Incestuous Power and Various Toldja So’s

The Left continues to receive some rather disappointing body blows from the Obama Administration as it laughs off their earnest questions about prosecuting the Bushies for war crimes.

The reason for that is simple. To draw too much attention to the radical abuses of power committed by the Bush Administration would be to draw attention to the fact that the radical abuses of power were protected and enabled by legal arguments and policies which the Obama Administration has every intention of hugging close to itself and making use of for its own ends.

So much for “CHANGE”. The Left will have to console itself that, although Obama is every bit as committed to uncheck, unilateral executive power as the Bushies, they are at least still solid on the sole core value of the Left: the sacrament of abortion. My bet is that, with the exception of a few principled people like Glenn Greenwald, most of the Left will find a way to make itself comfortably numb when they realize that Obama ain’t gonna budge on this. Between abortion and gay marriage, the zeal to guard and protect its sexual obsessions seems, historically, to have the power to override all other issues for the Left. I don’t see that changing.

Meanwhile, dunces on the Rubber Hose Right, who spent years and years defending Bush’s arrogation of power to the Executive Branch–an arrogation by which he declared himself competent to accuse anyone on earth–citizen or foreigner–an enemy combatant, detain them without charge for as long as he wanted, torture them if he pleased, and give them no right of appeal–are suddenly starting to figure out, at long last, that this might be a dangerous power to give a President.

Permit me a “toldja so”. I can’t tell you how many times I was accused of saying “Bush is Hitler” when I pointed out the danger of this arrogant and reckless policy. Again and again, I was assured that it’s all to keep us safe and is only being used against “bad guys”. (And, of coursee, the way you know they’re bad is… Bush says so!). I was told that if I criticized such a policy it’s because I hate America and Bush (and God and apple pie and motherhood, no doubt). I was mockingly assured, with classic straw man sarcasm, that Bush is not Hitler, etc.

But see, that’s the thing. I never thought he was. i thought him, instead, arrogantly short-sighted because I had every confidence that he would quietly leave office on 1/20/09–and leave it to a successor who will be ever so glad to take the powers he has arrogated to the executive and use them.

So yesterday, the morons on the Rubber Hose Right, especially the morons who simultaneously claim to be “prolife” while cheering for the infinite detainment and ocassional torture of detainees, awake to discover that prolifers and people who regard gay marriage as a ridiculous pretense and not a fundamental right are on a little list in the offices of the Department of Homeland Security as possible terrorists (a story ably commented upon by Fr. Z, who is in fine fettle).

Gosh! Who could ever have predicted such a thing? Who would ever imagine that, having cut down all the laws in England to get at the devil, the devil might turn around on the cowards and fools who were willing to make excuses for Bush and use his own destructive actions against them. Jeepers! What a totally unforeseen turn of events!

So congratulations, shills for Bush’s detainment and torture regime who haunted my combox for years. Caesar has his eye on you now. Hopefully, he will be clement. But you never know, do you?