E Pluribus Unum

by shep

Glenn Greenwald observes the “outrage” over only the latest revelation of Bush Administration lawlessness and depravity:

“Today's revelations involve the now-familiar, defining attributes of this administration -- claims of limitless presidential power, operating in total secrecy and with no oversight, breaking of laws at will, serial misleading of the Congress and the country and, most of all, the shattering of every previous moral and legal constraint on our national behavior.”

Greenwald also explains why “shock” is no longer a reasonable or acceptable explanation for our failure as a nation to repudiate, remove and prosecute the major lawbreakers in the Bush Administration, starting with George Bush and Dick Cheney:

“But in another, more important, sense, this story reveals nothing new. As a country, we've known undeniably for almost two years now that we have a lawless government and a President who routinely orders our laws to be violated. His top officials have been repeatedly caught lying outright to Congress on the most critical questions we face. They have argued out in the open that the "constitutional duty" to defend the country means that nothing -- including our "laws" -- can limit what the President does.”

“It has long been known that we are torturing, holding detainees in secret prisons beyond the reach of law and civilization, sending detainees to the worst human rights abusers to be tortured, and subjecting them ourselves to all sorts of treatment which both our own laws and the treaties to which we are a party plainly prohibit. None of this is new.”

The country was in deep shock after 9/11, why George Bush’s approval ratings literally doubled overnight. And I could give a pass to politicians and, to a lesser extent, journalists, right up to the point that George Bush forced UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq to invade. That proved without doubt that both the WMD justifications, as well as the promise that war was not inevitable, were bald-faced lies.

From there forward, most of the Washington establishment, media and political figures alike, have grossly violated their duty to the public. In response to the media’s failure to inform the public of Bush/Cheney corruption, in the face of a steady stream of revelations about their egregious conduct, Jay Rosen offers this explanation:

“The most important of these is that journalists and their methods were overwhelmed by what the Bush White House did -- by its radicalism. There is simply nothing in the Beltway journalist's rule book about what to do, how to act, when a group of people comes to power willing to go as far as this group has in expanding executive power, eluding oversight, steamrolling critics (even when they are allies) politicizing the government, re-working the Constitution, rolling back the press, making secrecy and opacity standard operating procedure, and repealing the very principle of empiricism in matters of state.”

“The press tends to behave because it does not know how to act, in the sense of striking out in a new direction when confronted with a new fact pattern”

But Greenwald correctly observes that no such justification can plausibly excuse any so-called journalist today:

“But we are now way past the point where that excuse is plausible. Anyone paying even minimal attention is well aware of exactly how radical and corrupt and lawless this administration is. We all know what has happened to our standing in the world, to our national character and our core political values, as a result of the previously unthinkable policies the Bush administration has relentlessly pursued. Ignorance or incredulity can no longer explain our acquiescence. Accommodating and protecting the lawbreaking of high Bush officials is widely seen by our Beltway elite as a duty of bipartisanship, a hallmark of Seriousness.”

“Shock” is both inadequate and unnecessary to explain the near complete acquiescence* from our supposed leaders in the media and government to continuing down the radical and dangerous path Republicans have taken us.

Believe it or not, the likely motive to explain certain people’s abandonment of fundamental American (and Judeo/Christian) values to reconcile themselves with Bush Administration conduct, was simple pride; the inability to accept the notion of a lost moral compass, having been badly fooled and having participated in a gross injury to the nation and millions of innocent Iraqis.

The mechanism for doing so is simple denial. From 30% dead-enders who delude themselves that destroying the lives of millions of Iraqis, unleashing an endless sectarian conflagration and destroying the rule of law across the globe is the moral, visionary (George Bush = Harry Truman) course, to beltway journalists and “centrist” politicians who satisfy themselves that the “radical” behavior is to forcefully confront Bush Administration lawlessness, these are people who cannot deal with their own feelings of guilt and unconsciously choose rationalizations to avoid them.

As Naomi Klein makes clear, shock wears off. But pride, self-delusion and rationalization go on and on.

*I should note that there were remarkable examples of courageous resistance to the administration’s mendacity and faithlessness (Russ Feingold, Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh, to name some of the few) and that Greenwald is a bit unfair in his blanket condemnation (I blame righteous outrage and frustration).