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Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Corruption log/pass: metafilter A proposed corollary to "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely": "Absence of oversight of one's actions and lack of accountability for them vastly increases one's power." Give enough men power without accountability and some will abuse it to the detriment of the rest. You can set your watch by it, no psychohistory required. Are we, as a country, so stupid to have forgotten the lessons of millenia, the fixed laws of human conduct? "Well," some say, "nothing has gone wrong yet, so why all the hubbub?" It's as though the entire fabric of our nation, the rule of law, civil liberties, government for and by the consent of the governed has suddenly become superfluous. In practice, then, America's freelance warriors are free to misbehave--and to escape the consequences. When a number of DynCorp employees working in Bosnia were recently found to be running a sex-slavery ring, the Army's Criminal Investigation Division dropped its inquiry after determining the men fell outside of its jurisdiction. U.S. courts proved to be similarly impotent, and the fragile, corrupt Bosnian legal system did no better. Similarly, if Karzai's new bodyguards decide to flout the law in Afghanistan, a nation with ample opportunity for profiteering and corruption, there is very little that anyone--Karzai, the Pentagon, or U.S. courts--will be able to do about it. This is to say nothing about the 'disappearing' of Bush I/Reagan presidential papers, Bush II's refusal to hold press conferences, the administration's directive to thwart FOIA requests, the Energy Commission coverup, etc., etc., etc. Where is our goddamned press corps? It is not necessary to prove ill intent to demonstrate that removing restrictions on government power and secrecy is unacceptable and asking for trouble. via Metafilter Edit: I can't spell. Wednesday, November 06, 2002
Tim Dunlop, from The Road to Surfdom, has an absolutely brillliant analysis of the election that includes this sentence: How would American politics change if the actual President had to do what they pay Ari Fleischer to do? Go read it now. Giddyap Horse! I'm deeply grateful to Media Whores Online for all the long hours of sleuthing they(?) put in, and for their valiant efforts to push the other side back, even if it's just a bit. They had some items today that have me scratching my head though" But do not adopt the media whore/Naderite narrative: Democrats lost because they don't stand for anything, and Tuesday proved they must move to the left in order to energize their base. That sounds like exactly what we need to be doing. If we don't move left, we're in the mushy center, which is practically the definition of not standing for anything. The problem for Democrats was not that more would have been motivated to vote if only Democrats had opposed war with Iraq more strongly or proposed repealing the disastrous Bush tax cuts, the consequences of which are not yet clear to most. While most Americans are uncertain about war with Iraq, it was not an exploitable issue by itself. The truth is, Tuesday's characteristically pathetic voter turnout supports the point that most Americans don't care at the moment whether it happens or not, and they couldn't be made to care in time. As for proposing a repeal of tax cuts - vigorously opposing them before they take place is a winning position, repealing them isn't. Repealing that god-awful insult of a tax cut isn't a winning position? I beg your pardon? It wasn't all that long ago we could energize people by saying something like 'they're gonna take your money and give it to, of all people the rich! America, is that what you want?' With repetition and coordination, it would have sunk in and won us a lot of races. Yes, this debacle of an election is the media's fault. But it's our fault as well, and we need to drastically change the way we do things in the Democratic party, not diddle around with how to phrase things to make them palatable to the electorate. If we have to drag American voters, kicking and screaming to chose their own interests, so be it. Otherwise, let's just give up and leave the fray to Nader. |