One of the central questions being asked in American politics today is “why won’t they fight?” — the “they” in this case being the Democratic Party. It’s a question that cuts right to the core of everything that has gone awry in this country.

Senator Russell Feingold is learning a hard lesson right now. The brave senator from Wisconsin probably thought he could lead a movement of courage among Democrats through his recent motion to censure President George W. Bush for breaking the law by wiretapping American citizens.

So Feingold mounted his steed, aimed his lance and charged off to do something that hasn’t been done since Andrew Jackson’s day.

And then he looked behind him and saw that he was alone.

“I’m amazed at Democrats … cowering with this president’s numbers so low,” Feingold told the Associated Press.

A recent report in The Washington Post highlighted the sadly obvious truth — that the power brokers in the Democratic Party wanted nothing to do with Feingold’s strike at the king, however deserved that strike may be.

Not Hillary Clinton, not Joe Biden, not Dianne Feinstein, not Charles Schumer, not even Ted Kennedy. All of them fled from the reporters and cameras asking them whether they were signing on to Feingold’s motion.

This isn’t unprecedented. Remember the sad post-2004 election demand made by a handful of congresspeople for an accounting of the election? Remember the motion contesting Ohio’s tainted electoral votes? Not one United States senator argued that the outcome of the election should be changed by either court challenge or a re-vote. Even Senator Barbara Boxer — whose one vote to bring the issue to debate made it possible — didn’t want to change the result of the election.

Boxer later stated she had made the motion not to challenge the outcome, but to “shed the light of truth on these irregularities.”

Why won’t they fight — even when they have a senator to carry the torch for them? Even with a supposedly unpopular war and a president supposedly hurt and bleeding?

Some might say that the media pressure on Feingold was instructive. The Republicans castigated the Wisconsin senator, saying he was using the censure motion as a crass political ploy for his possible run for the White House in 2008. Others, like Paul Weyrich (an American right-wing heavyweight), immediately cranked out fundraising letters telling the Republican base that Feingold’s move was a stalking horse for a future impeachment vote should Democrats regain the House and Senate this year.

The New York Times, according talk show idiot Rush Limbaugh the status of a sage, quotes him as literally thanking Feingold for giving the Republicans a gift.

On top of that were other, more sinister allegations, widely reported in the media.

“The signal that it sends, that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander-in-chief who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that is making our homeland safer, is wrong,” bloviated Senator Bill Frist, who has presidential aspirations of his own.

Republican Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado charges that Feingold “has time and time again taken the side of the terrorists that we’re dealing with in this conflict.”

One can hear the “T” word (treason) being bandied about in the background, not only in congressional cloakrooms, but on right-wing talk radio and in the blogosphere.

But here’s the rub to all that: If the American people truly believed that the president had violated the law and was indeed turning the U.S. into a fascist state by degrees, would this issue not be a political winner? The truth, as hard as it may be to admit it, is that the Democrats shunning Feingold are not as scared of the truth of what is happening to their country and their democracy as they are of the American people.

Noam Chomsky, in several interviews, talks candidly about how easy it is to scare the American people. He readily admits that he can’t quite figure out the genesis of that fear — perhaps it is endemic in the American culture.

If Orson Welles could use the radio to convince a great number of Americans within 20 minutes, on an October evening in 1938, that earth was being attacked by Martians, then why is it so difficult to believe Americans cannot be made to swallow all kinds of poison?

It’s not merely the media — it’s the inability of the average American to use a knowledge base to separate fact from fiction, truth from propaganda. The problem runs wide and deep in the U.S. — from a general distrust of “eggheads” and denigration of “book learning” and critical thinking, to a belief born of theological manifest destiny — America was anointed to rule the world because God said so.

In addition, people have swallowed the notion that a nation so blessed with material comforts would necessarily be hated and regarded jealously by other nations not so endowed or blessed. Therefore it has been easy in American history to constantly convince the population that shadowy figures stalked us with the intent of separating us from our Big Macs and X Boxes.

So too the “Cult of America” has taken on its own version of a state religion, with the president at its head. In the end, people want to believe the myths — we are great because we are good and therefore we are hated because of that. To question that is to question nationhood, the divine blessings of God upon the American people and, by extension, our own personhood.

This is the giant wall of cultural denial the Democrats face. To argue that Bush is a criminal in any form is to argue, literally, against the idea of America. Even Bill Clinton could face down impeachment (albeit for different reasons and not in a “time of war”) with the assurance that striking at the king, even for oral sex in the Oval Office, strikes at the established state religion of which the president is the chief hierophant.

In the end, there is a deep and broad gulf of indoctrination that anyone joining up with Feingold would have to fight against. Most members of his party, seeking the comforts of re-election, would rather pay homage to our belief system than to brave the terrors of striking at the heart of the American mythos.

The Republicans, who understand perfectly how the American mind works, knew exactly how to attack Feingold once he made his move. The Clintons, Bidens and their ilk can read polls, but they can also read the American mind and thus keep silent.

The American experiment in freedom and democracy now stands poised to careen off a cliff because no one, save a Russell Feingold, or a Dennis Kucinich here or there, has the courage to say the emperor is not only naked, but dangerous. Perhaps that is the scariest thing of all.

Keith Gottschalk

Keith Gottschalk

U.S. Keith Gottschalk has written for daily newspapers in Iowa, Illinois and Ohio. He also had a recent stint as a radio talk show host in Illinois. As a result of living in the high ground...