Or struggling to emerge from the Dark Ages, the Bush years. All of this debate, Glen Greenwald, Dan Froomkin, dailykos, over torture, is the healthy sign of a democracy struggling to emerge from dark times, to fully come to life. Obama made his contribution, when he recently said there may be, could be investigations, and ultimately, prosecutions, over the torture issue. Now that he's trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle is a sure sign many in positions of power are uncomfortable with this open debate. But it isn't unusual for the American citizenry to advocate for a more open democracy than its leaders are willing to concede.
State secrets, secret decisions are nothing new to our, in my view, still fledgling democracy. Back room deals are nothing new either. Take Max Bauchus. The first question posed to President Obama in yesterday's Townhall meeting, had to do with single payer health care, as in, why is it off the table, and why is Bauchus, who has received quite a bit of money from the pharmaceutical industry, overseeing discussion on this issue? Yes, the sounds of democracy struggling to come fully to life after the Bush, sounds like a "Patriot Act", ice ages. It wasn't that long ago when all of the major, 24hour news channels relied on pop culture for much of their headlines. Now they are all debating...torture, and should evidence of it be a secret or not.
That Dick Cheney feels he has to take to the airwaves for damage control, is a sign that you all are making an awful lot of noise...I bet he would like nothing better than to retire to some think tank. He's having to take to the airwaves to keep alive his neocon philosophy, because it is under attack, by you, by your insistence on no state secrets.
"Great" presidents can and do stumble badly. President Roosevelt left segregation in our neighborhoods intact in the creation of New Deal policy that allowed the FHA to redline neighborhoods where African Americans/Mexicans lived. White homeowners, terrified of losing the property values of their homes, were encouraged to fear and hate African Americans by American institutional pressures. The real estate industry played no small role in this, as it lobbied Washington, made backroom deals, accrued appointments, and made life miserable for those African Americans fighting, and desperate for housing, and those eager and willing to reform housing policy.
"Fear" is a factor in many very bad decisions. Roosevelt said "There is nothing to fear but fear itself", yet he was afraid to tackle the issue of segregation head on, leaving it for a Civil Rights movement to do so decades later.
When it comes to transparency and openness, the true hallmarks of a healthy democracy, this is where we must brush aside fear. There are no excuses for "state secrets", because that belief itself is a kind of domino effect; make one decision "secret", and it is that much easier to conceal another, and another and another. Give into one lobby, and you open the door for many, Max Bauchus, to have a deleterious effect on our democracy.
If you are one of those who challenges this administration, on a daily basis, to become more open and transparent, keep it up. Don't let anyone fool you. Democracy is made stronger with all of this debate and even quarrel. It is when people stop debating, and hide their opinions, along with the government hiding its "state secrets", that the real danger emerges.