Deciding our point of no return

I began to begin by making the observation that E.J. Dionne must be in gargantuan denial, behind the eight ball, slow on the uptake; that he's in the grip of whatever condition or cliche has prevented him from accepting -- not embracing, mind you, just accepting -- the brutal reality that the world's oldest, once-stablest democracy now routinely behaves like a prepubescent, incorrigible child.  

This morning he asks: "At what point do we decide that a political system has become decadent?" He answers: "The breaking point for me was the Anthony Weiner story." Well, then, that's his breaking point. Who am I to decide for another the proper tolerance level? Thus I cannot in good conscience attest that Dionne is in denial, etc., etc.; I can only swear that his tolerance is made of much sturdier stuff than mine.

My personal breaking point? My answer is regrettably imprecise. Yet, I would imagine some qualified psychiatrist somewhere would encourage at least an attempt in some form of some sort of stream of consciousness. Hidden bugaboos and lurking boogeymen and all that come out in mental abandon, don't you know, or so we're told. So I'll make a brief attempt -- I'll take my psychiatric one-hour allotment -- after first reconceding that there isn't really an "answer" to our decided decadence, since we all have our individual breaking points.

I heard my first unmistakable crack a bit more than 10 years ago, when a colossally corrupt U.S. Supreme Court not only single-handedly determined that the ineffably dimwitted George W. Bush should be president of these United States, but that its reasoning process in arriving at that staggering electoral insult should be forever regarded by future courts as sui generis, since the reasoning process was, like George W. Bush, so ineffably dimwitted. I consoled myself at the time with historical coddling: from county clerkships to the U.S. presidency, the American art of stealing elections has been a long and noble one; and besides, quite often the racketeering thiefs turned out to be not half bad as respectable officeholders.

So even though I had heard a crack -- even though I had, in fact, suffered an undeniable breaking point -- I further consoled myself with the Twainian thought that, like Wagner, perhaps Bush would be better than he sounded. Oh, what a misjudgment, or rather, what a false hope. He was worse, far worse, as in galactically far worse, and behind him he harbored a Congress-full of either likeminded ideological nincompoops or spinelessly loyal oppositionists willing to grant their imprimatur to virtually every imbecilic Bushian impulse.

A plenary listing of our young century's imbecilities conceived and orchestrated by Mr. Bush exceeds my time, my space, my emotional endurance and even our collective knowledge. Historians, for decades to come, will be unfoldingly horrified and appalled at the Bush administration's alternating recklessness and indifference; levels that make James Buchanan, by comparison, look like a Lincoln. From W.'s deliberate reversal of our fiscal health, to invading the wrong country, to Constitutional violations committed with a transcendentally arrogant shrug and a sneer, in general his trangressions against law, both domestic and foreign, as well as against human decency and just plain common sense -- taken together, the Bush-Cheney record of achievement is as degenerately sui generis as was its extralegal conception.

Perhaps worse, we reelected these buffooons, subsequent to appreciating just how immmensely boneheaded and corrupt they were. Added to that additional breaking point of 2004 was our national mini-stroke-slash-nervous breakdown of 2010 and, well, you get the diagnostic picture.

And I'm supposed to be upset by Anthony Weiner's cyberboners? Is Dionne kidding me? But, as both Dionne and I have so graciously conceded, to each his own, and unto each of us comes our own peculiar breaking points.

The one intervening salvation, of course, was our restoration of presidential gracefulness, executive competence and pragmatic reason in 2008. Barack Obama is doing his damnedest to make it all better, to heal the wounds, to correct our course and put the ethical, socioeconomic and loosely philosophical meaning of "super" back into "superpower." If he's unsuccessful -- if the ruggedly ignorant Americanism of tea partyism, Cantorism, McConnellism and Romneyism or T-Pawism proves to be insurmountable -- then that compound noun of once-great distinction will not improbably become a thing of the irretrievable past.

I'm sorry, but I see that my hour is up.

Comments

[Sk]

When we accepted the buffoonery of: "it depends on what the meaning of is is" and the bafoons who pursued the case.

[EF]

Blaming Abu Ghraib on some low level service-people and not the officers and political leaders who authorized torture.

[Peter G]

I confess that I have a fascination with American politics. It's not that the Canadian political scene lacks interest or drama but we just don't have a political system that revolves around elections. Six weeks of electioneering every four to five years barring the fall of a government takes away so much opportunity for grandstanding. What I see in the US is a kind of disdain for governing, particularly among the Republicans, as if they had convinced themselves that the awesome economic and military power of America is so unassailable as to make governmental policies irrelevant. That's a very liberating philosophy. It leaves one free to concentrate purely on winning elections. If one believes the idea of invulnerability one is free to say that deficits do not matter or to advance economic policies that are daylight madness on the theory that one will always have time to fix it later. One can say anything. And they do. The wake up call should make for interesting times.

[Tim In Chgo]

Having a report entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in America" placed on a president's desk the month before 9/11, and he reacts by going on vacation.

