Caesar: Antonius!
Antony: Caesar.
Caesar: Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Antony: Fear him not, Caesar, he's not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman, and well given.
Caesar: Would he were fatter!
— Julius Caesar, 1.2, 190-198, William Shakespeare
Bush’s men are both fat and still hungry. As corrupt as these men and women get, they are never satiated. But they’ve been choking these past few weeks. Our boy-emperor need not fear plots with daggers — but subpoenas are another matter.
Libby has been found guilty. The FBI’s abuse of the Patriot Act and their lies about their activities have been revealed. Alberto Gonzales has been laid bare as the fraud and liar he is. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are testing the limits of how low an approval rating can go. And Karl Rove, who is still accusing the Democrats of playing dirty politics, is watching more and more of his dirty tricks being exposed.
The more we learn about the Bush administration, the worse they look. And hallelujah, Congress is scrutinizing them, and the general public is seeing more of the truth.
A year ago, this U.S. attorney scandal, a mere fraction of the wrongdoing perpetrated by this administration, would have been furious fodder for liberal blogs, but little probably would have been done. This time, the liberal blogs were right as usual — and the mainstream media actually listened. Is this a dream? Not that all the coverage is fantastic, but isn’t this widespread furor over obvious misdeeds, incompetence and villainy exactly what’s supposed to happen? Not that everything is going well, but isn’t this cause for hope?
Did the divine inspiration and brilliant instincts of George W. Bush warn him of this? Has Dick Cheney’s unerring judgment fled to an undisclosed location? Did Karl Rove see this in the entrails of a crony, or have his powers of prognostication left him?
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Marc Antony says:
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
The truth always comes out eventually. But there’s now real hope that some of the evil can be dug out while the culprits are still alive, or even while they’re still in office. Every lie exposed and misdeed challenged is a small victory. And the permanent discrediting of these knaves and scoundrels is a matter of national security. There is providence in the fall of an attorney general. (Or something like that.)
Happy Ides of March!
1 comment:
EXCELLENT!
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