My mom has a saying, which I think she got from her mom: “A drunk man speaks a sober mind.” It means that sometimes being intoxicated can losen the tongue enough that a person says what they really mean. If you stretch this just a little, it applies to Cheney’s recent display of vocabulary on the Senate floor, the intoxicant being power.
Watergate and Abscam taught us that our public officials are often ungentlemanly in private, but Cheney’s public profanity shocked some people. It showed just how ugly things are between Bush administration officials and anyone who dares to criticize them. It’s as if there’s a new level of arrogance that says: “We can do what we damned well please, and if you don’t like it, well, bleep you!”
Cheney was only voicing this administration’s attitude towards anyone who happens to oppose their policies. And that attitude has been frequently on display in various parts of this administration, and among its supporters.
I can’t remember a recent White House that was so hostile to Congress, or to any form of criticism or dissent. Ashcroft has refused to answer questions about the application of the Patriot Act, which has allowed hundreds of wartime detainees to be held incommunicado for months or years, without access to lawyers and without formal charges, contrary to the most basic principles of our Constitution. The president only had to declare that the Constitution doesn’t apply to them.
Which is like saying “bleep the Constitution and the Congress that has oversight of these things.”
Disdain for anyone who questions the way they do business suffuses this administration, even going so far as its supporters on the Supreme Court. To the amazement of many, Justice Antonin Scalia rebuffed all demands that he recuse himself from the energy task force case because of his social ties to the vice president.
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So, as long as Bush & Co. remain in power we will be fucked, and without the nicety of lube or the courtesy of a reach-around. We have until November to decide whether we want to bend over just one more time.