Mike the Mad Biologist

…and are you in any way, shape, or form surprised? Has anything in the last six years suggested to anyone in the Coalition of the Sane that the Bush/Cheney Administration has any sense of shame or propriety? Of course not.

It should be clear that this administration will do anything and everything it can get away with. Bush now appears to have ‘accepted’ his 28% approval ratings, and won’t try to do anything to raise them.

The group that I’m truly disappointed in is the Democrats. They still seem to think that if they point out El Jefe Maximo’s outrageous and illegal behavior that the people will rise up. Well, they already did that. It was called the 2006 election. Now the Democrats have to deliver. Congressional investigations are dandy, but at some point, the administration has to be confronted and stopped because the administration has no internal checks.

The Democrats always seem to be two years behind the times. In 2008, no one will care about little programs or passing a successful agenda. The issues will be Iraq, and the general direction of the country. Unless the Democrats confront Bush directly, most voters will be incredibly disappointed with the Democrats. Yet the Democrats have not realized that they will actually have to get their hands dirty. Slogans and bold statements won’t cut it.

And I don’t think there would be a political price: after Nixon, the Democrats made tremendous gains in the House and Senate.

Fucking morons.

Related post: Kung Fu Monkey says it very well:

This just hammers home my realization of what the Cheney Administration — and yes, damn you this is the first time I’ve indulged in that neologism, and the first time I think it perfectly appropriate — what the Cheney Administration has discovered. They have found the “exploit” within the United States Government. As I watched Congressmen and Senators stumble and fumble and thrash, unable to bring to heel men and women who were plainly lying to them under oath, unable to eject from public office toadies of a boot-licking expertise unseen since Versailles, it struck me. The sheer, simple elegance of it. The “exploit”.

The exploit is shame.

Our representatives — and to a great degree we as a culture — are completely buffaloed by shamelessness. You reveal a man’s corrupt, or lying, or incompetent, and what does he do? He resigns. He attempts to escape attention, often to aid in his escape of legal pursuit. Public shame has up to now been the silver bullet of American political life. But people who are willing to just do the wrong thing and wait you out, to be publicly guilty … dammmnnnn.

We are faced with utterly shameless men. Cheney and the rest are looking our representatives right in the eye and saying “You don’t have the balls to take down a government. You don’t have the sheer testicular fortitude to call us lying sonuvabitches when we lie, to stop us from kicking the rule of law and the Constitution in the ass. You just don’t. What’s beyond that abyss — what that would do to our government and our identity as a nation — terrifies you too much. So get the fuck out of our way.”

That’s it, in a nutshell.

Comments

#1 mark
July 3, 2007

This incident, along with others, lend credibility to that rumor that George W. Bush referred to the Constitution of the United States as “just a goddam piece of paper.”
#2 J-Dog
July 3, 2007

I hear Keith Olberman is going to call for Bush’s resignation tonight. Is Keith Olberman enough to get the ball rolling?
#3 Kristin
July 3, 2007

So, 30 months in jail for lying to prosecutors and covering up your boss’ role in leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent is excessive…but the death sentence for a retarded black man with an IQ of 60 is a-ok.

Is Bush just using the Constitution as toilet paper now?
#4 Science avenger
July 3, 2007

KFM nailed it. The Democrats have no balls. Olbermann (and I’m a big fan) can say whatever he wants, it won’t make any difference.
#5 G
July 3, 2007

Here in the UK, Kung Fu Monkey, I think we have a similar exploit. The Blair government went to war on laughably bad intelligence: a doctored version of some guy’s thesis. It was an indefensible circumvention of the democratic process – any idiot could see that. On the basis of this one document the government acted on the assumption that Iraq could fire a missile at the UK in 45 minutes. To negate shame Blair didn’t use swagger like Bush’s gang – he did his vicarish “I did what I believed was right” thing resolutely and consistently, and no one important could find it in themselves to say, “don’t be bloody ridiculous!” We don’t have a mechanism that allows us to dismiss the excuses and explanations of liars in government; they only have to act confident and sincere, and repeat a minimally passable story endlessly. Blair stuck to his story until the storm just blew itself out, leaving ambivalence, bitterness and cynicism.

In the UK politicians don’t have quite the same superstar aura; in general we’re probably not so optimistic, positivistic (except, notably, when Blair got in in ’97). However, we too have this need to think that mummy and daddy are doing the best that they can and that our world isn’t run by mad arrogant fools – not only because that would leave us feeling insecure, but because we want all our labours to mean something. We want to believe in order and progress, and ignore evidence to the contrary in ourselves and our world. However, the essentials of leadership are primitive. The British are famous for being phlegmatic and skeptical, but the mass of humans everywhere really shun the burden of freedom in favour of thoughtlessly doing what a confident person tells them to do.

