WWHD?
What would Hillary do?
One wishes that every scheme hatched by this administration to classify, hide, and reroute information would be posed to Republican die hards as potential M.O.'s for the Hillary Clinton administration. How would they feel about those tactics then?
The abandonment of some of our democracy's most cherished *procedural* methods should give pause to many Republicans and cause for something like bipartisanship. The notion that political ideology has permeated every mechanism and agency of the public administration aspect of government--usually in the service of extraordinary secrecy and the enrichment of individuals and companies--is so anti-democratic on its face that those who are silent before it will be judged even by amatuer historians as early 21st century proto-facists.
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3 comments:
How has the "do unto others" lesson been so thoroughly lost on this crowd? There are only three explaniations I can think of:
(1) They didn't believe their reign would ever end. As long as the Bush (or is it Dobson? Robertson? Halliburton? Cheney? Rove?) dispensation endures, who cares what a mythical Clinton Administration would do? None of it will ever catch up with them.
(2) We're cashing in while we can. Probably the best thingI've read on the Bush Administration was written several years ago in Rolling Stone, by Patrick Kennedy (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/5939345/crimes_against_nature/print>), in which he compares Bush to a CEO, liquidating the assets of his company -- including our government's budget, extractive industrices and our natural resources, international goodwill, etc. Cash it in now, and deal with the consequences later.
(3) When our team does it, it's okay; when "they" do it, it's wrong. Just see how they've done a 360 on the filibuster -- you don't see them fretting about the hypocrisy of condemning "obstructionist" Democrats a year ago, and then threatening to filibuster a slew of bills this session. "It's our team! Of course we'll filibuster!" And the press won't call them on it until the Democrats frame it aggressively that way.
WWHD? is a good device, but first you have to convince Republicans some combination of: (1) that they'll ever lose, (2) that they won't still come out ahead by profiting now, and (3) that there's a price to be paid for hipocrisy.
If these folks simply think, "It's not hypocrisy when we do it," the chances of them restraining themselves in anticipation of a Hillary Administration aren't good.
I like answer number 2 best. They're like the Enron guys: grab it while you can, and then avoid and obfuscate questions later on.
In order to drown anything in a bath tub, you have to make it weak and little, and it is better to make sure it doesn't have any friends who may exact some retribution for your actions. That is all Bush and the Repukes are trying to do with our government. We have lost what may have been our moral high ground, we owe everything plus the kitchen sink to China, and our vaunted military has managed to loose our second war in a row to guys attacking us with cardboard boxes, trash cans and cars that barely run. The water doesn't need to be all that deep to drown that.
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