By the time you read this, America will be right on top of the 2006 elections.

And it seems, based on all the polls, the Democrats will undoubtedly take control of the House of Representatives and will at least get a 50-50 split in the Senate.

What does it mean?

Probably not much, sorry to say.

Let’s assume the Democrats actually capture both the House and Senate. George W. Bush is still President and, quite frankly, Hillary Clinton and Barack (Bomb Iran) Obama want to be President.

So don’t expect them to launch any efforts to pull the U.S. out of Iraq. Their consultants will advise against such “cut and run” tactics that will turn off the red-blooded in Middle America.

After all, despite all the deaths and “arrogance and stupidity” in Iraq, Americans still must believe that their country is great and good and woe to anyone who says differently.

Like former truth teller, Alberto Fernandez.

And Nancy Pelosi thinks a cushy office and the perks that go with it are more important than matters of abstract justice. She’s already told Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes that if she’s Speaker of the House, any talk of impeachment is off the table.

So the Bush gang can count on the Democrats to let them get away with it. The war, fought for the oil that fuels our “non-negotiable way of life” will continue . . . with new justifications and timetables.

And in matters great and small on the domestic front, we must honestly admit that nothing much can be expected here either.

Universal health care? Don’t be funny.

I would like one Democrat currently running for Congress to answer what they would do to change what happened to Julia Wilson.

Wilson was 13 when she put up a crayon-type picture of President Bush with a scrawled “kill Bush” message in the corner of the screen on her My Space site. She didn’t like it so she took it down âe” last summer. But for some reason, months later, the Secret Service decided to pay Julia’s family a visit and extract a pound of flesh.

The Secret Service grilled Julia’s parents about her political affiliations and then, despite assurances to the contrary, went to Julia’s school and interrogated her without her parents present.

According to the story by Stephen S. Pearcy in CounterPunch: In the school’s office, the S.S. agents interrogated Julia, reducing her to tears at many points. They demanded to know whether she or her parents belonged to any subversive organizations, and they often raised their voices, especially when they detected that Julia was either scared or didn’t understand their ambiguous questions.

This is America 2006, where the Secret Service in their insane zeal to protect the most powerful man in the world from a 14-year-old girl, stoops to these tactics.

Even more incredibly, the agents actually told Julia’s mother: there was a very strong likelihood that someone — possibly a terrorist from a foreign country — might see the image and be inspired to act upon it. Thus, they reasoned, even if Julia only meant to be funny, the art put the President in grave danger.

We can talk about what the Patriot Act did to America and all the other little legal bricks in the wall that have been constricting the Constitution for decades. But when we get to serious people reducing a 14-year-old to tears and demanding to know about the child and parents’ political affiliations, it’s time to take a large surgical instrument to this nation’s laws.

Will the Democrats do anything to dismantle this growing fascist apparatus if they ever get their hands on it? The answer, at least to me, is answered in the question.

So pardon me if I’m not oozing with breathless anticipation of the ascendancy of one corporately controlled national security party over its alter ego. I’ve seen too many years roll by and too many empty promises made while the national security corporate state grew and grew to believe anything substantial will change.

Unless, of course, the American frogs leap from their near boiling water pot and put something at risk to demand a real democracy that treats them as citizens, not threats.

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...