In a perfect companion piece to the McGowan series, Driftglass ponders the story of Job and the proper relationship of The People to Authority. The essential argument, the most important point, and the one I fear we are too conflicted and confused as a society to come to grips with is this: our government only works if we say it works. Our systems become what we decide, nothing more and nothing less.

Read the whole thing. Driftglass says it better:

The Law is a sacred thing, but it’s not a physical object, and it only works its mediating magic and keeps us from spinning off into a very Dark Age if we believe in it. If we have confidence in it. If we can trust that it is, in fact, impartial and that no one’s meaty hand is on the scales and tipping justice against us.

And as with Nixon, once the public finds that the good-name of the Law has been pimped to provide cover for morally indefensible behavior, we lose faith in our institutions, and the consequences are ruinous.

This is another of the malevolent viruses that this Administration has turned pneumonic and is breathing into every corner of our lives. By making war on Reality itself, and by using a razor-thin (and ill-gotten, but not in a Diebold kind of way) mandate as if it were a magic wand, Bush corrodes the very meaning of “authority” itself. Perverting it from “one who knows WTF they are talking about” to “one who must be blindly obeyed whether or not he knows a damned thing and whether or not he has a malicious agenda”.

It divides citizens up in a way that cripples Democracy.

• No Related Post

Sunday, June 19th, 2005 @ 12:15 pm Politics Matters
RSS 2.0 Both comments and pings are currently closed.