Schadenfreude Is My Middle Name

By David Michael Green
Created Apr 27 2007 - 11:29am

I'm not an angry man. But I am angry.

I'm not a bitter person. But, boy, am I bitter.

And I'm not generally given to vindictiveness. But, you know what? Right now
I'm open to persuasion.

The Bush administration is now beginning an inexorable process which will
change its status from the worst administration in American history to the
publicly-acknowledged worst administration in American history. I, for one,
couldn't be more delighted.

That delight is only partly based on having been on the receiving end of
their atrocities these last six years. And it is only partly based on the
assurance that those gifts will keep giving for decades into the future,
like a bad case of political herpes.

And that delight is also only partly based on their motivations and the
scale of their transgressions. People who believe that the regressive right
came to Washington to implement a legitimate ideology that just happens to
be different from ours, or who believe that they meant well but, ironically,
the first MBA president couldn't manage his way out of an empty wading pool,
even with the entire federal bureaucracy to assist him - such people
fundamentally misunderstand this administration and the movement which they
spearhead.

These are sociopathic predators - nothing more, nothing less - and we are
foolish, to the point of acting as enablers, if we fail to call this what it
is. This administration is a kleptocracy which came to town to grab
everything it could grab, operating behind a hideously deceitful veil of
generated fear and false security provision. Boiled down to its essence,
this is little more than a classic protection racket writ large. Whether
history will reveal that they manufactured 9/11, or purposely stood by and
allowed it to happen, or simply screwed up the job of actually providing
real national security, they in any case then milked that tragedy for
everything it was worth, constantly sowing fear in the heartland, and
offering the false promise of protection to a frightened public.

For all these reasons, they are surely getting what they deserve. But,
finally, my delight in watching the long-deserved implosion of this American
tragicomedy is also partly based on attitude. Never in my life have I seen
such high-handed arrogance, such disrespectful condescension for the loyal
opposition, such destructive shredding of the very core institutions of
Western political culture, such cavalier disregard for the lives of anyone,
including Americans.

No, I'm not generally angry, bitter or vindictive. But you rub your noxious
garbage in my face for six (if not twenty-five) years and arrogantly dismiss
me as an unpatriotic retread for opposing your transparent predations, then,
yeah, I'm going to rejoice in your getting what you deserve. And, right now,
I'm rejoicing. Right now, schadenfreude is my middle name.

The fun has only just begun, but nevertheless the wheels are already coming
off the wagon. The dominoes are already falling, and Henry Waxman has only
just begun to issue subpoenas. The water's rapidly rising, and is now
splashing the dirty faces of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and even George W. Bush.
We're running out of metaphors to mix here, but fortunately not jail cells.

You wouldn't want to face what they're facing over the next twenty-one
months under the best of circumstances. But you especially wouldn't want to
go there with your popularity in the toilet, your credibility so shot that
even Republican senators are disbelieving you in public, a corrosive war
that, at best, cannot possibly regain public support, and members of your
own party seeing that their association with you, your arrogance, your
screw-ups and now your scandals all roll up together into a giant freight
train called the 2008 Express, rapidly steaming their direction.

Who will be left to throw Bush a rope when he's finally going down? Trent
Lott? No, they burned him, and something tells me he hasn't forgotten. John
Kerry? Maybe he'll FedEx over some Band-Aids. Jacques Chirac? That's Old
Europe, people. Saddam Hussein? His rope is in use elsewhere.

So one by one they come down, and no one is even going after the big
questions yet, like what happened before and during 9/11, what's happened
before, during and after Katrina, the failure of the Afghan war, and the
marketing of the Iraq war. Whether we ever get to those or not, we can at
least take pleasure in the just desserts already being served, and relief in
the enfeebling of Bush and his destructive agenda.

Rumsfeld's gone. Without question, forced retirement in failure to some
corporate pastureland is far too good a punishment for him, even if he does
carry the shame of being one of the few people on this planet moronic enough
to get fired by George W. Bush. Nor is he necessarily out of the woods,
either. If even the merest approximation of the truth ever makes it to a
grand jury, Rummy will want to be investing in some very high-powered legal
Dobermans. He'll need them.