There is no hope in another party: we thought that Labour would undo the right-wing evils of the Conservatives, but this hope has proven utterly empty. We have instead seen more of the same pragmatic gamesmanship. When the Democrats gain power, as in the past the demands of power will force them to play by the rules of the game, unless they lose the taste for it and are replaced by a party who want it more. I think this is the present situation in America, and explains somewhat the Democrats’ ineffectual spluttering. In my view, if you want to place your hope in something, hope that individually and collectively humans realise that freedom is a burden we MUST carry, and that however arduous, we must chose clarity over consolation. Hope for the end of hope, because there’s no mummy and daddy, and no Coming Event out there to place one’s hope in. People have to be self-empowered. At present leaders of all kinds generally bludgeon autonomy and make people dependent. Maybe, maybe, maybe we’ll go though these dismal cycles of hope and depair, illusion and disillusion often enough to turn away from all that and cease to depend on anything. We need people to organise populations of millions, of course, but we don’t need buy into the vain dreams and phoney values that turn the perfectly straightforward and attainable demands of survival into an impossible quagmire of human conflict.
#6 Andrew Dodds
July 4, 2007

G –

I’m also from the UK..

I think the biggest problem was that Blair could have lost in 2005 had the opposition being creditable in any way, shape or form; instead, the conservatives ran a pro-war, pro-ID card, we’re-going-to-be-exactly-the-same campaign. So in many ways the British public have not voted on the war (Or ID cards, which are another pet hate of mine).

A major cause of this, in both the UK and US, is the relaxation of media ownership laws, which means that a politician who offends one or two large media owners is going to face consistent negative reporting. The US has a bigger problem with the cost of campaigns as well, which is illustrated most drastically in healthcare, military procurement and farming. Unfortunately, you won’t see many positive stories about media ownership restrictions in the mainstream media – and if there is one thing that unites ALL the major lobbies in horror, it’s campaign finance reform.
#7 Jeffery
July 4, 2007

Where was all this indignation when Mr. Clinton or Mr. Berger were caught red-handed? I think Kung Fu Monkey is right, the issue is shamelessness, and the “Cheney Administration” appears to be immune to shame, but let’s be realistic. They’ve learned from previous Administrations.

Hell, this shamelessnees goes back before Watergate to Welch and McCarthy’s “decency” exchange and maybe even before that.

One of the main problems progressives have is they have no idea how to manage armed conflict aside from being willing to appease any opposition so they aren’t called “the bad guys.”

Active battlefields require the absence of shame, and the Islamist fundies tagging us know this well.

One of the main problems conservatives seem to have is they can’t tell the difference between a shame-free active battlefield and civil society.
#8 Jeffery
July 4, 2007

Where was all this indignation when Mr. Clinton or Mr. Berger were caught red-handed? I think Kung Fu Monkey is right, the issue is shamelessness, and the “Cheney Administration” appears to be immune to shame, but let’s be realistic. They’ve learned from previous Administrations.

Hell, this shamelessnees goes back before Watergate to Welch and McCarthy’s “decency” exchange and maybe even before that.

Active battlefields require the absence of shame, and the Islamist fundies currently tagging us at home and abroad know this well. On an active battlefield, shame is a liability, and quite likely a fatal one.

One of the main problems today’s conservatives seem to have is they can’t tell the difference between a shame-free active battlefield and civil society.
#9 G
July 4, 2007

War is shameful; action coming from clarity doesn’t evoke shame. Killing is part of life, but killing someone for dimly-understood reasons, in the name of some vain idea like Jihad or Freedom, in obedience to a corrupt authority can only be shameful and stupid. The fundamentalists of the East and the soldiers of the West have self-righteousnes in common. This suppresses shame at the cost of their intelligence and humanity. As Jeffrey says, this is nothing new.

Don’t get caught up in the contextual fine points of hatred and madness because it can’t be resolved at that level: the context continually changes. The deep questions of religion and philosophy have been hijacked by idiots seeking consolation through the wielding and obeying of power. If intelligent people, disgusted by this, lose interest in the deep questions of life and instead waste their energies tinkering around the edges, their effect will always be on the margins. Intellectual debate that accepts 90% of the status quo won’t even change 10% of it. Accept nothing.

Ha ha, I’m not an experienced forum-poster and I’ve clicked onto this site, got interested what Kung Fu Monkey was saying, and come out with a lot of stuff tangential to the thread and probably the site. Sorry for the spiel, but it’s in earnest. I’ll shush now!
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