"Serious People" and Events

A great man has died. Forget the obituary: It's this interview and these dorky Prisoner fan questions that really get to the center of the man. He's apparently as intense in real life as he was as Number 6. But could there be any better compliment to the man's work than this:




"Serious people in our politics..."
Now here's democracy in action, and where your vote really matters, although the list is nowhere near comprehensive...

And also this gem, following up on Tuesday's post (These people are so very predictable, banal even). From Murdoch's Wall Street Journal:

To the extent the Libby prosecution distracted the White House staff, consumed its working hours, eroded personal savings on lawyers, and inevitably pitted the president's aides against each other, the strategy worked.

Strategy? Mr. Henninger must be referring to the inexpensive furor over former president Clinton's demonstrative "abuse of power" in receiving oral sex at the White House, and the two-year witch hunt that ensued...

Or, maybe not.

Although Henninger is, after all, a "serious person," and like all those "serious" "realists," many of whom argue for John Q. Public to forget about torture and war crimes (Just move on, despite all the truly pragmatic, constitutional reasons for prosecution), he advises we should all really just concede that clemency for Mr. Libby would be most prudent...For the good of the country...and...heal the wounds of the...and...hiccup...beer me-----please!

What was the supposed motivation to impeach Clinton, again? Something akin to: "It's about law and order," and "abuse of power," "nobody is above the law," "proper checks and balances," "the Constitution is much too important for us to neglect its principles"-----and all those types of radical, idealist notions. Republicans back then were sermonizing like the ACLU atop Mount Sinai.

And so it must be true today that these "serious people" still agree with those principles, I'm sure, even though ejaculation is not at issue.

Serious people in our politics, Republicans and Democrats, would understand that a Bush pardon of Scooter Libby is mainly about closing some of the worst wounds of these long war years...These were hard years, and required hard decisions. It's time to let Scooter Libby get back to work. Like the rest of Washington.

Yes, "serious people," indeed: The four and a half years probing into Clinton----and yielding NO convictions of any sort----resulted in a price tag of $80 million to taxpayers, according to the Government Accounting Office (Four independent counsels and inquiries total!). But hey, pardoning Libby would close "some of the worst wounds of these long war years." Um, where have we heard that before? (Incidentally, Ford modestly portrayed himself as a courageous hero for the pardoning of Tricky Dick).

Speaking of Nixon, the brand-spankin' new release of Kissinger's conversations with various denizens of power is downright riveting. In case one starts thinking illegal wiretapping was invented by the Republicans in Bush the Younger's administration, think again:

On the illegal wiretap scandal in June 1973, Nixon threatened to go to political war with Democrats if they pressed the issue. “Lets get away from the bullshit,” Nixon stated angrily. “Bobby Kennedy was the greatest tapper.” The President even suspected his own phone had been wiretapped in the early 1960s. “[J.Edgar Hoover] said Bobby Kennedy had [the FBI] tapping everybody. I think that even I’m on that list,” President Nixon told Kissinger. When Nixon noted that the wiretap scandal would “catch some of your friends,” Kissinger responded: “Well, I wouldn’t be a bit unhappy.”

Evidently, Mr. Nixon was wrong about Bobby Kennedy, as he was with most things.

But it is fascinating how even mundane glimpses into historical moments and figures can be just as revealing as the explosive stuff. With public servants like Nixon, Kissinger, Bush, etc., intoxicated with state power, it really could be the "banality of evil" that makes it so pervasive, and explains its intractable (re)manifestations in our state policies and actions. After all, there must be an "absence of the imaginative capacities" in many of the so-called "serious," "thinking" people, those apologists for modern-day torture (or the indiscriminate bombing of places like Laos and Cambodia, or the razing of Dresden and other non-military, civilian targets during WWII, and so on), that simply doesn't render these "activities tangible." And then there's our standard opinion-maker, who for all his highly-acclaimed intelligence and "expertise," cannot exercise any "capacity of thinking, of having an internal dialogue with himself" that would lead to a "self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds"-----namely, excusing inhumanity.

Becuase that just isn't "serious" enough.