Scooter Libby is now gone, and while it's true that his crimes greatly
exceed his likely punishment, even assuming no pardon, it is something. And
let us all laugh collectively at the absurd claims of the right, trying
desperately to defend him. "Valerie Plame wasn't actually undercover!" Well,
except that she testified she was. And it was the CIA which had initiated
the investigation in the first place, out of concern about having its spy
networks exposed. "Libby had lots of important stuff on his plate and just
didn't remember!" Yeah, except that what he just didn't remember was nine
conversations with eight different people on the same subject. (Aren't these
the same people who vitiated Clinton for lying about consensual oral sex
under oath? Did I miss something here? When did treason get to be the lesser
offense?) No one on the jury believed Libby's lies for even a second.
Indeed, they all felt sorry for what was transparently a case of Libby
taking a bullet for his boss, Dick Cheney.

Now comes Wolfowitz and Gonzales. I doubt either can last very long,
particularly the former, who has more constituents than just the
thumb-sucker at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and whose staff is in outright
mutiny against the head pirate. It's breaking my heart, in a schadenfreude
kind of way, to see Wolfie hoisted on his own petard, and now flapping in
the wind of shame for a third week running. Given his evident insularity of
breathtaking proportions (talk about not being able to take a hint!), he
probably doesn't have the decency to be embarrassed for himself yet. And
even when he's unceremoniously tossed overboard, it won't begin to atone for
the destruction listed next to his name in the Big Book of Death. (With
apologies to Nathan Hale, I regret that Wolfowitz has but one life to give
for all the ones he's taken.)

But it is a start. After what we've been through, it's amazing and
unfortunate how little it takes to provide a measure of satisfaction. Just
the same, the visage of European governments and World Bank staff (not
exactly paragons of liberalism, either of them) growing nauseous from the
smell of rotting predator is always encouraging. And seeing the great
anti-corruption crusader indicted for practicing the crassest form of
nepotism is only icing on the cake.

Then there's Alberto Gonzales, for whom the oft-employed term 'consigliere'
was always far too generous. Sure, the guy makes things happen for his boss,
but he's far more the simple soldier than the clever counselor in Bushland.
And since nobody in that sad country is actually principled enough to be a
soldier for any cause other than lining their own pockets, we ought to just
identify this guy for the sycophant that he is, pure and simple.

But he also happens to be the highest ranking law enforcement official in
the land, and if that doesn't send shivers up your spine you might want to
cut back on whatever is your self-medicating substance of choice. Silly Al
put on such a show before Congress last week that even Republican senators
were eying the political egress, wondering how they could possibly get the
stink of Bushism out of their clothes and hair (as if they weren't one
hundred and ten percent culpable themselves, back when Bush walked on
water).

No less than seventy-one times, Gonzales's memory evaded him as he tried to
recall the firing of key members of his staff, in the biggest credibility
meltdown since... well, since the Libby trial. Imagine a guy who really had
a memory that bad arguing the government's position before the Supreme
Court. "I'm sorry, your honor, I don't recall which side of this case I'm on
here." "I'm sorry, your honor, I haven't been able to keep all those
amendments straight since I lost the cheat sheet I used on my law school
finals."

Perhaps we would have gotten some different answers if the attorney general
was subjected to a little of his own justice. Perhaps a few days at
Guantanamo would have changed his tune. Maybe the rigors of a torture
program he once claimed it was "quaint" and "obsolete" to oppose would
stimulate his memory.

But, of course, his absurd testimony was all just dandy for the one guy
besides Gonzales himself who could put an end to this embarrassment. Bush's
take was that "the attorney general went up and gave a very candid
assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer, honestly
answer". Bush concluded that Gonzales's testimony had "increased my
confidence in his ability to do the job".

This last line in particular is just the most recent example of the utterly
juvenile content of regressive politics, and the sheer contempt with which
we in the body politic are held by these folks. As if Gonzales's lies to
Congress had anything whatsoever to do with Bush's assessment of him. As if
Bush was sitting there watching the television, hoping his attorney general
would set the record straight, explain why all of this is not a scandal, and
win back his job on the basis of his commitment to good governance. As if
the president actually thinks Gonzales told the truth on Capitol Hill. As if
that is what he wanted him to do. I don't remember a looking glass, but
surely there must have been one along the way somewhere.

