![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It couldn't happen to a nicer guy
So the US Administration had to give in and go along with the law that makes torture by US agents illegal. McCain didn't blink, the Whitehouse did. The Patriot Act been has filibustered. The majority leaders of both houses of Congress have come under ethics related charges in the last few months. An attempt to get drilling in the arctic wildlife refuge through a side door is hanging on by its fingernails, but hasn't passed yet. So a Republican president with a Republican majority in both houses can't seem to get anything on his agenda finished. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
The fact that a sitting president admits to authorizing secret wiretaps without the approval of the court that was set up to regulate such wiretaps, shows no remorse, in fact doesn't even indicate that he's going to stop doing it, is amazing. Slice it any way you like, but when Nixon used the same agency in the same way a law was written to regulate such action. The president is in open defiance of this law. A law, along with all the others, he has sworn to uphold. It is only his arrogance and the American people's ignorance that keeps him out of jail. I can't see the former ending anytime soon (despite how much political capital he's burnt domestically and internationally). I can only hope that the latter abate.
I disliked Clinton because he acted like all the people in America were stupid and did legal hairsplitting over things that were simply foolish. He was a four year old lying to his parents. But he showed just how defiantly someone in his position could behave. He did it over things mundane, personal, and trivial.
But he showed how to do it. People less creative but more sinister have taken that lesson and applied it more broadly. I did it because I can and you can't even stop me. I can only hope this is a massive case of hubris. If it isn't, if he actually gets away with it, the next one to apply these lessons will be even bolder.
The fact that a sitting president admits to authorizing secret wiretaps without the approval of the court that was set up to regulate such wiretaps, shows no remorse, in fact doesn't even indicate that he's going to stop doing it, is amazing. Slice it any way you like, but when Nixon used the same agency in the same way a law was written to regulate such action. The president is in open defiance of this law. A law, along with all the others, he has sworn to uphold. It is only his arrogance and the American people's ignorance that keeps him out of jail. I can't see the former ending anytime soon (despite how much political capital he's burnt domestically and internationally). I can only hope that the latter abate.
I disliked Clinton because he acted like all the people in America were stupid and did legal hairsplitting over things that were simply foolish. He was a four year old lying to his parents. But he showed just how defiantly someone in his position could behave. He did it over things mundane, personal, and trivial.
But he showed how to do it. People less creative but more sinister have taken that lesson and applied it more broadly. I did it because I can and you can't even stop me. I can only hope this is a massive case of hubris. If it isn't, if he actually gets away with it, the next one to apply these lessons will be even bolder.