This Is the Disease
Posted on | July 6, 2007
Glenn Greenwald’s diagnosis is dead-on:
That Lewis Libby has been protected by George Bush from the consequences of his crimes only highlights how corrupt and broken our political system is. It reveals nothing new. This is the natural, inevitable outgrowth of our rancid political culture, shaped and slavishly defended by our Beltway ruling class and our serious, sober opinion-making elite…
The Plame investigation was urged by the Bush CIA and commenced by the Bush DOJ, Libby’s conviction pursued by a Bush-appointed federal prosecutor, his jail sentence imposed by a Bush-appointed “tough-on-crime” federal judge, all pursuant to harsh and merciless criminal laws urged on by the “tough-on-crime/no-mercy” GOP. Lewis Libby was sent to prison by the system constructed and desired by the very Republican movement protesting his plight.
But our political discourse and media institutions are so broken and corrupt that Bush followers (and their media enablers) feel free to make the completely-backwards and fact-free claim that the Libby prosecution was driven by “partisan” and “political” motives — as though it was a mirror image of the Clinton persecution driven by Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and a purely partisan Republican prosecutor — because they know that there is no such thing as a claim too false to be passed on without real objection by our vapid, drooling press corps…
But the most significant disease highlighted by the Libby travesty is also the most obvious one. We have decided to be a country in which our highest Republican political officials can break the law freely, without any real consequence. In the United States, the law does not apply to the President and his closest aides…
The President and his followers know that they can apply completely different rules to themselves, and freely break the law, because our Washington establishment, our “political press,” will never object too strenuously, or even at all. Over the last six years, our media has directed their hostility only towards those who investigate or attempt to hold accountable the most powerful members of our political system — hence their attacks on the GOP prosecutor investigating the Bush administration’s crimes, their anger towards the very few investigative reporters trying to uncover Washington’s secrets, and their righteous condemnation towards each of the handful of attempts by Congress to exercise investigative oversight of the administration.
The only cure would seem to be courage, the courage to stand up and say, “This is wrong,” and to back that statement with action. Is our Congress up to it, or do they all secretly subscribe to the notion of a lawless elite? Is the corruption of the press complete, or will they permit the questioning of the Administration to enter our discourse?
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One Response to “This Is the Disease”
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July 6th, 2007 @ 9:19 am
Heh. The word I had to enter is ‘argument’.
I was never a big fan of “throw the bums out.” It always struck me as too indiscriminate. These days I’m really beginning to see its appeal.
There are still a few bums I’d keep, though. Feingold can stay.