On top of all the injuries of the Bush administration, these childish
rhetorical turns only add insult in the sheer contempt they demonstrate for
we owners of American democracy. Maybe for the thirty percent of Americans
who still support this guy, it works. Maybe for the sheep who are so
willfully naive that they let their pastors tell them what to believe
politically, it's okay. But for the rest of us with our very own brains,
this is politics that wouldn't be fit for a sixth grade civics class.

Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, DeLay, Brown, Ney, Abramoff,
Cunningham and more. Bush, Cheney and Rove are unquestionably next. Even if
they are lucky enough to survive the next couple of years in office, they
will be damaged goods to an extent we've never seen before, reviled and
despised, first a joke and then too destructive to any longer be funny. The
clock is now actually their only friend. If they had 41 months left to go,
rather than 21, I have no doubt whatsoever there would be impeachments. As
it is, we may be stuck with them for the duration.

Which is not necessarily such a bad thing. The longer these guys are around
(within severe limits, of course), the more thorough a job they do in
discrediting themselves and their regressive politics. Let the revelations
drip out, one by one, corroding the foundations of their destructive
project. Let them stew in the very acids they themselves have injected into
American democracy. It is not enough just to destroy Bush, because there
will always be more Bushes (starting with a real one - Jeb). It is Bushism
itself - the entire regressive political project - which must be beaten into
irrelevance, so that it never resurfaces to bring us this ruin again. And at
the moment, no one - not the press and not the Democrats - is doing a better
job of destroying regressivism than the regressives themselves.

I'm not an angry person, but if it sounds like I'm angry now, I am. I'm
furious for the lies which have been told. I'm indignant about the
manipulation of our best instincts as a society by the world's most
cynically destructive government this side of the 1930s. I'm outraged that
probably a million people are now dead in order to satisfy the personal
insecurities of one individual who is the most powerful amongst us, but at
the same time also the weakest, the worst and the most emotionally bankrupt.

I'm irate that my country has become hated in the world, known now for its
human rights violations, its arrogant disdain for the institutions of
international cooperation, and its practice of cheap pretext-driven
invasions of sovereign states of the sort that was already becoming morally
inexcusable back in the nineteenth century. I'm enraged that my country is
seen as the most hypocritical on Earth, calling for democracy abroad while
undermining it even at home, ranting on and on about terrorism while
protecting terrorists from justice, railing about weapons proliferation in
other countries while building new classes of nuclear warheads and leading
the process of weaponizing space, yet another frontier of our physical
environment to be turned into a battlefield.

I'm ashamed that it was not already embarrassing enough that my country,
five percent of the world's population, produces twenty-five percent of its
greenhouse gases, but that our government then also had to scuttle even the
wimpy Kyoto attempt at remedying the problem, all the while lying to us
about the disaster itself.

I'm incensed at the fiscal, environmental, governmental and moral mess that
we are leaving to our children. We are saddling them with our debts instead
of trying to advantage the next generation, like every generation prior has
done, and this government's policies are responsible for that. We are
leaving them a planet which will be wracked by the effects of global
warming, and this administration is responsible for that. We are bequeathing
to them an America which is deeply divided and widely hated, and that is the
legacy of the Bush government.

So, yeah, as a matter of fact, I'm pissed.

Three things happened on the same day this week. The first was that the
stories of the two most visible faces of the Iraq war were exposed as
complete, and completely intentional, lies, manufactured for the purpose of
selling the war. Army Ranger Bryan O'Neal told the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform, "I was ordered not to tell" the family of
Pat Tillman the truth about how he died by friendly fire. Indeed, Tillman's
uniform was immediately burned and other evidence destroyed, so that a tale
of his heroic death in battle with the enemy could be fabricated, complete
with the awarding of a Silver Star.

