Let me be clear, Anthony Weiner should be drummed from office.
With enthusiasm. With clanging pots and pans tied to his ankles. Amidst children crying, and loud boos and hisses. Send him packing, preferably strapped to the front end of a cow-catcher. His district should burn at least this member’s proudest member in effigy in front of his district office in Queens.
But not because he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar (poor choice of metaphors, I know, under these delicious circumstances), but because of the craven way in which he has tried to wiggle out of it (again, a lost opportunity).
The Viral Lie
Weiner used a template that we must also drum from public office: the Bart Simpson, “You can’t prove it” lie.
Weiner’s manner of trying to lie his way out of a scrape has been a common template in America for at least 20 years now. (Someone ring Mitch McConnell up and tell him this, for I don’t think he knows it.) It is based on a premise that will destroy any civilization if allowed to go unchecked.
We can no longer afford to raise the Lie Ceiling anymore, either. Our checkbook is empty in the Bank of Honor as well.
You see this kind of lie is made everyday, not just on the news with any Democrat (name anyone) in front of a microphone, but on the internet. It surrounds 90% of all the so-called debates and comments and blogs that exist, from HuffPo to DailyKos.
For twenty years Republicans couldn’t figure out how to defend against it. It was so…well, legal. Today I doubt most even recognize it, that is how perverse it has become.
Many right wing blogs also taste its nectar, for once a Lie can become free, with no consequences attached, it transcends political lines. It infests entire generations. What was notorious because it was so rare in Bill Clinton (my generation) is now commonplace even on some of the more respectable conservatives programs and blogs. The “unprovable lie” has become cultural.
And Anthony Weiner is just a symptom.
Truth vs Truth by Gavel
Underlying the Anthony Weiner/Bart Simpson defense of truly a miraculous theft of his cell phone and Twitter account, is a template, namely that …
…in America a fact isn’t a fact anymore until or unless someone in authority brings a gavel down and declares that it is one.
We all know there are legal truths, such as a man’s guilt in a crime, when he must first be tried and convicted. He is innocent until proven guilty. But unlike our rights laid out in the Constitution, this right isn’t universal, or immutable.
I would hate to see a man go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit, but I am quite sure there was never an innocent politician ever driven from office, even as Bob Torricelli screamed he’d been framed, and Weiner is now.
Slowly the past forty years or so, we have been conditioned to believe that it is a sin…to the extent a godless people can actually sin…to “judge” another UNTIL THAT GAVEL HAS BEEN BROUGHT DOWN.
We are reminded daily that now the people have no authority over anything anymore, but there is still an authority over everything, even if the State hasn’t gotten around to putting out regulations on it yet. God is not included in this recipe.
Under this rule, political speech in general, Anthony Weiner’s, Harry Reid’s, Barack Obama’s in particular, fall into a giant loop-hole, for it is speech specifically designed to be unreachable by that gavel. It is speech that is designed to insure that there can never be, as in a courtroom, both plaintiff’s and defendant’s evidence presented. Hence, no judgment.
A controlled, one-side media can ensure this at least to the point that contrary evidence is exiled to a separate universe (talk radio, the right wing blogosphere, or the kitchen table) so that no matter how preponderant the evidence, (70% range, as current polls about Obamacare, or 60% range on abortion, etc, etc) “fairness” (another code word) dictates these can only be opinions, minority opinions, and never, never is be rendered as part of any kind of public judgment.
Truth can only come out of the end of gavel.
This is where we need to take the “law of fairness” into our own hands.
Is Anthony Weiner guilty? Bet your best sidearm he is. Only I don’t care if he’s ever brought up on criminal charges. I want him punished, and I want him punished swiftly. Like right now. I want him to feel the public’s boot on his behind.
There is no entitlement to legal due process in politics. (There is no entitlement to due process in political advertising as some malefactors will find out this year.)
The Bart Simpson “you can’t prove it” lie has become the ruling template in current American politics, for all the lies, at Kos, at AARP, at SEIU, AFL-CIO, and Harry Reid’s office are always offered in a venue where those lies can never be exposed to the people’s gavel.
We know how this game is played, and have begun to interdict it.
To discern truth requires the ability and willingness to judge. But to judge a thing, any thing, is bad, we are told.
Who we should judge first are those who are telling us this, and then most of our problems will be solved.
