It's only words

By Libby

Well I'm back. I've been lying low the last few weeks trying to make sense of my little world, including Blogtopia. The place has changed in the five years I've been cruising the intertubes. As I watched the coverage of the election, I had days when I wondered if bloggers were the solution or have become part of the problem. Sometimes it felt like too many of the A-listers we'ren't so much changing the media narrative or they were becoming co-opted by it.

Certainly, we haven't made much headway in changing it. Hard core conservatives and pseudo-liberals still dominate the talking head programs and as David Sirotta documents the elite media has been pushing the "America is a center-right country" meme relatively unfettered by reality. The only notable exception I've seen is article in the WSJ of all places, admitting that the election did carry a mandate for liberalism.

Meanwhile, I worry that the focus is too much on Obama, who has no real power yet, and not enough on the useless Congresslizards that hold it now. Dan at Pruning Shears in a post that was actually about the Electoral College, sums up my thoughts well on how to better spend our energy.

We should expect, and be expected, to do more than cast a quadrennial ballot for president. We should be talking, persuading, agitating and advocating between elections for or against those policies that matter most to us. For better or worse Congress is the object of these efforts. Think about the big issues of the last few years - Social Security privatization, immigration reform, various FISA changes, the bailout - and they all received passionate response and intense lobbying efforts by Americans towards their Representatives and Senators. Even though not all succeeded, the fact is that is where people directed their energies.

I think that's right. As long as our legislators ignore the mandate and dance to the media's tune, we going to keep getting the same old song and dance out of DC. As to what to do about the media, I don't have any answers, but it's clear to me that they become more dangerous every day in their desperation to keep the daily news cycle captive to their own self-interest. Hart Williams in a post looking at the degradation of our discourse through the lens of Joe the Plumber's new book, puts it perfectly.

Language is the mother of all tools, and the single most valuable tool that we own. All law is language. All politics is language. Everything from cookbooks to the most exalted poetry requires language. And, as we debase our language, we debase that freedom of the mind.

I think when historians look back, the Bush legacy will be defined by its Orwellian success in destroying the value of words. I see no signs that they won't be allowed to get away with it. For those of us who would see justice served, perhaps the best argument we can make for prosecuting this administration for its crimes is simply to restore appropriate consequences for false testimony.

Comments

[smintheus]

Restore consequences for false testimony - good point, Libby.

You don't hear much about matters of accountability from the Smart Set in DC, do you? I think it's prerequisite of membership in the club to foreswear any belief in consequences for other Smart people. Their reign of self-regard must remain pure and unsullied, you know.

I don't like to put much stock in anonymously sourced chatter about what Obama will or will not do. But I'm getting pretty disturbed by the unrelieved series of expectations-lowering leaks warning us that there will be no prosecutions of the Bush administration's high crimes.

As far as I'm concerned that implies an amnesty will be coming in lesser matters as well. You can't decide to overlook crimes involving torture, say, and then prosecute people for stealing a car. In fact, I wonder whether the legal standards in civil law will have to be annulled retroactively, too. Shouldn't we all be given a free pass for whatever we want? Why should any of us have to pay our mortgages off, for example, when the president gets to walk away from spying illegally on the nation? Once you start taking prosecutions off the table, can a cancellation of debts be far behind?

[Libby]

I had no expectation that Obama or the incoming Congress is going to prosecute the current occupiers of the White House for anything. I think Obama took that off the table a long time ago.

The economy is going to get much worse before it gets better and that's going to be the prime focus for the next two years is my guess. Prosecutions would be a hard sell even in good times and I'm not sure it's worth the political capital to push it, for the netroots I mean. It strikes me as fight that can't be won and it contributes to the whole myth of the angry left meme.

[smintheus]

I think we'll be talking about the failure to prosecute Bush administration criminals for decades to come. It will prolong rather than avoid the agony of coming to terms with our past.

Accountability for crimes shouldn't just be a matter of concern to net or grassroots Democrats. If it is, then perhaps the country deserves its current opprobrium around the world.

[Libby]

You're right of course. In a perfect world, the country would rise as a whole and demand accountability. But that's just not going to happen, especially while the average voter is worried about paying their bills.

I think the best we can hope for is a broad consensus on health care reform, since that's a major pocketbook issue and the annual raise in rates is due.

[jon]

Well said, and an excellent point on broad-based pressure on Senators and Representatives has been much more effective than pressure on the Administration. Looking forward, though, it's not clear to me how much the new infrastructure (change.gov, whatever role myBO continues to play, etc.) changes the game by introducing new possibilities. On issues like FISA, is there synergy between the two paths? We shall see ...

And yeah, even though my expectations were low, I'm still disappointed that it doesn't look like we'll have war crimes trials in the US. Oh well. There's always international courts ...

[Libby]

Hey Jon. I think Obama was pretty clear that he had no intention of pursuing investigations and FISA will forever be a thorn in my side. I'd like to see the netroots tackle that again down the line.

For the moment I think it's more practical to give him a little breathing room until he's in office and focus on the Dems who are in a position to do something now. I'm mulling over who I'd like to see kicked out on the incumbent side in 2010. Reid is on top of my list. I was just thinking I'd like to add Steny Hoyer too if he's up for reelection. He hasn't exactly been a friend to progressives. I think we need to spill some blood on our side now to get their respect.