Tempered Glee

Please believe that I will enjoy the indictment of any and all Bushco officials with any and all charges as much as anyone. I am delighted that over 80 percent of American's polled think that Bushco did something illegal and/or unethical in PlameGate, and I suspect that even in the improbable circumstance that no charges are brought against anyone, most Americans of both major tribes believe that Bushco is at the very best a deeply unethical outfit not to be trusted at their word.

But say charges are brought? So what?

The war in Iraq continues, yesterday marked by the symbolic 2000th death of a US soldier (and the unmentioned continuance of the average death of 60 Iraqis a day). Veep Cheney asks for legal permission to torture - not that Bushco has needed legal authorization to torture. Republicans in the House have begun writing legislation that will cut funding for student loans, health care, foster care, and food stamps.

I don't mean to minimalize all that Plamegate symbolizes and signifies about the world view of those who perpetrated the act coldly, clinically, with an eye towards maintaining legality while working to violate the spirit of that legality. You all have read me; I've written about the various routes to outrage on this.

But there is not another Rove to replace Rove? another Libby Libby? another Cheney Cheney? and while we're busy playing Whack-a-Mole with whomever next pops his head up out of the bottom orifices of Bushco, Big Republicanism continues its relentless, well-financed, and conscienceless march to Corporate Imperialism on a geo-political scale, to undermine the rights labor has fought long to wrangle, and to enrich the rich at the expense of the poor.

I'm all for Rove going to jail. It's call for a celebration, a small, intensely happy one, shared over a beer with like-minded friends. But it's not victory. Maybe it's a start of something; it certainly is not an end into itself.