Meanwhile, Private Jessica Lynch testified to the same panel that her heroic
story was also manufactured, as were the lies about the abuses of the Iraqis
holding her, people who in truth tried to help her and to return Lynch to
her unit. "Tales of great heroism were being told. My parent's home in Wirt
County was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little
girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true." To this
day, Lynch says, "I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried
to make me a legend". Perhaps I can help here. Can you say "Old Shoe"? Does
Robert DeNiro have to walk onto the set to get the American public to
realize just how wholly fabricated everything about this war has been?

Everything, that is, but the death and destruction, which has been all too
real. The second thing that happened that day was that nine more Americans
were killed in Iraq, and twenty more seriously wounded. We don't ever get to
know how many Iraqis are consumed in Mr. Bush's Mesopotamian conflagration
(for the same reason we couldn't be told the truth about Tillman and Lynch),
but based on the best and most scientific research on this question, a
reasonable estimate is that about 685 are killed every day. Not a bad day's
work for a contemporary Caligula, eh?

And the third thing that happened that day, while the administration's lies
were being exposed, and while those lies harvested their inevitable
grinding, grim reapings yet again, is that the very same people who brought
us this deceit and destruction continued their campaign to annihilate the
remnants of American democracy through the use of yet further Orwellian
rhetoric.

"What's most troubling about Senator Reid's comments yesterday is his
defeatism", said America's vice-president. "It is cynical to declare that
the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage.
Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our
country, not on the interests of their political party." The president added
that the he was disappointed in Congressional Democrats for using the
spending bill to make "a political statement".

It would not be possible for Cheney's assertions to be more polar opposite
from the truth. It would not be possible for him to be more culpable of
doing exactly what he accuses the Democrats of doing, for we know for a fact
that much of the purpose of this fabricated war (or, at least, the quick and
successful war they thought they were fabricating) was to make Bush and his
GOP machine invincible in the context of domestic politics, so he could ram
through predatory legislation like his raid on Social Security. And we know
that the war has in fact been extremely damaging to the security interests
of the United States. And we know that when Bush says that, because he will
veto a bill it is therefore a "political statement", he's actually
desperately trying to intimidate Congress into abdicating its voice on
policy questions, to prevent them from forcing him to demonstrate before the
public the very obstinance he seeks to hide.

All this in one day.

So, yeah, you're damn right I'm angry. My question is, what in the world is
wrong with anyone who isn't?

And you're damn right that I get a little thrill from seeing the slightest
punishments meted out to the greatest of our criminals. Even if good news
hadn't been so entirely rare these last six years, it would be appropriate.

For these are not ordinary fools, and this is something that Americans
haven't really begun to appreciate yet. If these folks were mere bunglers
with proper intentions, I could forgive them. If they were true patriots who
simply believed fervently in a different ideology than mine while all their
policy ideas turned out to be wrong, I could even forgive that.

But they are none of these things, and the measure of that is to be found
precisely in the inversion of truth which is at the core of regressive
politics as practiced by Bush, Rove and their fellow predatory kleptocrats.
In the marketplace of ideas, lies don't have to be told to sell policies. In
the domain of good governance, memories don't have to be conveniently erased
in order to cover up incompetence and malfeasance.

And this, ultimately, is why I am so angry. These aren't boobs who couldn't
shoot straight, though they are that as well. And they aren't true believers
of a stupidly destructive ideology suitable only for the most emotionally
stunted amongst us, though they are that too. Instead, fundamentally, they
are simply greedy marauders who have come to plunder America for all it's
worth.

If they were Russians, or Chinese, or Muslims, our response would be to hate
such imperialist exploiters accordingly, and to seek their destruction
expeditiously. But because they are Americans, and because they have
ironically expropriated all the historic symbols of American patriotism, and
because they have so massively and cynically exploited one of the greatest
tragedies in American history, and, especially, because the magnitude of
their crimes is too existentially debilitating for most Americans to permit
themselves to comprehend - because of all these things, we merely revile
them, rather than hating them and destroying their movement.

But that is our mistake, and it has already become a lethal one for so many
innocent victims of the regressive machine. It's time for this to stop, and
it's time for us to label this chapter in our history for what it is.

We have a word for Americans who sell out their country for their own
profit.

They are traitors.

And we have a word for what these traitors do when they betray our country,
our values and our Constitution to pursue their agenda of personal
aggrandizement.

It's called treason.
_______

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson