Believe me, I want to celebrate me some Fitzmas as much as the next guy- but I'm starting to get this eerie deja vu and I feel like it's October 2004 and there are a bunch of diaries about how John Kerry is about to send Bush back to Crawford....
Maybe it's because my football team is the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. Maybe it's because I'm the progeny of a naturally cynical and pessimistic dad. Who knows. But really, I caution everybody not to start the party yet on the Fitzgerald grand jury. I remember a few days ago, an insightful diarist posed this question, and I'm going to pose it again:
How many times have you thought "oh, we've got the bastards now!" only to see them wiggle free?
One reason this happens is that we get complacent. They may have dug themselves the grave, but we've got to fill it in for them. As opponents of the Bush administration and presumably supporters of justice, we've all- from the bottom to the top- got to remind people of how outrageous this is without appearing overly partisan about it. This won't be news unless we make it news.
The next thing we have to address is this: What do we want to get out of this? Right now, it seems to me that most of us, myself included, are motivated by schadenfreude. And oh, do we deserve to be. I will be cackling with glee just like the rest of you when (IF?) justice is served here. But we've got to think past that. We've got to tie this whole sorry mess in with Iraq, with FEMA, with the general lack of honesty and transparency that this white house and this party have brought to our government. Because if all we do is hoot and holler with glee, the majority of the country that are not quite as blue as us will just see a bunch of people dancing around a (well-earned) funeral pyre. We have to be saddened that this happened- and I mean genuinely. I know there's a component of my response that says "God, wouldn't it be great to get those smug bastards." But if i' a decent person, my true motivation has to be justice for the Plame outing and getting rid of these people who are so low and sleazy and destructive to what America has built.
End of sermon. Rest assured, I don't want to ruin anyone's Fitzmas. But a watched pot never boils. And one should never count one's chickens before they hatch. And I'm sure i could think of a third folksy aphorism but it's late. I just don't want us all to awaken on Fitzmas morning to the proverbial socks and underwear, that's all :)