I have no idea how normal this is or isn’t to people, but whenever I think about things, there are always a certain number of said things that prompt a song in my head.
Remember the awkward phase of rap that produced the cringe-inducing song from West Coast Rap All-Stars, We’re All in the Same Gang?
That’s the song that plays in my head every time I begin considering things political. I wish I could explain it and I wish it weren’t so. As if “modern” politics weren’t intellectual torture enough, this song has to pop in and add to the mental waterboarding.
(I thought it might be nice to get my digression out of the way early–c’mon, follow me through the jump)
With regards to the widening and deepening of the US Attorney firing scandal, the president did what de does best today–spew ridiculousness and generally try to be a tough guy. That’s not the primary thrust, as it is more than obvious that these silly presidential actions and words are nothing more than the natural result of a child with entirely too much privilege and power. One who was never told “no” and who has no concept of what it is like to without, under any circumstances–someone whose words evidence that these concepts are completely and utterly foreign if not couched in the very, very distant abstract.
Today, I’m feeling much more like addressing the continued national bought-and-paid-for, partisan (and unbelievably shallow) national media. You have the media “conservatives” hollering, “but Carter (or Truman or Roosevelt) did it!” on TV, echoing bloggers and columnists and of course, the waterboys. Here are a couple of articles from TIME in 1978 for further details on Carter and “Floodgate” (gleaned by myself and BG in a combined 10 minute research effort on the Internets, aka the new Terrorist Training and Recruiting Camp). The national media seems to primarily be focusing in on Carter, but only in the broad strokes by “liberal” MSNBC, among others. Likely because they are very aware that in the modern bankrupt-in-oh-so-many-ways America they would have some trouble finding people who really know who Truman and Roosevelt were (does Leno still do Jaywalking?) and the media demonstrates time and time again that “details” and “context” aren’t things that they think the public needs.
My natural reflex here is that I ache to pose the same question my mother posed to me so many times. “If (insert friend name) went and jumped off a bridge does that mean you have to do it too?”
The obvious and logical answer to that (even for children) is “no”–unfortunately in Washington (which is increasingly just a playpen for criminally-minded simpleton children, itself) the “no” answer is neither logical nor obvious.
Then there are the “liberals”, who are trying to ignore the “Carter did it too” platitudes and focus (correctly) on the fact that Bush’s offer to interview Rove and others on the condition that they not be under oath and that there be no transcripts from said testimony is basically nothing more than Bush telling Congress that his people need a comfortable and secret forum in which to tell more half-truths (also known as lies).
Yet, a witless media is still trying on behalf of Lord Bush and the powerful people who own him to convince everyone that this is no big deal because everybody does it and has done it.
This is no longer about the firings themselves. It is about the accompanying lies that are explicitly designed to (feebly) disguise true intent to manipulate and ignore the law as the president sees fit and to destroy anyone who does not march in lockstep alongside. It will be interesting to watch Congressional Democrats respond–not the verbal responses, but the action taken to push on (or not) into the belly of this beast.
Let’s see if they can pull up their shorts and keep this one “on the table”.
*******
However, all of the above simply leads me to this statement, found (via NitPicker) yesterday.
“We have a crisis where there doesn’t need to be one, and now Democrats have an issue where they can open up the subpoena floodgates,” said an exasperated Republican aide. “Once these investigations start, there always ends up being a lot of messy collateral damage.” (Emphasis NitPicker’s)
NitPicker’s emphasis is well placed, and the exasperated Republican aide is right on. With the proper pursuit there is sure to be a lot of collateral damage, and messy collateral damage, at that (here is a nice peek into just one of the many rabbit holes). I’m not a big believer that any of it will go very far, though, because it likely won’t be too long before we hear the cries of Lieberman-ized congresscritters acquiescing to transparent bullying, telling everyone something that echoes the sentiments of “…a Constitutional Crisis is not what the country needs in Time of War” or some such tripe.
Constitutional Crises are exactly what we need, they are exactly what we are heading for (and should have arrived at long ago), and they are the only thing that Americans have left to grab onto that might allow them to regain the freedoms they once enjoyed.
“Liberal” Democrats are arguing malice (and doing it pretty darn effectively) and “Conservative” Republicans pleading the combination of incompetence and “they did it too”. It doesn’t matter one iota if one attributes these events (past or present, Democrat or Republican) to ineptitude or malice. I want to know why either has been deemed be acceptable as defined by your party affiliation.
It is all about protecting the corruption on your side of the partisan fence, and the media consistently promotes this way of thinking as being acceptable, just as they ever have. They media are simply the announcers that preside over a body politic primarily composed of cutthroat, connected people who fight with each other over what have become (and have been for some time) “the spoils of government”.
And the public continues to sit and watch this bi-partisan symphony of gluttonous destruction through the windowpane as we are promised scraps from politicians who pay only lip service, ignorant to the fact that we are dying in the outdoor cold, and never remembering that it is our allowance of both malice and incompetence that enable them to shut us out in the first place.