Chris Floyd has just posted a fine pointer to a great essay by Scott Horton -- a you-must-read-it-all piece about Karl Rove's most recent shenanigans in Alabama, in a case involving Don Siegelman and Dana Simpson, featuring all the usual "sleaze, graft and criminal conspiracy" (in Floyd's phrase), punctuated by a whistle-blower's house burning down. How quaint.I was especially struck by this part of Floyd's comment, which makes a lot of sense even if you haven't yet read Horton (emphasis and space added):
As the Bush gang's tenure in office nears its end, the frantic thugs will face the possibility of prosecution for a number of high crimes, and they will resort increasingly to physical intimidation to cow or silence witnesses.As a long-suffering chess-player I have always admired the writings of the long-ago grandmaster Richard Reti (1889-1929) [photo]. Apart from the charming wit that pervades his writing, there's also a remarkable pattern in the content: again and again Reti saw previously undocumented truths about the game, some of which had been lying in plain sight for years, and he expressed them in such a way that everyone who read him came away thinking "Well, of course! It's obvious, isn't it?" But it wasn't obvious until Reti said so.
Does that sound far-fetched? Then consider this: at every single point, the Bush Administration's depradations have turned out to be even worse than originally thought.
For example, the "bad apples" of the "incident" at Abu Ghraib turned out to be the products of a deliberate, knowing, thorough-going, worldwide system of torture formally created and officially approved by the White House itself.
The "investigation" of 9/11 -- which had to be forced on the Bush gang in the first place -- turned out to be an ludicrous whitewash, directed by a close colleague of Condi Rice who later went on the State Department payroll.
The "shaky evidence" for launching a war of aggression against Iraq turned out to be a pack of falsehoods that were known to be falsehoods by the war's perpetrators, just as the "unforeseen chaos" that erupted in the wake of the invasion turned out to have been predicted beforehand with remarkable precision by government agencies.
The illegal wiretaps on "foreign terrorists" turned out to be part of a secret nationwide system of domestic espionage that has caught untold millions of innocent Americans in its web.
The "routine firing" of a few federal attorneys turned out to be the tip of a vast iceberg of legal and judicial corruption.
The "all clear" on deadly chemicals at Ground Zero in the days following 9/11 turns out to have been a deliberate deceit that has already killed many selfless rescue and reconstruction workers, and will kill many more in the years to come.
What Chris just said is obvious, and has been for a long time. I've grown to expect it. As Ali led with a killer jab, Rove leads with a limited hangout. It's a signature in the M.O. -- plain as day. It's always worse than they lead us to believe in the beginning. It's a tactic that works and Rove is nothing if not pragmatic: we can expect to see the tactics that work again and again and again.
I say all this now in a jumble of words that flow freely: ah yes! It's so obvious, isn't it?
But have I ever had the presence of mind to say so before? No! I haven't even had the clarity of vision to formulate the thought!
As a young man I used to think they broke the mold when they made Richard Reti. But that was before I started reading Chris Floyd.
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Scott Horton: Justice in Alabama
Go ahead. Click.
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