- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
That was great --- you elaborated this idea a lot better than I could.
I think if we're ever going to learn anything from this debacle (I know, always a dubious proposition), or even just understand what happened, we're going to have to first identify the mechanisms ... as Glenn has done a stupendous job with here ... that exploited the institutional vulnerabilities, and then pull apart the actions of individuals.
When we do, there will be the obvious criminals who pushed the campaign, the enablers and waterbearers in the center and peripheries, and then the ones who failed through inaction, ambiguity, moral failure, as well as those who might have actually tried to do the right thing and not been up to what was in front of them. It's going to have to go beyond, 'But why didn't you quit, then?'
It's easier to just call the whole thing criminal, stop there, and boil everyone in oil. If we even get to that point, we can all feel relieved that justice has been served. But if we ever hope to fix anything, to try to prevent the same things from happening again (and sooner), we need to be willing to examine the institutional gaps that opened when pressure was placed on those on the periphery, and look at their situations just as you did in this comment.
Going back to highlighting Hannah Arendt now ... some lines seem a lot more relevant these days than they used to ...
