May 17, 2013: Efflorescence
Suddenly, the flowers are budding. The trees are greening. Dandelions brighten my lush lawn. And America is entering that glorious era that recurs every eight years: the President’s second term is riddled with stupid scandals, and nothing good will ever happen ever again.
The past weeks have seen not just the IRS scandal, but a resumed focus on the Benghazi consular attack. I know what you’re thinking; my admirers beat a tattoo on the cobblestones, chasing after me with this question. They stop me on the street, or waylay me as I dash out of the opera, to demand: why would I make common cause with the gang of right-wing mutants currently lapping up the blood of four dead Americans?
The question begs answer. First of all, I make no common cause with today’s crypto-fascist GOP, nor House Oversight Committee Chairman/probable arsonist Darrell Issa. Those creeps should be dragging their knuckles at the bottom of a mineshaft in a region safely isolated from the rest of humanity. But until "Operation: Goldmine" can take effect, I have found that even parasites are necessary for gastric health. Policemen don’t care when gangbangers shoot each other; I feel much the same when a jackal like Issa makes Attorney General Eric Holder, the little man who thinks "due process" is as optional as a Subway sandwich topping, sweat and implode on national television. Let the badgers rip one another’s faces off! I’d sooner mourn roadkill.
However, beyond the thrill of seeing high-speed collisions between hacks of each party, there is a more haunting melody. Though it’s apparently apostasy for anyone on the left to say so, the slaying of four Americans, including an ambassador who genuinely seemed a rare, humane, and decent friend of the Arab world , was an enormous failure. Not since Lebanon has such a calamity occurred. And, as I argued months before the attack occurred, as in Lebanon, our foolish, illegal intervention into another country’s civil war on the side of some of the combatants but not others would be paid in blood.
Members of both parties sent those guys onto the killing floor, into a restive country the fine minds behind the Libya War had no understanding of, and, desperate to prop up this stunning victory, failed to safeguard these civilians. Once the attack had begun, according to the military brass, it was too late to stop it. So they didn’t even bother to try. (Yes, the military that brags about its ability to project force anywhere on Earth couldn’t be bothered to scramble in time for "Zero Dark Thirty-Two.") It’s a fine explanation, one those uniformed assassins are no doubt very proud of stating publicly – just like horrorshow social climber Susan Rice, with her patently ridiculous claims that a Youtube video inspired the slayings, not an obviously well-organized network of attackers, intact from their days of glory bringing down Gaddafi.
Well. The good guys won though, right? No one will take seriously the loss of another few lives, tinged as they are in the usual insufferable partisan bickering. And Hillary Clinton will still run for president, and still win.
And the gang of cheapjack creeps she brings in – the Lanny Davises, Mark Penns, and eunuchs named "Phillipe" of the world – they’ll make slugs like Susan Rice and Darrell Issa look like Jefferson and Adams.
Happy Friday.
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