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Lyons commentary in The Shaming of America is a glaringly ugly display of self-contradiction and toxic hypocrisy.
"That said, anybody with an ounce of political sense can also understand why Obama has said that his administration will seek no prosecutions.
What about moral sense?
Civic sense?
Common sense?
Like most people who are paid to espouse conventional political wisdom, Gene Lyons simply doesn’t give a damn about the law. The only relevant consideration for Lyons and his fellow partisan water-carriers, be they Democrat or Republican, is politics. They invoke conscience, morality, responsibility and justice only when they perceive it to be politically advantageous for their party of choice.
Lyons rightfully denounces the token functionary who rubber-stamps the torture policies of the previous regime. Unfortunately for Lyons, his poorly constructed platform of righteous indignation utterly collapses under his own weight with his assertion that the regime itself - a regime which necessarily includes no small number of bipartisan enablers in The House & Senate – should be immune from prosecutorial investigation relating to those same torture policies and practices.
Do you read what you write, Gene? That’s some serious duplicity. Very serious. And it’s coming from a lot of quarters these days.
"This is a time for reflection, not retribution ... We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history," he [Obama] said in a prepared statement. "But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."
Here, the former Constitutional Law professor provides Lyons, et al (including many of the letter-writers at Salon.com), with a meaningless platitude used to justify the disturbingly commonplace opinion that the nation’s most powerful, connected citizens – and those who serve them directly - are exempt from the laws imposed on those of us who do not share their social status.
This is a simple message for simple people, which, of course, makes its regurgitation and propagation a simple affair. It is also a lie. For Lyons and others in the politician/pundit class – all of whom fancy themselves as professional communicators – such linguistic distortions are standard tools of the trade. A few of the wildly popular pejorative terms used by Lyons and other justice-deniers in order to obfuscate the significance of judicial process: retribution • revenge • avenge • criminalize policy differences • blame • finger-pointing.
Gene Lyons would have us believe his motivation for denying Justice stems from a fear of civil unrest among the pathologically devout Republican loyalists – i.e. “tear[ing] the country apart.” This, to me, is the most offensive and hare-brained justification for exempting officials from the laws they create for the rest of us. By using the fear-based rationalization that law enforcement is primarily a political affair (for our betters, at least), Lyons is admitting the U.S. is not governed by laws, but by fear – and that’s quite alright with him, or else he wouldn’t be advocating capitulation to it.
Then again, it's hard to know if Gene Lyons is truly fearful of civil unrest. I suspect he is considerably more fearful that criminal proceedings against Bush-Cheney, Inc., will reveal a sickening degree of Democratic complicity in those crimes, and jeopardize the well-being of powerful individuals he considers friends and allies.
Meanwhile, The Republic can go cry in the corner while serious people like Lyons, Conason and Walsh are writing their next serious article explaining the benefits of Tasers, bullets and prison for The Little People - and looking forward when The Big, Important People devise policies which literally and figuratively, on an epic scale, destroy human lives.
The naked criminality and moral bankruptcy of the political class - a segment which absolutely includes the American news media - is on sickening display today solely because its monolithic girth has proven impossible to conceal.
And, so, the command is issued: Look to the future. How virtuous, magnanimous and wise!
Except for one thing: No matter how much they seek to portray themselves and each other as such, those who exalt politics at the expense of justice don’t have a monopoly on looking forward.
Those of us who understand the future cannot be divorced from the past are also looking forward. What we see in Future Land is not a Utopian vision of Obama's successful domestic agenda (which, no doubt, includes spying on law-abiding Americans), but, rather, legions of unaccountable criminals upholding and reformulating the same lawless policies Gene Lyons & Company condemns today – with greater crimes to come. When this happens, Gene and his professional cohorts will accept zero responsibility for their collective role in agitating against Justice all those years ago.
As others have pointed out to no avail, Iran-Contra is ample proof of the dynamic, but it would be extremely naive to expect party loyalists like Lyons, Conason and Walsh to acknowledge this since doing so would interrupt their perpetual obsession on The Next Election™.
While you’re dishing out shame, Gene, make sure to save a steaming pile for yourself. You may not use it today, but, luckily for you, shame doesn't have an expiration date.
