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so wait.
first off, i doubt seriously that anyone is actually surprised by this action.
second: what is with the conservative-set resurfacing at this particular moment in order to outline the limbaugh-esque relativism thing? you know, whatever bush has done can be balanced against action x done by clinton such that everything is ok----as if in the last remaining theater in conservativeland there is a film running that outlines a series of imaginary injustices---the film only plays for conservative crowds, whcih get smaller and smaller every day--and this film is the basis for all conservative judgments about libby, the trial, its meaning and that of cowboy george's commutation of the prison term.
in threads here about the fiction of "illegal immigration" you see conservative shrieking about how undocumented workers "break the law" and so are necessarily Alien Other Bad...so when it comes to the poor, conservatives are sticklers for the trappings of legality...but when it comes to the actions of the bush administration, the terrain suddenly transforms and anything goes...anything at all...and why is that? because the film says that clinton did x and so cowboy george gets to do -x and there we are.
in responses to the bushpartialcommuntation in various papers, you get the same division of positions: the conservativeset uses the same fucking arguments in every last place. marc rich's name comes up in post after post.
what is amazing is the emptiness of this momentary surge amongst the inhabitants of conservativeland, emboldened to stray from beneath the rock they have been hiding under since november. the rationale? "o boy those lefties are pissed. it is a good time to be a conservative."---this speaks to a truly adolescent sensibility, doesnt it?
what's the argument behind it?
the argument is: "nyah nyah."
there is one interesting additional element, though: the virus that is far right ideology has been institutionalized in the legal system and so the bushwork is in a sense done...and now as lameduck or dronebee after mating with the queen, cowboy george slips, spent of precious bodily fluids, into a kind of dotage and the gratitude the felt by the far right for institutionalizing their backwater politics is expressing itself in a displaced form via cheerleading for liddy/libby.
this is one of the sources of real and lasting damage that the backwater politics of the american far right can do and continue to do.
well this and the debacle of a war in iraq...between the two, the right has left the credibility of the american system in shambles all the while hallucinating that they defend that system. and so it is that folk find themselves in iraq defending "democracy" american style by imposing it incoherently on a society they do not understand because their leader did not think it necessary to understand it just as it was seen as unnecessary to have a fucking plan.
and there is nothing to be done: the american system does not allow for anything to be done.
paralysis is what we have.
paralysis is all there is.
yay america.
then we have the rationale floated by cowboy george for his action: the sentence was "excessive" and george all merciful (when it comes to wealthy, politically allied white men, who are of course the only people who matter).
the claims behind this amount to a wholesale whitewashing of the entire plame affair in a manner consistent with rightwing talkingpoints of the past 3 years. nothing major was involved. why? well clinton did x, y, z....
a pathetic state of affairs.
von trier was right in dogville. the us is a gangster state. the only thing to be done is to burn it down. the error he made was in imagining that it would require someone outside the system to light the fire. it turns out that the far right attempts to defend/remake the system have already done that.
a fucking pathetic state of affairs.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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