Appeasing the Jaguar Gods of Political Discourse

The Rude Pundit on the tendency of the American public to drive with its eyes closed.

In a perfect world, crimes ought to be judged on their own intrinsic harm, whistleblowers' lives and motives ought to be insignificant, and the evil ought to be punished. Nixon had to be dragged up to the Capitol Rotunda and, before the statue of George Washington, sliced open, his cold guts spilled on the floor, like a worthless sacrifice at the end of Mayan civilization. We had to believe the gods needed to be appeased. We had to believe they were appeased. We were wrong, just as the Mayans were wrong to believe the crops would flourish because virgin blood nourished the earth and a heart was burned in honor of absent deities.

There's many reasons why the Downing Street Memo has gotten so little attention in America beyond Left Blogsylvania, despite the fact that it says that the Bush administration "fixed" the intelligence around its desire to bomb the living shit out of Iraq, "fixed" it like a cheap mafia thug fixes a warehouse boxing match. We could point to the corporate media, the post-Rather memo fake-out, and more. But remember: the Pentagon Papers were published in the middle of 1971. Nixon still got over 60% of the popular vote and 520 electoral votes in 1972.

The Rude Pundit thinks this: the American public, in growing numbers, knows in its heart that they've been lied to, just like in Vietnam, and that Americans are being killed for those lies, just like in Vietnam. But fear is a powerful thing: deep, psychological, repressed fear - that if the truth is not held back, then the monsters of anarchy must be unleashed. It is better to take down a President for something a great deal more prosaic than war crimes and mass murder. Because what does it say about us if our leader is guilty of such things?

Which is why the Rude Pundit believes, hopes beyond rational hope, that other 'Gates are going to develop around George W. Bush, 'Gates that will move in tighter and tighter until they become increasingly strangling. And that's why this is a very interesting little development in the Jack Abramoff scandal: it seems that the White House was allowed to be used to fundraise for Abramoff's and Grover Norquist's various causes/pocketbooks.

Ahhh, the sweet relief of dirty money. Now there's something we can actually get our heads around.