KRISPY Kreepy Karl

dr. elsewhere here

Well, on occasion there may well be a method to their madness.

The madness being this pseudo-shakeup, and the occasion being Karl Rove's relief of certain WH duties - so he can concentrate on swinging the November elections, of course. We sure had good reason to wonder what might be up. Will it turn out that tossing Scottie away from the WH press corps wolves was just a smokescreen (Josh astutely wonders why Scottie would leave without a ready replacement) to distract media attention from Karl's shift away from policy and possibly toward police?

Turns out, just as Scottie was bidding farewell to his tormentors, the Biggest, Baddest Wolf in their neck of the woods (i.e., Fitz) was meeting with the Grand Jury where he presented additional evidence against Rove in the Plame leak case, and announced to them that he will soon be sharing a list of criminal charges with the jury members in hopes that they will deliver a multicount indictment against Bush's Brain. Jason Leopold of Truthout spoke with attorneys and US officials close to the case, and to Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, who recently admitted that Rove remains a "subject" in the ongoing investigation. According to Leopold's sources, Fitz explained to the Grand Jury that Karl had lied eight out of the nine times he had been questioned about the details of this case, and previous testimony was reread in the courtroom yesterday that implicated Rove in both lying and in the campaign to smear Joe Wilson.

So. Joe Wilson, along with the rest of us, just might be granted a real live viewing of that delicious fantasy of Karl Rove being frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs!

Now, if you'll be so kind as to allow me a minor conceit on Joe's behalf here, I'd like as graciously but pointedly as possible to connect the import of Karl Rove's felonies and fate to Mr. Cannon's very important post just below this one. The common denominator is the abominably amoral and heartlessly destructive behaviors these people - Karl Rove and Michelle Malkin and their entire mob of Flies (as in Lord of the) - are capable of. There is no real distance between Malkin's and Coulter's insistence on exposing innocent individuals to death threats and Karl Rove's insistence on smearing Joe Wilson, or John Kerry or John McCain, for that matter. Or, as long as we're on the subject, Rummy's exposing innocent Iraqis to slaughter in order to maintain military-industrial power over our nation. Etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam. They're all playing footsie in that perverted power grid.

The list of abhorent actions is too long to insert here, and I know you can each do it for yourselves. Though I invite you to just start a list of categories, from stealing the 2000 election to the tax cuts in early 2001, right through 9/11 and the USAPATRIOT Act, and the Hammer's cynical legislation and Abramoff's criminal control of Congress, and ignoring science and imposing an American Taliban, and lying us into Iraq and now Iran, and just lying about everything, and the arrogance and manipulation and buck-passing and fear-mongering and excusing torture for chrissake, and trashing the Constitution and everything we as a nation ever stood for. Just a start; the deeper details do overwhelm.

And it's not simply that these sad, cowardly bullies are capable of these monstrous things. No, they actually seem to feel perfectly justified in committing these offenses against anyone who is somehow in their way. We all learned how to behave and treat each other in kindergarten, how to get most of what we want without hurting anyone else; these are the kids who never got it, the ones who bullied and picked on those who tried to play by the rules, those they called names because they/we refused to be naughty and reckless like they were. Like Abramoff brazenly breaking the rules of an election in elementary school, and Karl doing the same in high school, then both of them, infamously, prophetically, in college.

Scottie was recently compared to Piggy from Lord of the Flies, and Karl could easily take the role of Jack, the ring leader of the most savage acts in the book. Hell, he essentially is Jack, as are most of the rest of the heavy players. For the insanity to escalate as much as it did in the novel, and as much as it has here in our world, the lighter players have to join in. The "base" and most of the rest of the country have allowed this to happen, ignoring the consequences, and continue to do so, from keeping these thugs in office to giving the likes of Malkin and Coulter and Savage and O'Reilly and Hannity and Rush and Boortz and all those hate-spewing banshees - as well as their lesser, relatively "civilized" propaganda parrots like Chris and Timmy - a soapbox to stand on.

Karl's kabal requires the likes of Michelle to deliver the message of intimidation from the Jacks of this world, the same way Goering understood the power of this message in bringing the people to "the bidding of their leaders." Though Goering killed himself before he could be hanged at Nuremberg, one man who participated in his menacing dance of fear was hanged for his crime, even though he never wore a uniform and never worked in the Nazi government. That man was Julius Streicher, editor of Der Sturmer, the vile and vicious German newspaper. The Nuremberg jurists condemned him for inciting hatred and extermination of the Jews.

The theme of Lord of the Flies was that each and all humans, even seemingly innocent children, are capable of evil; I should think that would be a theme from history, as well. But an implicit theme in the book was that limits on behavior are needed, for rules made by grown-ups help to manage the potentially dangerous unruliness in kids of all ages, because unlimited and unruly behavior always has some consequence.

Our modern world imposed the Nuremberg hangings not only on the executors of the crimes against humanity, but against a man who schooled and manipulated the masses into justifying and, even in some cases, committing those crimes. We will not recover any decency in our country - and indeed, do not deserve to - if we do not bring the Karls and Michelles and Rummys and Rushes and Bushes to some kind of consequence, some kind of justice. No, I am absolutely not suggesting we hang these depraved characters. But we must as a society reject fully their heinous behaviors and refuse them audience or influence.