The mainstream for-profit news media's hunger for bloodshed is in full force this holiday season. Their task has been made easier by the fact that US troop deaths in Iraq, 3000 total, have reached their second highest monthly level since the 2003 invasion, 111 in December, only to be outdone by November 2004's second siege of Falluja. Iraqi sectarian violence has swelled to claiming over 3000 civilians every month. But strangely, the story on everyone's lips, of course, is the televised death of a dictator.

The absurdity of the comments surrounding the hanging of Saddam Hussein should suffice to show what kind of ironic propaganda slips into the cultural mainstream. Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shiite, claimed that out of respect for human rights, he had no choice but to hurry the appeals process and execute Hussein. No human rights body in the entire world supports capital punishment, so whose rights was he referring to? Certainly not Hussein's, and certainly not all of humanity, unless we want to dub Hussein inhuman for shits and giggles. And if the justice was merely for unimprisoned Iraqis, why then were the executions not sought out for those who sold Iraq his weapons of mass destruction, for the infamous chemical attack on his own people? However, this was not about revenge, or was it?

Amazingly the Bush Adminstration's distancing remarks were that Iraqi justice had successfully been carried out, as opposed to some standard of international justice, which we seemed to be promoting ever since 9/11's "bring them to justice," Western style. So long as Hussein died in a "dignified" way without mutilation or humiliation, the Green Zone could have a very merry New Year's. The Shiite side of the civil war was not to be as lucky yesterday, as the executioners were seen to be all Shiite, and the taunting and execution in Saddam's old execution chamber a bit off the mark of dignity.

When discussing whether international justice has been meted out evenly, it is important to list the war's most grievous violations of global agreements on "civilized" warfare, elucidated in the Geneva Conventions: initiating combat without a threat of imminent attack, denying humane treatment to prisoners of war, attacks on soft targets such as media institutions and medical transport units, and the oft-forgotten law barring humiliation of prisoners, which includes televising their incarceration or death (see faces of Uday & Qusay Hussein, and Abu Al-Zarqawi). But fortunately for America, we apparently had nothing to do with the capture, incarceration, establishment of the tribunal, and handover of the former president. Nor would American backers ever get a chance to be held to account for our Machiavellian support for Hussein's rule by fear throughout the 1980's. Not that the World Court would be able to really hold the US conservative elite responsible for complicity in war crimes--don't forget that we were already found guilty for our support of death squad attacks on soft targets in our proxy war in Nicaragua in the early '80's, to which we only stepped up our "anti-Soviet" campaign.

What was accomplished by this execution? A reinforcement of the ideology of shame and revenge in Islamic culture. The end of a distraction from fighting "Iraq's enemies" that haven't been disarmed, to be sure. And surely the Shiite and Sunni torturers and murderers across Iraq are quaking in their ski-masks about having a sham trial and "dignified" death if they are ever to be captured. Bush can now tell his daddy that we finally "took him out." But the most significant thing accomplished was the fruition of Hussein's born-again-Muslim fantasy of being remembered as a martyr who fought the crusaders. In death at the hands of infidels he understood he could have more lasting power than sitting in a spider hole eating Snickers bars until the shitstorm blew over. So perhaps it's time that Usama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar "involuntarily" came out of their holes to be martyred, so that they again have relevance to the diffuse and decentralized broken web of simmering revenge that constitutes our global civil war.

By now, get-out-the-vote partiers will have received their special gift of the elections--a massive hangover and a return to business as usual. We all prepared for the worst--and perhaps we ended up with the least worst, which somehow flips a mobius strip and becomes the best we get.

Suffice to say that future Democratic candidates success is clearly now riding on how they use their position of relative power within a system of checks and balances that has steadily eroded under their passive-aggressive lame-puppy-dog eyes. What can Democrats do to distinguish themselves from being merely critics preaching to the choir? And how can John Kerry help fuck up the next election?

Ethics scandals--a somewhat less cloudy phrase than moral values, seemed from all counts by the mainstream media, and to some extent the president in his concession speech, to have had a tremendous impact on turnout and dissafection with the ruling party. As GWB complained, GOP write-in candidates had an uphill battle winning races in Houston District 22 and South Florida District 16. Maybe their old voters felt a little shame themselves for a while.

But the scandal that is the elephant in the room is the host of illegal actions carried out by this Administration which may yet go unpunished. Rumsfeld's resignation means nothing if the same cadre of other officials does everything in its power to stay the course in an unsanctioned war and leave finding an exit-strategy to the next Administration. Conspiracy theories about 9/11 aren't necessary when the facts of illegal activity, undue corporate influence, and corruption are staring the House Intelligence Committee in the face.

If newly-elected Democrats do not heed their constituents' calls for investigations of impeachment, raising the minimum wage, returning to a state of broad civil liberties, rapidly decreasing fossil fuel dependence, massive oversight on the War on Terror including troop withdrawals and potential extended campaigns in the mountains of Pakistan, they will have barely a leg to stand on in the next presidential election, when anything goes.

Don't forget that terrorists are now emboldened--because they see that two corporate-financed parties have a lock on our democratic system and we promise to stay good ideological enemies for the foreeable future and keep justifying massive retaliation for our actions in Iraq and all-out support for Israeli's border-creating military adventures in the Gaza Strip.

The sooner the media can get to the root of the American Debacle, the sooner politicians will start plotting a new direction. As it stands, the informed debate and necessary criticism is just a lot of babble about a horse race and political capital.