The Purloined Constitution

[davidswanson]

Or How to Look Only Forward and Still Look Like an Ass

The wonderful thing about big lies is their kettle logic. The term, of course, derives from the story of the man who offered several mutually incompatible excuses for returning his friend's kettle in damaged condition: "It broke too easily." "It was like that when I got it." "I improved it for you." "I never borrowed the thing." Et cetera. A big lie is not just a beautiful creation because the bigger you make it the more firmly people believe in it, but also because you can tell other big lies to make the same point and the lies don't have to make any sense in combination.

One big lie in circulation at the moment is that we don't know whether Bush, Cheney, Rummy, et alia, committed any actual crimes. Some people believe this, but they believe it in the sense in which one "believes in" a big lie, as one "believes in" a religion. If people actually believed it as an ordinary fact, then they would have to either advocate investigating the topic or determine that it simply didn't matter whether the Cheney-Bush gang had committed crimes or not. Here's Barack Obama: "Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it." He believes in the idea that there is doubt, but he's not ready to either pursue the matter or to claim it's unimportant.

A second big lie is that the toughest deterrence possible against future crimes is produced by simply learning the facts about past crimes. This lie has been spread by countless sources. Here's Joe Biden's version: "Personally I would like to know exactly what happened because -- more of a past is prologue kind of thing. I would like to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Torture is going to be a major issue. Torture is going to be a major issue. … And so all that's going to be reviewed." If people believed this in the ordinary sense of belief, they would have to support replacing all police, prosecutors, and jailers with videographers and reporters. And they would have to advocate investigating any crimes they didn't already know about but leaving alone any crimes they already knew about -- the ones they'd already determined they didn't want to see happen again. Because you can't very well want to deter the repetition of something until you've already learned what it was.

A third big lie is that the appropriate way to handle crises created by criminal activity is to ignore the criminality and focus on solving the crises. This is described by thousands of its advocates as "looking forward." Here's Obama: "I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve." And here's Biden: "The questions of whether or not a criminal act has been committed…is something the Justice Department decides….That's a decision I'd look to the Justice Department to make." While stating he was "not ruling it in and not ruling it out," Biden underscored that he and Obama are "focusing on the future." "I think we should be looking forward, not backwards." If this passed the smell test, people would smash store windows, calmly make off with expensive goods and coolly advise the cops to focus on the future replacement of the window glass.

A fourth big lie is so huge that it's buried invisibly in the preceding paragraph. It is the claim that Democrats need to work with Republicans. The Democrats are an overwhelming majority in terms of public support with significant majorities in both houses of Congress and possession of the White House. If Democrats did not want Republican senators to be able to filibuster any bills, they would take one or more of the following steps: change the number of votes required for a filibuster, appoint one or more Republican senators from states with Democratic governors to cabinet positions or ambassadorships (aside from the Secretary of Labor nominee, it's not as if they could be much worse than the current cabinet selections), or give Washington, D.C., voting representation in both houses of Congress.

Edgar Allen Poe told of a purloined letter effectively hidden by conspicuously placing it in plain sight. Our Constitution and the very idea of the rule of law now find themselves in a similar situation. There are variations, of course, on the idea of the rule of law. Often the judicial and penal systems are viewed as purely backward looking. For example, many people favor the death penalty in full awareness that it lowers, rather than increasing, deterrence of future crimes and eliminates the possibility of restitution or restoration. But an ethical system of criminal punishment, which indeed looks forward, still deals in every single case with crimes that have happened in the past. To ignore crimes that are in the past is to ignore all crimes, and therefore to permit all crimes in the future.

The corporate punditocracy puts on a show of wondering whether crimes have been committed, while Bush and Cheney are on videotape confessing to authorizing torture, Bush is on videotape confessing to violating FISA, Bush is on videotape being warned about Hurricane Katrina and on videotape swearing he was not, the evidence that Bush and Cheney lied the nation into an illegal war is already public and beyond dispute, and at the same time that great minds ponder whether the water torture is really torture the common Bush-Cheney technique of beating the shit out of someone and breaking their bones is being employed against a guy who threw his shoes at the president.

The purloinedness of Bush's violations of law was developed in a manner that would have astounded Poe when Bush ordered the creation of "legal opinions" supporting the violation of laws, such as those against torture, engaged in torturing, signed into law new bills redundantly recriminalizing torture, wrote "signing statements" erasing the new laws as just signed, and went right on torturing without anyone's gaze drifting for an instant from a sharp focus on the latest bread and circuses. If Bush now takes the unprecedented step of pardoning the crimes he authorized, the big lie that this is neither unprecedented nor in conflict with maintaining any system of laws will seize us in its death grip.

But the bigger the lies, the harder they fall. The idea that there is some sort of doubt about Bush and Cheney's criminal records is collapsing rapidly. Support for the idea of actually enforcing laws is spreading as swiftly as at any time since Moses came off the mountaintop. And our next president is going to run hard up against the fact that failure to prosecute violations of treaties is itself a criminal violation of those same treaties. Protecting a predecessor is going to mean endangering, not protecting, yourself. Paradoxical but true, and only the truth has a chance of setting us free.

[Dragonfli]

1. Nothing at all I could add or disagree with. K&R

[Jim Sagle]

2. Not much to add, except to discuss how permanent Republican rule was established,

and how, or if, we can bring it down.

[bertman]

3. Sunday night a week ago I went to an Obama "house party" where anyone who had

signed on to the Obama website or the Obama transition team website was invited to help define the most important issues for our new President.

