I just came from reading Greenwald's piece this morning about the NYT editorial taking Obama to task for covering up the Bush era war crimes and for embracing Bush abuses of power. The comments after the post voice a lot of impotent rage, and I sympathize. But while it's disturbing, it is only baffling to those of us who really don't understand how power in large institutions works.
Power does many things, but one thing you can count on it to do is fill a vacuum, and that vacuum has been created by a largely supine, morally vacuous congress. We can only count on congress to stand up and be counted when it comes to condemning the sexual indiscretions of Democrats; matters relating to the rule of law, the integrity of the constitution, or checks and balances, not so much.
Obama and his people deserve the criticism they're getting about not relinquishing the executive power arrogated by Bush/Cheney. I don't think that at this point we can cut them any more slack on that. But there is tremendous institutional resistance to give up power; If a balance is to be regained, executive power has to be taken back, and the ones to do it are Congress and the courts.
And we, the people, are supposedly the ones who control congress. But the reality is that entrenched power does as it pleases until challenged by a force that is greater than it. And that power does not exist except in numbers, and we are either too apathetic, or if not apathetic, too divided and conquered to muster enough numbers to pose much of an electoral threat.
We are forced into a position in which we must rely on the benignity of entrenched power, and that, of course, is foolishness. And so things will progress along this tack until things get so bad, probably when the Republicans take over again, that there will be some kind of push back, and that will be pretty ugly. Until then most people just won't care. They've other concerns closer to home, and that's just the way of it.
Leave a Reply