Law and Order

Tooling around the blogowhozits today, I recognized in the general sense of rage and injustice regarding Libby several dozen arguments which had half-formed in my own mind over the last 24 hours, many of them having gestated for as long as 6 or 7 Bush-addled years prior to that.

Glenn Greenwald had a typically astute post, which included a few lines highlighting the hypocrisy of fake tough guy Fred Thompson for calling for the application of the rule of law in one breath, and advocating a full pardon for Libby in the next. Thompson, of course, is famous for his role on the TV show Law and Order. Greenwald's post made me realize that, as between the two, the authoritarian cult that props up the Bush Cheney regime will opt for Order every time. And if that Order includes the privileges of rank and class for the select few, so much the better.

Lots of folks thought of Karla Faye Tucker:

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them", he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.

So I'm guessing Scooter didn't whimper, "Please, don't send me to prison."

Lots of other folks said, hey, isn't it a little fucked up that there's a whole bunch of guys in Guantanamo and elsewhere who haven't been charged with anything, given access to counsel, or been subject to any kind of recognizable judicial process, and who are, quite literally, dying for the chance to even have some kind of sentence to challenge or serve, and this clown walks free?
Andrew Sullivan, to his everlasting credit, was all over this all day (he even refused to apologize for "going cable" on it), and at one point even called for open rebellion against the government. (Gotta love the British Guy Fawkes tradition.)

Sullivan is a big Orwell fan, but it was The Blogger Formerly Known As Wonkette who summed it all up in epigrammic form. Here's her entire initial post on the subject:

Bush has commuted Libby's sentence.

Some animals are more equal than others.

It's almost a haiku.

I have read 1984 probably half a dozen times. I view it as a cautionary tale of a dystopian alternate reality. Dick Cheney views it as a handbook. Damn, that Big Brother was on the right track, he thinks.

All of this Libby crap is terrible, and may well be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back for a lot of people. But it might represent something far more ominous, and it was local heroes PSoTD who were the first, to my knowledge, to get it on to the intertubes:

Wonder if they'll turn over the White House in 2009? Who's gonna make 'em?

I pretty much drive to work at the same time, more or less, every day, and so I see a lot of the same cars most of the time. There's one that has a bumper sticker that says January 20, 2009: The End of an Error. Every time I see it, which is most days, I think, Yeah, well, we'll see. Because I have been saying for a long time, at first half-jokingly, then gradually with more alarm, that there's simply not going to be an election for president in 2008. Who's gonna make 'em, indeed?

Yeah, yeah, I know: one tin foil hat, size 7 1/4, please. But how's this for a concise summary of the Bush Cheney administration:

This is great. I always wanted to live in a rustic Third World country. But thanks to Bush, now I don't even have to move!

Torture? Political prisoners? A lack of civil liberties? Leaders who consider themselves above the law? Cronyism and corruption? Total incompetence at every level?

Now we've got it all! Woohoo! In your face, Uganda!

It's funny, because it's true. But all joking aside, is it really so hard to envision "cancelled elections" on that list? It would be absurdly easy to pull off, much easier than some of the stuff on the list above. Can't you just hear the Address to the Nation, in prime time, around the end of October, 2008? Just cobble together some of Bush's Greatest (s)Hits, and you're pretty much there:

...tonight, troops in harm's way...
...decisive ideological struggle of our time...
...fate of western civilization hangs in the balance...
...enemies of freedom...
...non-specific but credible threats...
...seeking to harm us...
...threaten our way of life...
...hate us for our freedoms...
...lessons of September 11th...
...protect the American people...
...time of war...
...extraordinary measures...
...great power comes great responsibility...
...it is with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy. I love the Republic. Once this crisis has abated, I will lay down the powers you have given me...

OK, that last one was from Attack of the Clones. But still, isn't this the natural extension of everything that's happened over the last 7 years, beginning, appropriately enough, with a stolen highly irregular election? The 2004 election had some, uh, irregularities as well. It might be the last one we see. It has happened before: Rome, post-revolutionary France, uh, probably some other places (like Dubya, I wasn't much of a history student in school). And more to the point, who's gonna make 'em? Sure, the Law says we gotta have an election, but again, the Fred Thompsons of the world will give it right up for Order -- sweet, glorious Order. In fact, I would bet that any of the likely Republican candidates for president (Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, maybe even McCain) would graciously agree to "temporarily" postpone the election in order to help the president Keep Us Safe From The Terrorists. (Whether any of the likely Dems would play along is, sadly, an open question.)

I don't believe there is any master plan to this. For one thing, these guys aren't that smart. Commuting Libby's sentence is not the double reverse pike position insert slot A into tab B kamikaze tango step that keeps this plan in inexorable motion. Karl Rove didn't draw this up back in Austin while Dubya was still knocking back Jack and cokes. They take their opportunities where they can, but all with one goal in mind: the accumulation of absolute power for its own sake. It corrupts. Absolutely.

Tomorrow is July 4th. It is time to dust off the Declaration of Independence, which in large part consists of a list of grievances against the king and his unjust exercise of power. Many of them are depressingly familiar. You know what the colonists did in response, even if, like the president, you were a C+ student in history.