Constitutional law specialist Glenn Greenwald has an important post on his blog about the corporate media and their past and present role as willing accomplices in covering up for the criminal activities of our government. In one excerpt from this provocative essay Greenwald posits:
"As I pointed out more times than I can count during discussions of the warrantless eavesdropping debates, we don't have a country where political leaders are free to commit crimes and then, afterwards, claim that their doing so produced good outcomes."
If I may, I'm going to expound upon and garnish that observation. First off Glenn - I would argue that indeed WE DO have a country where political leaders are free to commit crimes and then, afterward, claim that their doing so produced "good outcomes." The United States didn't become the empire it is by piously adhering to the rules of it's own laws as we roamed the planet spreading the messages of militaristic democracy and free-market capitalism. The unadulterated historical record indicates that those messages were either spread by written treaty, to those nations that were receptive, or by the end of a gun barrel and point of a bayonet for those who weren't. But that's a whole other discussion so I'll leave that sleeping dog lie for the moment. Suffice to say, America is the super-power it is today precisely because our political leaders have indeed worked above, behind, under and around our own laws and it goes without saying that that activity has transcended partisan political affiliations.
But getting back to Greenwald's assertion -- as I was reading that excerpt a stark analogy popped into my ahead which I believe fairly sums up this unholy partnership that exists with the mainstream media elites enabling and running interference for the government criminals because they are sympathetic to the argument that the crimes of their equally elite political brethren justify the ends.
My analogy of this perverse synopsis is this: Imagine if you will a thug, who during the commission of a convenience story robbery, purposefully shoots the clerk, and the bullet severs the poor clerk's spinal cord leaving him a paraplegic. The thug is subsequently captured and at trial he stands up and eloquently and earnestly proclaims his innocence before the judge and jury by stating that by virtue of his criminal actions the paraplegic clerk is now better off in life because he is now receiving a huge monthly disability check and free medical benefits from the government instead of having to work his hands to the bone with the measly minimum wage, no benefits convenience store job he had. It's a pretty fucking sick and demented state of affairs when you get right down to the nuts and bolts of what is transpiring here with the media/press in this country not doing it's goddamn job by reporting the truth of what our government is doing in our name.
The sad fact of the matter is this - the doe-eyed concept that many Americans have of "no one is above the law" is nothing more than a self-medicating placebo that the masses ingest to convince themselves that their venerable institutions (the government and the press) aren't actually being run by corrupt, evil sons of bitches. Is that observation blunt enough? Sorry - right or wrong (which I doubt) I call it like I see it.
Ultimately, I'm not holding my breath that the American people will tire of this loathsome situation and rectify it in my lifetime. But when it does finally occur, here's hoping that whatever the solution turns out to be, it will be painful and bitter enough to deter these detestable people from ever wanting to incestuously mix the elements of governing power and the press again.
----k
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