Scooter and Paris

So I've just read the news that President Bush (god, I choke even typing those words together) commuted Scooter Libby's sentence, stripping it of the 30 months of jail time which he had been given by the Federal Judge.

Just as fast as my own ire started rising, I quickly headed to my usual left-wing sites to see what they had to say... it's all pretty much the same. We are pissed. It was worth noting to me that the comment sections, usually full of all sorts of long-winded diatribes and amateur political philosophizing had been reduced to single word exclamations like "Fuck!" "Impeach!" "Cocksuckers!" and the like.

Is there some fancy German word for the sick feeling you get when someone gets away with something they shouldn't? You know the feeling, don't you? Disgust and anger all mixed up at once into a sour taste that twists your stomach and makes your lips purse up.

I felt it when O.J. was acquitted.
I felt it when Paris was (first) let out of jail.
I'm feeling it now.

I think humans have a visceral reaction when they see people who flout the social contract without penalties. For most of us, our lives are spent making compromises, going along to get along, following stupid rules made by stupid people, just so that we can get our paychecks, pay our bills and be left alone to claw whatever little bit of satisfaction we can out of this life.

We do this, for the most part, because we are taught from an early age both verbally and with the harsh electric shocks of reality, that these are the sacrifices we have to make to get along in life. We don't like it, but for the most part we have the thin satisfaction of knowing that everyone else is more or less in the same boat, too.

That's what makes equality before the law such a cherished ideal. It's bad enough that the rich live better lives than us, on a daily basis. It's bad enough that the rich and powerful are able to isolate themselves away from the rest of us behind gated communities and executive privilege, so that they can do what they want without fear of getting caught. It's bad enough that they have resources to hire expensive attorneys to protect them from the consequences of their rule breaking on the few occasions when they do get pinched.

But when we see that their privilege goes beyond even that, that even when they've been caught, tried and convicted that they are able to pull strings which pluck them from accountability, we become enraged.

This commutation was a poke in the eye to a lot of people, not just liberals. It's the sort of thing that is going to enrage anyone with the sneaking suspicion that there are two sets of rules operating in America, one for the obscenely rich along with their minions, and the other for the rest of us.

This is going to be the stupid little thing that sets off the firestorm, I think. This is the small act which crystallizes all the things that have been bugging the shit out of people about this administration all along. Even Republicans are going to be pissed about this one. I think this is the tipping point.

The scandals that fuck the political figures aren't the big, real, complicated fuckups like, say, invading Iraq. That's too amorphous, too hard to get a head around. No, the deadly mistakes are the ones that are simple and personal... lying about a break-in.... getting blown by an intern. Protecting a convicted minion from responsibility falls in that category.

It's pretty clear. THis person was convicted, but simply because the President likes him, he doesn't have to serve time. This is going to stir the shit, and at last it might very well start to boil over.

Bring it on, I say.