(CHICAGO) - Washington's more than year-long absorption with you-know-who doing you-know-what proves either that the U.S. government has lost its mind -- or that something's pulling American politics out of normal orbit.

Of course the lunacy explanation is compelling.

Here's the Senate--solemnly debating the political death penalty for the President, oblivious to the world and the wishes of constituents--again rejecting proposals to wrap it up. So what if there will never be enough votes to remove Clinton?

Here's the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding over the Senate trial in chevroned robes from a Gilbert and Sullivan farce -- the Chief Justice so impressed by the costume that he ordered copies.

And there are the Senators gravely signing their oaths of impartiality with souvenir pens -- imprinted with the misspelling ;quotUntied States Senator.;quot

Easy to say that Washington has gone mad. Or that--as a Leftist publication put it here--the Democrats and Republicans are ;quotfinally taking a step in the right direction: a political murder/suicide pact.;quot

But lunacy explains nothing.

Fact is that everyone from farthest Left to deepest Establishment utterly under-estimated how far the anti-Clinton drive would go. Or how it would persist after its goal became clearly unattainable.

What did everyone leave out of their calculations?

How about the emergence of a damn-the-consequences U.S. right wing -- one that at least borders on the ultra-right?

After all, turns out the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate (one Trent Lott) is a long-time member and supporter of the Conservative Citizens' Council, the modern incarnation of the White Citizens' Councils which organized sometimes- murderous resistance to Civil Rights in the U.S. South..

Today's Citizens' Council--a staunch opponent of immigration and inter- marriage--is devoted to ;quotthe preservation of the White European Race,;quot which it sees as under mortal attack.

Lott is just one among an easy dozen Neo-Confederate Congressmen and Governors who venerate the old Southern slave-holding regime. (Perhaps such allegiance coloured Lott's recent refusal to back the Commander-in-Chief of American military forces even while U.S. military actions against Iraq were underway -- a virtually treasonous act for a leading politician.) Then there's the countless links between the impeachment forces and the ;quotpro- Life;quot movement that has blockaded, burned and bombed women's clinics--and assassinated obstetricians--for including abortions among their medical procedures.

But whatever their ultra-right ties, perhaps it's their relentless--even shameless--aggressiveness that speaks the most.

After all, impeachment-driven scrutiny revealed a leading Senator--White Citizens' Council member and pro-Life ;quotfamily-values;quot advocate Senator ;quotBob;quot Barr--philandered and paid to abort one his seminal by-products. It revealed House Majority Leader--anti-abortion moral crusader Henry Hyde--kept a paramour in a paid apartment for five years ... while a ;quotsacredly;quot married man. And it exposed the erstwhile incoming Speaker [leader] of the House as a sexual gymnast of at least Clintonesque stature.

Yet the impeachment forces have continued to drive to overturn the last presidential election, no matter how scandalous the revelations against them.

Nor have they ever been slowed by polls showing approval of Clinton^Òs presidential performance at a record 82% .

An aggressive Hard Right has seized the American stage.

True, there's been no sudden infusion of new personnel -- no new party, no electoral landslide sweeping in a wave of new representatives. In fact, the most recent election was a setback for the rightists.

But if the politicians haven't changed, the world has.

Economic meltdown has burned Asia -- and is scorching Russia. Collapse is underway in Latin America^Òs largest economy, Brazil, threatening the entire sub-continent. ;quotGlobal over-capacity;quot and deflation reappear for the first time since the 1930's.

Meanwhile the U.S. stock market is swollen so burstingly-taut that $1,000 invested in Dell Computer ten years ago is now worth $36,000,000.

;quotThe world is in the grip of an acute financial and political crises [which] if left unchecked will lead to the disintegration of the global capitalist system,;quot warns none other than multi-billionaire George Soros in the current issue of Foreign Policy.

;quotWhat makes this crisis so politically unsettling and dangerous,;quot he adds, ;quotis that the system itself is its main cause.;quot But, unwillingly to brake the runaway ;quotfree market;quot freight train, the Right demands it drive faster.

At the same time the center cannot hold, crawling instead toward the dim light of the Right. Clinton eliminates the right not to starve, gutting the Social Security Act for the first time in 64 years, ;quotending welfare as we know it.;quot Now he proposes handing Social Security billions over to private speculators, and launches the greatest expansion of the military budget since Ronald Reagan.

But these moves only whet, not sate, the hounds of the Right. Their doggedness despite certain failure resembles Hitler's doomed 1923 putsch, which served to make a mark and gather cadre for the future.

And so it is that the highest judge in this land presides over the trial of the world's most powerful leader wearing a Gilbert and Sullivan costume.

And that Senators solemnly sign their oaths on souvenir pens reading ;quotUntied States Senator.;quot

It might look like mere lunacy. But it smells like a rough beast slouching toward Jerusalem.

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