It Means: Trust Us.
It's now very clear ( despite the concerted, press-abetted, election-year coverup) that the President casually used some of the most sensitive information the government holds -- the NOC status of WMD operative Valerie Plame -- in a clumsy attmept to smear a critic. So far he has paid no price for having done this. So what compunction would he and his cronies have about using any personal information, obtained in any manner, against any private citizen they fear or dislike? Why
wouldn't they?
The Usual Suspects
So ChoicePoint, the same people who disenfranchised enough black voters for W to steal the Florida election, has the multibillion-dollr contracts to do the data-mining within the mountains of phone records. Not really a problem.
The Bush administration could apparently put up the permanent steel gallows between the camp kitchen and the crematoria and the major networks would still be abuzz with idiots talking about how this death-camp thing is a "legal gray-area." Then they would report that 63% of Americans think this is acceptable or necessary to the War on Terror. We didn't really defeat the Nazis -- so much as
absorb them.
Freaky Friday
Let's see now... the same big telecommunications companies that want to privatize the internet and start charging bloggers and e-mailers money and filtering the content they or their overlords don't like are the same ones who, at the bequest of the Bush administration have been illegally turning over our phone records to the NSA, and therefore too, to Karl Rove and his Dirty Tricks Detail. Could there be some sort of linkage here?
At this point there really isn't much more to say. If you're not outraged by these evil fucks you're an asshole.
Mission Accomplished Day, plus Three Years
W's administration is absolutely post-ironic, of course, and so when one turns attention towards the White House, the moral compass spins wildly, finding irony in every direction -- none of it intended or noticed by those responsible. The famous Mission Accomplished stunt is the epitomal instance. When W was deposited like the prop he is on the deck of the carrier off San Diego, the previously-stated goals in Iraq had not been accomplished, nor of course have they now, or are they likely to ever be. But the unstated goal -- to distract the electorate from the repugnance and incompetence at the White House (and everywhere its appointees went), for just long enough to ensure a second term --
had indeed been accomplished.
The grand overarching irony of W's reign is grand indeed; it's almost metaphysical. One of W's greatest failings is his tendency to see things in Manichean terms, in black and white -- 'You're with us, or you're with the terrorists.' But he has proved so blatantly mendacious, malicious, unscrupulous and cowardly that he has nearly brought into being the binary moral system he hallucinates. There is no longer any middle ground; those who support, or remain indifferent to George Bush are guilty at the very least of moral
negligence, and to the degree they support him guilty even of moral
turpitude. We all have friends and relatives in this condition; they may not be despicable, or evil people, but they are certainly
wrong.
