The Unbearable Divisiveness of Consequences

To follow up on Joan's post (and Digby's observations therein) on the nixed Brennan nomination for CIA head, I have to note that the attempts to blame cruel bloggers for the pulling of Brennan's nomination seem very much part and parcel of the new, sulking "establishment outrage" that's being built up against the notion that there might be even the barest hint of consequences for actions taken in the Bush years. It's only marginally about Brennan in particular.

I mean sure, now everyone in politics can vaguely agree that we shouldn't go torturing people and then coming up with bullshit justifications that make it sound all legal and stuff. After this being a controversial or even anti-American notion, according to the foundational premises of the Bush years, all the usual suspects are, begrudgingly, recognizing that this new maybe-illegally-torturing-possibly-innocent-people-isn't-such-a-great-idea idea is the way the wind is blowing, and for them to say otherwise might, you know, suck for them.

But the thought that there should be consequences for prior endorsements or justifications for pro-torture positions, or advocacy for pro-domestic-espionage, or illegally premised detainment, or advocacy for utterly incompetent military strategies -- that's still a crazy, freakish notion in Washington or in politics. A bridge too far.

If there's one thing that nearly every politician and appointee and hanger-on in Washington can agree to, it's that no matter how bad some heinous or flagrantly illegal action was, prosecuting someone for it would be simply inconceivable. And even punishing them for it by reducing their upward career mobility would be outrageous. And even just criticizing them for their past actions would be unnecessarily "divisive" or "confrontational," the sign of a sick and addled population bent.

After all, if we were to agree that torturing a few now-known-to-be-innocent people required even the barest, most minimal minuscule punitive actions be taken against those who facilitated that torture, where would it end? Next thing you know we'd be all up in arms about all the other corruption and legal violations, and that'd be as divisive as all hell, especially for all the people who would possibly be looking at jail time (or at the least, a possible pay cut.) Don't forget, we've passed into a new era when there isn't the slightest thing wrong with the premise that the President can declare any American he likes an "enemy combatant", and that simply nullifies every Constitutional right that American possesses, on his say-so.

For some reason, politicians facing consequences for illegal acts is always "divisive". You or me or anyone else breaks the law, nobody gives a flying crap about "divisiveness." Someone in a position of power does it, though, and it's apparently a f'ing crisis of our f'ing legal system to contemplate taking any action against them. We'll even get tsk-tsking comments directed our way by f-ing f-stick apparatchiks if we so much as express displeasure towards those poor, put upon souls.

So when anonymous figures in Washington pin John Brennan's failure to be appointed head of the CIA to meddling, know-nothing bloggers and their cruel whims, instead of, say, pinning that failure on John Brennan's defense of programs that should be roundly indefensible, it seems self-evident that they consider the current public mood and thought of consequences in general to be the problem, and not the underlying philosophies, failures or even past crimes themselves.

But what do any of us know?