You quoted something I wrote here,

"The Dems and media are just defending the 'mafia principle,' the idea that the world is run by competing crime organizations. They are defending Chomsky's understanding of the world."

And then, you said about this,

"And Chomsky should know. He's helping the Establishment by propping up the official lies about 9/11. Chomsky is a show boating dissident in the pay of the American Stasi."

I think you are unclear in what you have written, and unfair to Chomsky.

I think you mean that whatever Chomsky has said about the "mafia principle" can be ignored because he's employed by bad people to tell us lies and falsehoods. Well, maybe Chomsky's Mom wore army boots, but you have not shown by that insult that what he says about the way the world is run is false.

You might mean to say that Chomsky does not better society if he argues to ignore the claims about 9-11, that it was an inside job, most likely, because you think we have to prosecute the miscreants responsible because they might do the same kind of thing again. You disagree with Chomsky about whether anything will really be accomplished by the decades of work and effort that will have to be done to do these prosecutions.

Greenwald here likely agrees with you that miscreants have to be prosecuted and the rule of law re-established in order to preserve and better society.

Chomsky does not think criminal prosecutions will help much against the mafias. He argues that you can waste a lot of time going after individuals responsible for 9-11, or the wars, and the major thefts, and so forth, but not get anywhere. The next guys in there will do the same sorts of things because it's the way the institutions work. They are put together and maintained by crime organizations. He thinks political activism has to target institutional change.

My point is that where either Chomsky's or Glenn's strategies might make the mafias obey the rules, or weed out the mobsters who are out of control, like Bush perhaps, you will not challenge the "mafia principle." The world will still be run by thugs, just different more well behaved thugs.

You apparently want to beat up on Chomsky, when you should be dealing with his claims about how things are.

There seems to be some puzzlement about this question,

"What explains the virtual unanimity among political and media elites that Bush officials should be protected from any accountability for crimes they committed?"

One answer given is about "complicity." The Democrats and the media people can't complain about the crimes of the Bush people because they all supported and agreed with it. Glenn says that by defending Bush, the Dems and media are really defending themselves.

I don't think this answers the question, however. There are two other concerns.

One has to do with why there is the unanimity. Yes, all these people agreed with Bush, but why did so many, why the unanimity? I think this has to do with how the Dems and the media people represent or, as we like to say, they are tools of, the corporations. There are just a few major interests in the country and the mainstream folks are all bought and paid for. There are few who see themselves as working for the weak and the poor, or even the middle class.

The second has to do with why even one of them went with Bush. Glenn has pointed out the long list of felonies and internationally recognized war crimes committed by various Bush people. It could have happened that all the Dems and the media could have pointed this out too. But they went with torture, the invasion of Poland...Iraq and Afghanistan. What explains that?

It has to do with the deal we make to avoid domestic strife. The weak mob and the powerful few agree not to harrass each other. The weak get some kind of domestic tranquility for agreeing to not challenge the powerful on their thievery and murders in other countries. The powerful agree not to steal from their own people so that they can go out into the world and steal from them. They are thereby able to avoid domestic prosecution and can then focus all their energies on making their fortunes off of foreigners.

This is a well used process, against native Americans, banana republics in Latin America and elsewhere, and now Europe and the middle east.

The reason the Dems and media defend Bush is that they are in agreement with this deal. They think it's important to maintain the power they have, and to protect the disorganized domestic mob from the powerful turning on them.

The Dems and media, and Bush people in large part, support the torture, etc, done to protect the country, because that's how the powerful have always obtained and maintained their power.

The business of "rule of law" and being accountable for obeying the law, is applicable, on their view, only for the way the powerful interact with the weak and poor domestically. However, these are innapropriate standards if imposed on the powerful for what they have done to outsiders.

The Dems and media are just defending the 'mafia principle,' the idea that the world is run by competing crime organizations. They are defending Chomsky's understanding of the world.