An American court recently failed to reach a verdict on a torture case because the definition of torture had been rendered ambiguous. No, it hasn't, not if we take adherence to International Law seriously. If we go by the Yoo memos, the torture convention has been disemboweled, and words have lost their meaning. But then the US wouldn't have been subject to sanctions by the International Criminal Court in any event because we have not accepted the jurisdiction of that court.
Then came the testimony of Attorney General Michael Mukasey before Congress. Asked whether he regarded waterboarding to be an act of torture, he first hesitated, and then demurred on answering in the affirmative. This is a crime for which we had hanged Japanese military officers after WWII, at which time we had no doubt that waterboarding constituted torture.
In the 2008 Obama/McCain campaign, Obama was accused of being an acolyte of Reverend Wright, who could bring righteous condemnation down on US policy. That was not ok, even though both Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell had thundered in the same manner. Obama was likewise accused of being a follower of Bill Ayres. And finally he was thought to be a Muslim. Given Bill Ayers atheism, the three projections ought to have been mutually exclusive. But Obama could be disliked for all three reasons at the same time! One of them would surely turn out to have been right. This was 'guilt by association' without any inhibition by countervailing evidence.
President Trump decided to take us out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran. This he did not have the right to do. The JCPOA had been ratified by the United Nations Security Council, and as such had risen to the status of International Law. It was binding on all UN members. The agreement could not be abrogated by a single party. And yet the US government not only stepped out of the agreement, it initiated sanctions against other parties to the agreement that were abiding by it. We are witnessing the spectacle of the rogue Trump regime sanctioning law-abiding countries. The fact that Trump had rendered International law mute did not even rise to the level of controversy within our major media. That is how far we have sunk.
Then consider the Kavanaugh hearings. Brett Kavanaugh quite clearly perjured himself in his testimony, and he did so in a manner that bore close resemblance to the case of Bill ("It depends on what the meaning of is is") Clinton. Both dissembled on matters of sex under oath. In one case, it was deemed to merit removal of a President, whereas in the other it was dismissed as an irrelevance, even though a judgeship on the Supreme Court sets a high bar for ethical standards.
But there was more. There was the faking of an FBI investigation. And there was the mutilation of the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford. For that ordeal to have been an act would have called for the talents of a top Hollywood actor. This was no act. This was no fabrication. This was a public service in the most noble sense, and it was duly punished. Shame on the small-minded men who participated in that act of personal destruction.
Finally we come to the matter of impeachment. The particulars don't need to be recounted, but collectively we witnessed reality turned on its head. This was done in the service of the Unitary Executive, of the imperial Presidency. The power of impeachment had to be neutered, and it was. But there was more. There was that matter of the symbiotic relationship between Trump and Roger Ailes' creation, the Fox Amen corner. Once roused, the base had to be appeased. A secret ballot would have gone differently, according to Jeff Flake.
Perhaps in reflection on Joseph Stalin's dictum on voting ("It is not a matter of whose votes count, but of who counts the votes"), Berthold Brecht once said bitterly: "It has come time for the government to dissolve the people and to elect another." Roger Ailes effectively pulled that off. The tyrant merely needs to keep his base united and the opposition divided.
What is even more depressing about all this is the cynicism that prevails, the contempt in which Fox Nation is held even among its creators. Rush Limbaugh is slightly incredulous that his "schtick" is still working. Challenged on the issue that people like being informed, Roger Ailes countered that people 'like the feeling of being informed,' a lower bar that is more readily subject to manipulation. Another Fox executive referred to "stirring up the crazies."
When words lose their shared meaning, we are in Tower of Babel territory. We will have become as 'sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.' What has historically set our nation apart is its ideals. Our greatest inheritance from the Founding Fathers has been the constraints they placed on the exercise of centralized political power---separation of powers at the top, and protection of individual human rights at the bottom. All this is now at grave risk with the emergence of an extreme factionalism that is taking us to winner-take-all politics. Left to themselves, matters will not get better. An intervention by the citizenry is mandatory. The national divide must be healed, and under present circumstances that can only occur from the bottom up.
"If you want to know who rules you, just ask whom you may not criticize." Voltaire
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness." Carl Sagan
"The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; they are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world." James Baldwin
"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them .... You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good." -- Harold Pinter, in his 2005 Nobel acceptance speech
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