Scooter Libby's commutation

[xela]

I don't usually comment on American politics here. Not because I don't care but because I find it so dispiriting. The Bush administration has deliberately chosen to engage in outrage after outrage after outrage, so many outrages that people can't keep track. Torture, censoring scientists, lying to Congress to lead the country into war.... What's one more outrage amidst all that? So the Vice President's Chief of Staff commits perjury? So what? Commute his sentence, who cares? For most of us, a sort of outrage fatigue has set in. The kind of fatigue that makes you just yawn and flip the channel when you see the Attorney General on TV lying to Congress.

Except. Except, I remember when the Republicans broke out the solemn machinery of impeachment over President Clinton's "perjury" (a perjury claim no prosecutor in his right mind would have pursued). On what planet do you impeach a President for lying about a blowjob, and commute the sentence of a political hack who lied in the investigation of the leaking of a CIA agent's identity?

I can't even write coherently about this. I feel so sad for my country. And so ashamed. Even if we turned around tomorrow, the damage the Bushies have done will dog us for genertions. But we're not going to turn around tomorrow. The 2006 elections showed that: As conspicuous a disaster Republican rule was by then, the Democrats still barely took a majority in Congress. Because roughly half of my fellow countrymen were still happy to vote for them. And I don't see that changing.

Comments

[nakor.livejournal.com]

Not until the Democrats can demonstrate a wholly better image than the Republicans. That means that they need to be better, across the board, and show it in a believable way. They can't meet even the first and easier of those criteria today. They're only the lesser evil, and that's not enough.

What is?