In "The City on the Edge of Forever", Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are transported back in time to 1930s Earth, and Spock tries to push the ancient technology to build a device that will allow them to contact the Enterprise.

They get jobs at a local charitable mission house, and Spock starts buying vacuum tubes and such to create this device. When asked by their patron what he is doing, Spock utters the priceless line:

"I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and bearskins."

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That's pragmatism one can respect. Spock dispassionately surveys what he's got, devises the least improbable scheme to achieve his goal, and damn it, you know he'll pull it off.

There's no fuss about whether Spock is a "purist" or an "idealist", etc. Spock's honest pragmatism is an entirely different creature from the term "political pragmatism", which rings as a pejorative to me because it's really just a respectable-sounding wrapper for a multitude of shams, scams, and gimmicks-- means justified by ends. Political pragmatism, by definition, is a cognitive locus, a center of gravity, a singularity like a black hole that pulls everything into the event horizon of politics, and discards what it can't use.

So don't blow rancid political pragmatism up my ass; it's bad enough that my colon has turned into Little Brother jerky with all the smoke streaming up there during our painfully interminable-- in fact, perpetual and permanent-- campaign "season".

I don't want to hear any talk of "Truth Commissions" or investigations into criminal malfeasance by government and corporate officials strictly for therapeutic purposes, e.g. deciding that the highest achievable duty is fulfilled by rigorously investigating and exposing the maladministration's multifarious wrongdoings just so that We the People can gain insight that will potentially improve our collective behavior.

Please!

First of all, just think of the highly-polished bipartisan hacks and frauds that would be tapped for this farce... Jesus, don't get me started!

All of these half-assed substitutes for the perfectly functional, if demanding, laws and methods for adjudicating heinous wrongdoing are mere whitewashes and smokescreens. And in flinching from the difficult quest for justice, the evils-- more sensed than revealed in mock inquisitions-- are not in the least checked or reduced.

Sorry, no matter how illustrous and profound a White Paper or Truth Commission is made to seem by proponents and pundits, it's the equivalent of one of those automobile "kiddie seats" featuring a fake steering wheel and dashboard. Beep, beep!

It just gives me the fan-tods to even think of the craven, mealy-mouthed suggestion that the new administration take a "no-fault" approach to their abominable predecessors. Immunity my ass.

The worst part is that I can actually picture President Obama pitching such a lame dodge, and suggesting that the Healing of the Ravaged Nation is best accomplished by allowing George, Dick, Condi, and the rest to Go to Their Rooms and Think About What They've Done.