I have never truly considered myself a cynic--the fact that I voted for Nader in every presidential election except the last should disqualify me on that score, at least. But I have a cynic's nasty suspicion growing in my soul, and I hope it's just my deep disgust with Comey's recent revelations of Godfather-esque machinations by Card & Gonzales, Inc., at the bedside of a very ill man.
My suspicion, my friends, is that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Card, and company, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum...
...will never be called to account.
This Olbermann segment sums everything up rawther nicely, I think.
The most interesting statement in here starts a little before three minutes in, when Turley comments that the committee loses credibility each time Gonzo walks out of the room without having answered questions, and then goes on to remember during the Republican-controlled Congress, when Democrats couldn't even get a committee room.
Power corrupts, and power has shifted to the rich and the right. The last eight years have seen an unprecedented transfer of economic and political power to the economic top one percent (as Molly Ivins pointed out so frequently, the only policy Dubya has ever been consistent and hardworking on is a capital gains measure to free up the ultra-wealthy) and the use of that power to consolidate, by hook or by crook, the hard-right Republican party line. This centre of gravity has shifted to such a degree that even the mandate the Democrats received from the public masses during the recent elections hasn't managed to make much of a dent. The debate is still being framed by the likes of Giuliani--super-rich, super-right, super-warmongering.
People are still applauding when the Republicans talk about torture. The MSM is still serving Democrats lose-lose questions and lobbing easy ones at right-wingers.
But that's not the most troubling part. The most troubling thing here is that Democrats are still voting with the Republicans' most egregiously foul partisan moves, against their party and the mandate their party received from you and me.
What's going on here? Have the Dems been so battered by the last eight years that they've internalized the far-right framing of the debate? Where is the moral courage? Where is the outrage?
Where are the frocking votes?
Glenn Greenwald, as usual, distills the problem in his most recent post about the Washington Post Editorial page finally trumpeting in pain at the lawbreakers in office.
There is clear and definitive evidence of deliberate lawbreaking. In addition to Congressional investigations, there is simply no excuse for anything other than the immediate commencement of a criminal investigation by a Special Prosecutor. And the administration ought to be pressured every day to account for what it did here. This is not a one-day or one-week fleeting scandal. These revelations amount to the most transparent and deliberate crimes -- felonies -- by our top government officials, not with regard to private and personal matters but with regard to how our government spies on us.
Hiatt-like protests are welcome (even if inexcusably belated), but they must be accompanied by genuine and relentless demands for follow-up and accountability otherwise they will amount to nothing more than inconsequential rhetoric. The Attorney General lied continuously, and the administration concealed pervasive criminality at the highest levels of our government. Even Fred Hiatt says so. So now what? (Glenn Greenwald)
Quite frankly, this will never end until the Bush Administration is forced from power, and I don't see that happening. When Democratic Congresspersons and Senators are still keeping the administration alive by pretending it's business as usual and that you can sup with the Devil without a long spoon, I simply do not see any hope of this administration being called into account.
I am certain some will say, "Well, we Dems and left-wingers believe in due process and doing things right. It will take time for people to get fed up with the Bushies and their gutting of our rights. We just need to be patient."
And my reply used to be, that's a good point. We need to be better than the monster we're fighting. Now, however, my reply is more like, F&%k this. There's due process, and then there's sitting on our thumbs. If over three thousand casualties and revelations of unprecedented lawlessness and naked maneuvering to turn our country into a fascist state isn't enough, what is?
Let us regain our sense of proportion here. Even the most hardline GOP apparatchik should be horrified at this betrayal of everything that makes America America. How much more horrified should anyone who calls themselves a Democrat be?
And yet the niggling and the petty politicking goes on, and on, and on. Pelosi, Reid, and Feingold are constantly portrayed as embattled even within their own party, crafting fragile consensus after fragile consensus and being stymied by members of their own party. No, it's not that I expect blind bland obedience. But I require at least a little common sense and true moral outrage in the face of craptacular autocracy, and the Dems aren't cutting it.
I'm hoping that the recent revelations, both of Gonzo's willingness to swoop over a sickbed like a vulture and of Dubya's willingness to deny security clearances to investigators, will act as a shock of cold water and bring this painful degrading episode in America's history to a close. But frankly, I'm not holding my breath. We have seen revelation after revelation of illegality, waste, nepotism, oligarchic plutocracy, fraud, lying, influence-peddling, embezzlement, idiocy, and just sheer murder (if one doesn't call the casualties of the Iraq War murder victims by now, I don't know what one calls them.) And still the Dems can't get together enough votes to end the war, bring our troops home, impeach the rascals, scoundrels, and criminal shysters, and restore some semblance of sanity to our public discourse.
Quite frankly, my dears, I find it a little difficult to remain hopeful.