There is a strong tendency within communities of the like-minded to indulge in knee-jerk criticism of sanctioned enemies. Fortunately Keith Olbermann's Special Comment has not devolved into such safe and pointless entertainment of the choir. He has again and again called out positions not only of principle but of real practical significance, as opposed to the convenient fudging our political leaders employ as a matter of course. In his latest Special Comment, he's done it again.
He's come out and said what needed to be said: that President Obama is wrong, principally and practically, in his now entirely predictable call for the nation to move on without benefit of a cathartic process of legally redressing the wrongs of the past eight years.
Video over the fold...
I find it fascinating to watch, particularly given my sense of certainty that Obama will not be moved to change course. How to resolve the innate sense that justice must be done with the certainty that it won't be? Can a convincing argument that justice is unnecessary be made?
This is the question that's dogged me over the past few months, as Obama has repeatedly chosen to offer nothing more than scripted, impersonal, rhetorical punishment for crimes which have bankrupted our financial system, mired us in generational military conflicts and destroyed national principles of privacy, due process and essential human rights. (On a similar note, the King of Swamp Castle, attempting to ameliorate the rampage of the very brave, and dangerous, Sir Lancelot, said: "Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who.")
It's a deeply troubling pattern that sounds very much like the situation that unnamed Bush aide predicted for Ron Suskind, in which the Reality Based Community - satisfied in its sense of sober judgment - is left forever cleaning up the realities the empire creates on the ground without regard for any principle beyond power. Always a step behind because it is never willing to confront the past and so clearly look ahead and see the future.
Perhaps a belief in the necessity of justice is an idealistic stance to take in politics. But then, perhaps sometimes the right thing to do is actually the right thing to do.
Epilogue:
As stated, I see no reason to believe President Obama will become convinced by the necessity of justice. As far as I can tell - and there have been a host of similar situations already - such behavior would be counter to a pattern of engagement firmly established in him. He would never have gotten to where he is were he other wise; and i don't honestly believe he'd last long were he to take this moment to change. Corruption makes the world go round, and pity the man who tries to stop that spinning.
So my point is not to express anger or dissatisfaction with our President, though on some level i am angry and dissatisfied... if only because I Want to Believe and can't. Rather, my thinking dwells on what strikes me as the irrefutable existence of this great unresolved - and apparently unresolvable - crisis in our country: the crisis of injustice beyond justice. More than torture, or wiretapping, or fraudulent war, or the systematic crimes of high finance, injustice beyond justice is the signature of our times. The most powerful are simply beyond the law. Too big to fail.
So, given that, does justice really matter?
Olbermann's Special Comment suggests it does; that more than mere idealistic principle, justice is of essential practical (if not obvious) importance: because grave injustice not confronted becomes the foundation of future injustice, perhaps by the very same people returned to power.
I, personally, don't believe that a society in which injustice is effectively accepted at the highest levels can be well. I agree with Olbermann. Perhaps we're both misapplying personal ethics to a grand scale. Even if injustice has been the historical norm, this degenerative slide has got to end somewhere. A reckoning must come, and real change, real reconciliation, lies beyond that point. Till then, it seems to me all we're really doing is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Stimulus package or no.