Elizabeth Warren has quickly demonstrated that it is still possible for officials of intelligence and integrity to publicly confront and investigate abuses of power and criminality with direct questions and demands.
For so long we have routinely been told that such methods would be impossible, impractical, imprudent, inadvisable and politically inept. We are told this repeatedly by both our representatives and their appointees and their supporters among us.
For these specious reasons have the actions and in-actions of the President, Geithner, Holder, Bruer and others been defended. And thus have four years of gross corruption and malfeasance been given full, unquestioned expression. Falsely serious willful coddling and collusion, facile incompetence, dereliction of duty, and deferral and denial of justice substitute truly serious investigations, public hearings, trials, convictions, sentences and reparations -- the rule of law -- such that criminals, their accomplices, and their criminal enterprises have been spared. Token settlements arranged. Voodoo, supply-side economics, the common crime of our age -- exposed and vulnerable in the barren wasteland of the vast misery it had once again been allowed to create -- was spared, resuscitated and reinstated, also in fake seriousness.
As if Henry Paulson's hysterical attempt at extortion had gained traction in subtler, more private yet still perceptible and no less egregious theft.
Also spared was the boundless, immoral, selfish greed of which voodoo economics and the insatiable vulture and vampire oligarchs are made. Spared as well were the passionately guarded, self-serving defenses of voodoo economics -- vice clumsily yet earnestly trotted out as virtue -- with which the workaday lemmings and gold-brickers protect it.
All spared as if all were innocent. Or as if the widespread participation was as good as innocence. Or too much to pursue. Or too dangerous to touch.
As if there would be no future consequence of little to no present consequences.
Almost as if none of it had happened except the damages, as evidenced by the victims.
All that is left are the excuses, the blatant corruption, and the ongoing devastation of the 90% who will NEVER be allowed to recover under an empire worshiping neoliberal make-the-rich-richer economics with no or little accountability.
"The best description of 2008 and its aftermath that I heard came from Thomas Frank. He said that our country came to a turning point, and didn't turn." - eightlivesleftThose who would tell you otherwise are being facile with the truth. And they are legion. And influential. And the relative health of the plutocrats, their willing adherents and corrupt servants and their wage and debt slaves expose them.
They will object and insist this is hyperbole and hysteria, though endless reams of dispassionate charts can and have been produced to demonstrate the simple, obvious truth they self-servingly refuse to acknowledge.
Our representatives and their defenders will also object to the analogy of Senator Warren's displays, asserting that she has accomplished nothing yet.
By simply asking the direct questions, putting responsible parties on the spot, and demanding the information necessary to investigate the institutions and individuals involved in the greatest financial collapse in eighty years -- which easily could and absolutely should have been done four years ago, by accepting responsibility and doing her duty in spite of the difficulty and danger she has accomplished more than all of our other elected officials combined.
" i'm part of the 99% - america's largest minority " - joe shikspakSenator Warren has actually exposed the 800 pound elephant in the room by not only acknowledging but actually respecting the expectations and needs of the 99%.
Rather than trivializing them and the rule of law upon which they are based by calling them PONIES.
For she has immediately and forthrightly undertaken what the people expected of and needed from her, which the administration and her peers have so obtusely, spectacularly, intentionally and corruptly failed to do for so many years before her. And, as a consequence, she has exposed them all.
It is a political Danse Macabre, full of ominous symbolism that signifies a politics of nihilism. Failure is presumed. Failure is expected. So rather than fight for the good, all that is offered is the not-as-bad, and failure thus becomes the best case scenario. The cynicism of it bleeds. - Lawrence LewisAnd it's worse yet than that. Because it is largely the result of thinly veiled and sometimes naked corruption.
The administration and its defenders will also object by saying that Senator Warren is in a different and better position than the President or his appointees in the Executive branch. As if the President and his departments of Justice and the Treasury have no influence over these matters.
Now there are minor exceptions to all of these truths. That is the nature of truth in reality. And the President's devotees' minds will fill with these exceptions and they will flood out of their mouths. But the exceptions do not make the rule, and the rule is undeniable in the dominant arc, the trend line of the work and non-work of those with whom Senator Warren's actions so brightly contrast.
One can only guess how long the plutocrats and their legion of devoted servants in both parties will wait until they draw their knives, as if they aren't already in hand.
Those who have the slightest interest in preserving any chance for democracy best be on the ready to come to Senator Warren's defense.
But I succumb again to hyperbole. Because wealth is no longer accumulating, the integrity of elections and governance is safe, and the Bill of Rights has been restored...
The contrast between Elizabeth Warren's behavior and that of the administration and its cohorts on the Hill provides a perfect opportunity to conduct a reality check on recent election narratives.
