I see yet another diary is on the rec list about the Holy Glenn Greenwald and his eternal outrage that we're all not as pissed at Obama as we were at Bush.
Greenwald's self-righteous rants are old hat at this point.
- Barack Obama is "just like Bush" because he won't investigate war crimes (ignoring the fact that these very crimes occurred under Bush, not Obama's administration)
- Anyone who isn't as outraged at Obama as they were at Bush over these issues is an "Obama Loyalist" or an "Obama Cultist" or any of the other of Greenwaldian Holier-than-Thou litanies of pseudo intellectual consistency
- The fact that anyone defends Obama on the grounds that he is a good person is a "follower" who lacks the perfect intellectual purity of the Holy Greenwald and his flock.
Well I'm sick of it. What Greenwald calls "Obama Loyalism" I call living in the real world.
As with rightwing cultlike flock leaders like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, Greenwald's endless whines are always, at their core, about Glenn Greenwald and the "purity" of his belief system.
The world is complex and flawed and incomplete and tragic, but the Cultist, be it L. Ron Hubbard, Glenn Beck with his chalkboard, or Glenn Greenwald with his "consistent outrage," offers the pleasures of the reduction of the complex into the system.
In the Greenwald logic system, the magic, shining "rule of law" is always there to guide us. To answer all decisions, even on the global stage. The details of these laws, their interpretation, is of course the subtext the Cult Leader then uses to guide the flock to his agenda once they've bought in that:
- The world is complex
- The system being offered will answer all questions.
This is where Greenwald fails the Left.
He offers the "purity of the law" with the dextrous duplicity of a lawyer making his case. Underneath his fealty to some objective standard lies the political agenda of a prosecutor.
But lets cut the bullshit. This has nothing to do with the law, and everything to do with the cult of Glenn Greenwald.
It is the subtext of narcissism. Legal rants not about improving the government or making better policy or getting better politicians elected, but about Glenn Greenwald demonstrating that he, and he among the rabble, has the Strangelovian "purity of essence" to resist the real world pollution of his perfect, glowing, intellectual consistency.
He claims fealty to the magical higher ideal -- that all crimes must be prosecuted, that there is some perfect legal framework that covers any and all issues in the world, and that no amount of resources can ever be spared in pursuit of this magical and wholly perfect "justice."
It sounds great.
Like waving a flag at a Tea Party and shouting about believing in the "Constitution" and "Freedom," the endless sloganeering of Mr. Greenwald tugs at the heartstrings.
Who doesn't want a perfect legal system that investigates and prosecutes any and all crimes learned about?
Who doesn't want equal justice for all?
And if we all turn on the Obama justice department because one decision didn't go the way Glenn Greenwald has determined it should, then so what if we take down the left and let right win?
If one case is not perfect, then the perfect holy ideals of Glenn Greenwald are offended.
And if any of us dare to suggest that the law is, and has never been, equal, perfect or complete, we are "loyalists" or "cultists" or Obamabots.
It is the defense of the cultist. There is only one logic system, and Glenn Greenwald has it. Anyone who argues otherwise is "corrupt," or "craven," or "inconsistent" to the Purity of Essence offered by the perfect consistency as defined by Dear Leader.
The facts, of course, are simply the tools of argument.
Greenald LaRouchian Cult's endless rants and whines that serve no purpose and further no political goal other than self-congratulatory narcissism.
They are the toots of the self congratulatory law school student. The tweets of an idealism that is as wholly destructive as the very "inconsistencies" they see in every real world move Barack Obama makes that isn't 100% consistent with some third grade textbook "law = prosecution" formula.
They fail to account for the limitations of resources in prosecuting any crime. The hard decisions made in a complex world. The fact Obama inherited a shitstorm of legal collapse from Bush, and has to make some very hard decisions to get us out of that mess.
And yes, this means Obama will make some decisions to hold combatants without a trial because Bush screwed up the evidence gathering and Gitmo was so corrupt that he's left with no choice.
It would be easy for us to say that the "rule of law" compels an American president to follow a locked script in every case and in every decision. But this is idiotic.
In what world did this perfect law take place?
Many of us consider FDR the greatest American president. Didn't FDR intern Japanese Americans in one of the greatest American political disgraces of the 20th Century?
What do we make the ugliness of the blacklist of the 1950s? Should we have spent the 1960s prosecuting every civil rights violation that took place? We'd still be digging out of that legal mess today if we did.
At some point we have to "move on," whether it was Ken Starr shutting the government down, or asking Obama to tie up the justice department on legal cases against the Bushies that could possibly take years to dig out of.
But no.
To the Cult of Greenwald, there is the perfect, shining "Rule of Law," and like Jean Valjean, it must be pursued at all costs, no matter what, or we are lost in an existential abyss.
This is very disgrace of the Clinton perjury was not that Clinton commited a crime, but that Ken Starr ruined lives, spent millions and tied up the federal government on a witch hunt. Yet on Planet Greenwaldia, the Ken Starr justification reigns supreme -- "a crime has been committed."
Of course that's always the excuse of the zealot.
Like Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables," the tragedy of misguided belief in some perfect "rule of law" becomes the justification for the pathology of mental illness and self destruction.
So no, I'm not an "Obamabot" because I'm willing to let Barack Obama's team dig out of a legal fiasco so disgraceful and so complex, that tough decisions have to be made.
Just as my belief in assisted suicide doesn't mean I don't "value life."
Just as my belief in a woman's right to choose doesn't mean I celebrate abortions.
There are real world compromises in service of a larger good that can and must take place at the Federal level. This means bombing campaigns to target Osama Bin Laden may kill innocent people in the process.
Life is messy.
Life is complex.
And life is short.
I would like to see Dick Cheney in jail for his crimes, but I know that won't happen. And I stand with Barack Obama's efforts to clean up that mess, even if some cases won't be prosecuted, and others will be covered up under institutional procedure.
This is the nature of the beast.
And I reject the Holy Greenwald's judgment, just as I reject his Ken Starrian "purity." I hated this legal bullshit when the right offered it up in the 1990s to "get Clinton" and I see no reason to support this zealotry from the left in 2010.