Priorities
Have been limiting the intake of current events news pretty significantly lately, in defense of my own mental health. Just heard a report on William Barr saying there will be investigations into the agencies that investigated the Trump campaign, along with the usual panel discussion following the basics of the story.
It’s ironic to hear. Both Democrats and Republicans have consistently said, “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about,” where things like surveillance, cash bail and a number of other civil rights and criminal justice issues are concerned. The only difference in who was saying it was who was president, governor or mayor. The existence of the phrase, and it’s acceptable deployment in public relations across party lines, is part of what makes Barr and Trump know they can make that announcement, even if they don’t go through with the investigation. The announcement is “running it up the flag pole” of public opinion, and benefitting from the hypocritical outrage from all the right sources. You’d think this would be the perfect example for conservatives. An investigation happened, law breaking was prosecuted. If Trump isn’t guilty of breaking the law, the investigation found that. It’s the essence of “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
It’s just as real and troubling that Barr’s announcement and if there is one, the subsequent investigation, are politically motivated.
It’s also true that Barr is essentially just treating these agencies the way “street criminals” are treated everyday. The investigation itself is based on the assumption of guilt. We don’t leave people languishing in jail for years before their trials, if they’re not assumed guilty. We don’t allow laws of discovery in criminal trials like those that exist in VA, if we’re not assuming guilt based on the existence of an investigation, instead of the evidence the investigation produces. It’s interesting to see the reactions when institutions which operate on those same basis are then subjected to the treatment they justify when they’re the ones administering it.
It’s also true that those agencies certainly have a history of dirty dealings, often illegal, when they’ve decided their target is an enemy of their interests. It’s not completely unthinkable that Barr begins an investigation on completely BS terms, and finds wrong doing where surveillance or evidence gathering is concerned. Even if it weren’t outright wrongdoing, all it will take is mistakes in technical protocol for the entirety of conservative America to believe it really was an outright “witch hunt.”
That full range of coexisting realities isn’t where the news coverage is going, I don’t have to follow it everyday to know that. Part of the failure in our press has been the kind of “equality of failure and equality of falsehoods” and I actually think Democratic leadership is victim to it as a belief as well.
The problem with conservative America coming to believe they have “proof” of the witch hunt they’ve claimed is that despite what most of the rest of us want to believe, a sizable portion of the American right wants a civil war, and wants the nation purged of what they need to believe are the “detrimental others.” They want to feel justified in waging it though. It’s true they are a minority, but the size of that minority is catastrophically miscalculated.
I don’t think either the press or Democratic leadership are aware of the depth that sentiment holds in the politics of the right. Gaining access to those kinds of positions of power means a demonstrated belief in the common fantasy of American Exceptionalism (here embodies by the “It can’t happen here” exception) or at least a demonstrated ability not to challenge it too directly. I honestly think this is the basis of why the right and the center dislikes AOC so much. She challenges that sentiment and those ideas.
Somewhat like the Assange story. I can believe Assange is a horrible human being. I can believe he was motivated by a desire to harm the Clinton campaign based on a very personal dislike (related to being targeted by the State Department when she ran it, and that a woman would dare do such a thing), and decided it was fine to side with a white supremacist in order to get his just revenge. Assange may even just be sympathetic to white supremacy. I can believe he would sexually assault someone. I can believe there should be consequences for all of those things too.
I can believe all of that and understand that the charges in the particular case he’s being extradited for, related to Chelsea Manning, also have far reaching consequences where press freedom is concerned.
The thing about all of this though, is it at least feels like the overwhelming majority of press that reaches the largest number of people aren’t particularly concerned with press freedom or much beyond making the highest possible profit to bother attempting to deal with all of those complexities.
It is kind of amazing though, given all of this, how thoroughly nuanced and how thoroughly detailed both the press and a majority of the public have been demanding the discussion be to work out and dissect every nuance, every possible perspective, when attempting to figure out whether or not attempting to shun and shame people advocating civil war in order to institute genocide and/or subjugation based on race and gender identity is acceptable.
All of these other complicated, nuanced topics, treated like some kind of team sport on a daily basis, but making sure every variety of white supremacy and misogyny gets it’s full hearing enough attention to suss out which part is really THE MOST WRONG, is definitely a priority. In a country commuting both genocide and profit driven racial subjugation at its inception really want to make sure that of all the ideas and perspectives we could just agree should actually be suppressed, this is where we measure our commitment to an individual right when it conflicts with the well being of the whole society.