There were 25 of us present. We went around the room listing our priority issues. I was the only one who said that we need to investigate and prosecute the crimes and violations of the U.S. Constitution that have been committed by the Bush administration. And I got the argument from one woman that we would jeopardize President Obama's entire agenda if we "alienated" the Republicans in Congress.

There were actually two or three individuals who were supportive of my postition, but it did not become one of our group's priorities.

The lesson I took away from that meeting of committed Democrats was that we have become a nation that values its creature comforts and fringe benefits above its democracy. When we are willing to trade better health care or a greener environment for the rights and security afforded us by our constitution, we are acknowledging that we only pay lip service to our democratic (little d) ideals.

Either we are so ignorant of our heritage and the fragile state of our democracy, or we are so concerned with better roads and bridges and schools, that we are willing to trade the fascist tyrant we now have as a President for someone who will be a more benevolent leader but with the same options open to him as the current tyrant. This extreme lack of foresight will likely come back to haunt us in short order. But I sincerely hope not.

Thank you for another insightful post, David.

[Greyhound]

6. I'm sure that same meeting happened in homes all over ancient Rome too.

Just what are we trying to save anymore?

[KoKo]

9. That's been my experience with folks I know....

The meme is: "move on...there are bigger issues and Bush/Cheney will be gone and we need to focus on what can be done in the coming years." To press issues of accountably is greeted with an uncomfortable stare, and then silence. Without a media that isn't in the Laps of the PTB it's hard to get a groundswell for accountability. We have to hope the voices on the internet working for accountability can grow stronger and that something is done about our Media in the FCC. Whoever Obama appoints is key. I hope he doesn't let us down on this one.

[clear eye]

11. Where do you live?

I'm wondering where that attitude is so dominant among Democrats. On the Obama "Change" site, getting action on this administration's unconstitutional acts was the #3 priority in response to asking for suggestions for Obama's priorities and for votes on the suggestions. I'm a little isolated by living in most liberal downstate NY. (Despite the Wall St. NYC elites, downstate NY is still an order of magnitude more liberal than 'most everywhere else. Witness the Feb. 2003 outpouring against the upcoming Iraq war.)

[bertman]

12. I live in Chapel Hill, N.C., clear eye. It's a bastion of liberalism in a state that just barely

squeaked into the blue column in November--HOORAY for that!!!

There were other "house parties" that were designated as "appoint a Special Prosecutor" parties, but I could not go to them due to schedule conflicts, so I went to another one. Perhaps I would have felt better had I gone to one of the Special Prosecutor parties, but it was very disheartening to hear the silence of the lambs at our party.

Also, MoveOn.org just did a poll of issues among its members. Again no interest.

The only thing that gives me hope at this point is the realization that it only takes a tiny minority to affect major change with a complacent majority. I'm just counting on the tiny minority being us and not the neo-cons.

[Usrename]

4. I think you said it as clearly as it can be said.

Here's another interesting thing about torture and the big lie. I think that historically torture has always been used to create or reinforce the big lie. In the Spanish Inquisition, torture was used to prove that Satan walked the earth. Actual proof. Legal proof.

The current spate of torture doesn't seem to be any different when you take a close look. Sure, some people may think that torture is a way of terrorizing the public to keep them in line, a form of intimidation if you will. But it is much more than that.

Take the 9/11 Commission Report. I've posted about this http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2841686&mesg_id=2841967">before, but the gist of it all is that the waterboarding was used to create the evidence for the big lie that was told in their report. You know, the official story. We KNOW it isn't true. We know the Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI) sent Mohammad Atta money days before the attack. We know that there had to be someone on the inside for these guys to get past NORAD. We KNOW the story that was created by torturing these people until they either confessed or made outrageous claims and accusations is not the truth. It's all a big lie.

And I bet that most of the commissioners themselves believe their own lie. As the prophet Orwell once said: War is peace.

[davidswanson]

5. in the code of hamurabai

you throw someone in a river and if they drown they're guilty

that's where we come from, and i think you're right

but most of us have advanced somewhat

[Laelth]

7. My sig. line expresses my feelings about this matter.

Arrest, indict, convict, and imprison.

If Americans can't trust us to fight Republicans who shred the Constitution, how can they trust us to fight terrorists?

:dem:

-Laelth

[mmonk]

8. Somehow, the last two sentences need to be driven home

to and in the minds of the new administration.

[MasonJar]

10. Thank you again, Mr. Swanson, for once again standing tall for all of us.

What this country would do without great patriots like you is unimaginable. I just finished Bugliosi's book about the prosecution for W of murder. It too stands tall. Read it is you have not, DUers. It is imperative that Obama and his crew pursue these crimes against humanity. The attack on Iraq was comparable to the Holocast. That country, the cradle of civilization, has been virtually destroyed by our unprovoked attack. Irrespective of the damage to its infrastructure (which can eventually be repaireed), is the monumental destruction of its artifacts, representing the dawn of civilization, the deaths of possibly a million citizens, including children, even babies, the displacement or murder of the professional class, the total destruction for perhaps generations of women's rights, the destruction of the environment (through depleted uranium and other toxic substances) in which the generations to come must hope to survive, the murder of the leader of a country, which had done nothing to us in addition to many of his sons and subordinates, etc. Bushistas, may you burn in Hell. There is little doubt that you will if there is such an place. Now it is imperative that the American people insist on justice for these crimes or we are equally culpable, our new president included.