The Truth Takes Another Hit

They made Pete Stark apologize today for telling the truth. It seems that with each passing day telling the truth about America and the crimes of its current administration is less and less acceptable.

You are not allowed to remind people that Iraq is sitting on an estimated 30 trillion dollars worth of light crude and that is precisely the reason Bush/Cheney are spending a a trillion or so dollars to get control of it. Never mind the American soldiers dead and wounded...spending a dollar for a thirty dollar return is good business...especially when all the profit will go to you and your buds.

You aren't allowed to talk about the rendition, torture, secret evidence or imprisonment without habeas corpus. Just not done. Off limits is the intrusion into our privacy and the shredding of our Constitution and Goddess forbid you mention the insanity of tax cuts in a war.

Arthur Silber at the Power of Narrative does his usual excellent job of putting it into words.

…For this is where we are in the United States, nearing the end of the Year of Our Lord 2007: the truth is not merely unpleasant, an uninvited guest who makes conversation difficult and awkward. Truth is the enemy; truth is to be destroyed. To attempt to speak the truth on any subject of importance requires a deep reserve of determination, for to speak the truth requires that one first sweep away an infinite number of rationalizations, false alternatives, and numerous other failures of logic and the most rudimentary forms of thought — as well as the endless lies. On that single occasion in a thousand or a million when a person overcomes these barriers and speaks the truth, he or she discovers an additional, terrible truth: almost no one wants to hear it. This is how we live today: lies are the staple of our diet. Without them, we would die, certainly in psychological terms.

People will tell you that we still have all the accouterments of a participative democracy. There is still the Constitution, still voting, still the rule of law, still multi-party rule. They won't admit that even though all the trappings are here there are no guts and fervor behind them. There is no outrage when they are violated, no riots when our rights are trampled, no impeachments when our elected servants stray from the straight and narrow. We all know that Bush and Cheney have violated the public trust multiple times and we also know that they have broken the law multiple times but they are still the leaders of the most powerful country on earth. How sad for us and the world.

If something doesn't happen to change this state of affairs then there is room for serious worry about the future of our young country. The fact that the current crop of Democratic candidates are carefully skirting these truths is frightening. Seeing Pete Stark being forced to apologize for speaking the truth on the floor of Congress is a tragedy in so many ways.