive.)

But as frustrating as the donnybrook between the Publicans and 'Crats is, it would serve neither accuracy nor fairness for us to give it our Most Likely to be Enervating Award. No, those laurels must go to the guaranteed-soporific carping between the Obama Lovers and the Obama Haters here on TPM. Congratulations to all participants for driving most intelligent debaters out of the Café and into pleasanter drugs.

This -- ha! -- discussion, lead mostly by people who wouldn't recognize a political fact if it were giving them a blowjob, seems to center on the question of whether the current President is an Evil Buffon or a Wise and Subtle Savior. Inasmuch as he is neither, allow me to enumerate what Pres. Obama is, is not, and may be.

Pres. Obama IS socially moderate, who seems willing to grant a minimally-acceptable level of rights, services, and status to the poor and oppressed. His stance on the rights of gays is a good example of his attitude.

Pres. Obama IS fiscally conservative. His immediate impulse is to throw money at giant corporations in trouble -- AIG, Bank Of America, General Motors --  and rich people -- for example, by retaining the Bush tax cuts. At the same time, his "middle-class tax cut"  awarded something like $8 per week to the median American household.

Pres. Obama IS an extremely capable politician. Two years ago, it was unthinkable that he could be the nominee of his party, let alone President.

Pres. Obama IS NOT a liberal. The very idea is ludicrous and drives real liberals up a wall. Liberals don't vote to indemnify communications companies for spying on their customers. Liberals don't act to protect torturers from accountability in court. Liberals don't keep people in jail indefinitely without legal recourse.

Pres. Obama IS NOT a person who would recognize any action of his own as overtly evil. He thinks he is a pragmatist, and if some little people need to get shafted or killed to achieve something grand, well, them's the breaks. He will do many great things for many people, some of them actual people as opposed to corporate "persons." He will do little, perhaps less than nothing, to close the gap between rich and poor.

Pres. Obama MAY BE the best thing to happen to this country for the last three decades.

Pres. Obama MAY BE the worst thing to happen to this country, even worse than George W. Bush.

May I make a suggestion? If you choose to respond to this article, please don't bother telling me that I am an idiot, that I am a terrible writer, that I am the very cause of the same napping I am trying to prevent, or any of that kind of stuff. I know all that. OTOH, please do point out where my facts are wrong or where my characterizations or opinions lack coherence.  If you can.

I hope I have not induced insomnia among those who depend on TPM to nod off each night.