[Robert Lipscomb]

Any breaking point I might have would not be in response to any action taken by a politician. It would be in response to any reaction or non-reaction to something done by a politician.

A couple months after the Iraq invasion. George Bush stated in front of the cameras that we had found no WMDs. Still a large majority of our populace continued to believe we did. Even all these years later, people continue to believe it.

Maybe this is the government we deserve.

[TT]

Impeaching a president for getting a blow job is about as decadent and irrelevance-/decline-/collapse-inducing as it gets. Previous political assaults on the presidency were as necessary as they were justified--the offenders were engaged in truly illegal and corrupt behavior, whether they were turning the state security apparatus on political opponents or selling arms to terrorist regimes in order to fund an illegal war. Punishment was uneven: Nixon thankfully resigned but went on to a fat, rich retirement; Reagan skated through with nary a scratch at all.

But the Republican "payback" (their word for the Clenis jeremiad) was a total and true reflection of their party and their ideology--small, petty, and next-level self-congratulatory and smug. Historians will look at the impeachment episode and its cast of characters as the low embarrassment and fiasco it was. And as the moment our country and political/media establishment decided that heavy use of hallucinogenics was a pretty good idea.

[BobH]

When these outbreaks of "dumb" happen, I am reminded of the essential genius of the Founding Fathers who sought to protect us from ourselves. In our mechanistic Constitutional system no one person or small group is given all power. So, on balance, I think that our Republic will survive. At these outbreaks of "dumb" I do not despair, I grimace and laugh!

[RC]

I wish I could have said this as eloquently. The only difference is that I'm more pessimistic than you about the future.

[Pete]

Throwing away the Geneva Conventions- even Obama has not lived up to them.

[Vern]

New Coke

[Mike]

I assumed that the last paragraph about President Obama was sarcastic, but upon re-reading it seems sincere.

You can't seriously believe that the current President has done any meaningful reversals regarding the despicable policies you list that Bush initiated? Still no trials for accused terrorists, still immunity for the telecom industry that carried out Bush's illegal surveillance, Gitmo has been moved in everything but name to Bagram, our presence in Iraq is as permanent as ever (though reduced), no end in sight in Afghanistan, no prosecutions for the massive fraud committed by Wall Street that caused or at the very least enhanced a world-wide recession, extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, prosecutions against legitimate government whistleblowers, has ordered the assassination of a US citizen for speeches he has made... probably more that I forget.

Bush was a disaster. Obama so far has not shown himself to be much better. He just has a kinder, gentler machine gun hand.

[dr.e]

"Deciding Our Point of No Return" ? We've reached it.

"Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public"

-- HL Mencken

[fbacon]

The undercurrent throughout all those events in 2000 was liberal disengagement, cynicism and general ennui. I can't help but wonder if a diagnosis of political dysfunction is complete without acknowledging that the coalition with the policy prescriptions to benefit the nation renders itself useless. I'd put Mike's comments above in this category.

[Revisionist Punk]

"Judge" Lance Ito

[George Arndt]

I think the moment of (almost) irriversable decline might be the GOP idiocy of threatenting to not raise the debt ceiling. Meltdown on steroids.

[beejeez]

Well, American history has almost always been messy. But I would peg the election of a hack actor as president in 1980 as the point of no return. From then on, the high points consisted of staving off utter disaster.

[SteveH]

I have to throw my lot in with Peter G's comments. Governing isn't even an afterthought any more.

[Famous Original Bob]

Agree with TT. The Republican House's attempted coup of Clinton was straight out of Shakespeare. Et tu, Henry Hyde?

[Jaffe Cohen]

Shock and awe. What was more decadent than turning the bombing of Bagdad into reality television?

[cat48]

Cable TV News channels reporting abnormal behavior by politicians as "normal and perfectly logical" "both sides do it",etc. Anchors/Hosts gave up a long time ago. They don't know policy or care to learn about it much anymore. They report on DC as though it were Hollywood. The loss of serious news has hurt the country. I only noticed this b/c I've watched a lot of foreign news online. The difference is stark. The country could recover from offensive pols or political behavior if the news wasn't so offensive itself. Turner Cnn was great, but those days are gone.

[Michael]

Sorry that you didn't like the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in 2000. It did not decide the election. The voters did that. What it did do, and rightly, is reign in a Florida Supreme Court that tried to re-write Florida State election law rather than judge from it. While all 7 of Florida's Supreme Court justices were Democrats, their partisan over-reach still only came in a 4-3 decision. And at that, still earned the stern rebuke of their own Chief Justice:

"...the majority's decision...has no foundation in the law of Florida as it existed on November 7, 2000..."

"...the prolonging of judicial process... propels this country and this state into an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional crisis. ...this constitutional crisis will do substantial damage to our country..."

"Judicial restraint in respect to elections is absolutely necessary..."

"Plaintiffs asked the trial judge to grant... a recount of the under-votes... without first establishing that remedy was warranted... This proposition plainly has no basis in law."

"there is no practical way for the contest to continue for the good of this country..."