1 Boring Old Man

For several years, there have been numerous lies in the Republican Reign in America exposed. Not small lies, but big ones. Lies about the Administration being warned about bin Laden. Lies about the prewar intelligence. Lies about the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity. Lies of ommission about Guantonomo, the N.S.A. Lies about the state of the Iraq War. Lies about Abramoff. It’s an amazingly long list, and I haven’t covered them all [and we don’t know about them all]. It’s a culture of telling everything in such a way as to put the Administration in the best light. I think it’s unequalled in our history [I hope it’s unequalled in our history]. We’re so used to hearing it, that we don’t even know when and if the truth is ever being told. Our Administration is only political, at least in public.

Now, we have the Foley scandal in the House of Representatives. But we’ve already had several there. Duke Cunningham was almost laughable, he was so corrupt. Ney, too, was blatant, though not quite so flamboyant as Duke Cunningham. Tom Delay is still pretending to be lily white – a virtual impossibility in the face on the public evidence alone. But the Foly scandal is the one that has lit a bonfire. A lot of people say it’s taken off because it’s about sex, sexual predation on children. That makes some sense. Those are the Congressional scandals that make the news.  Some say it is specifically because it has to do with homosexuality, or it has to do with children. Others say it’s because it’s not possible that there’s not a mega-cover-up for political reasons. Yet another possibility is that we all recall how the Republicans mercilessly stalked Clinton over the Monica story.

All of those things are possible, but they’re not what I think. I think it’s because it’s the first big lie to be exposed after the spell was been broken. What spell, you ask? In 2002, I received an email from a highs chool classmate that said, "Well, I’d rather have a President who prays every morning than one with his shorts around his ankles!" That’s a hard statement to respond to. In the first place, I had said nothing about Clinton at that point. I’d questioned going to war with Iraq. I hadn’t even criticized Bush [hard to believe]. But it was 2002. There was a great moral resurgence, a big backlash reaction to popular culture, the early days of the anti-homosexual agenda, a strong anti-abortion movement, and aversion to Clinton’s behavior and his lying. But most of all, we were terrified. We’d watched the Twin Trade Towers fall on New York – people jumping to their deaths in downtown Manhattan. Our world was quickly going to hell in a hand-basket. We needed something badly. And Bush gave it to us.

As it turns out, it was bad theater that we got – very bad theater. But even though it was suffused with lies, it cast a comforting spell. Somehow, the recent noise – Clinton’s interview, the Congress approving torture and denying rights, Condi’s outright lying in the face of Woodward’s book, the media waking up and reporting things more accurately, the N.I.E. report on the war, war fatigue – all of it tipped the scales at last. Foley’s scandal may have been a really big deal at any time, but the scale was definitely tipping this week already, so now it’s plunging. The United States of America has been betrayed, and the betrayal of our kids [the good kids] by a Congressman symbolizes all of it. We’ve all been "IM’d."

But mostly, the spell is finally broken. The United States of America has been betrayed by our own leadership, and we know it. Now, we’re about to see if Democracy actually works…