Honesty and politics

Andrew Sullivan gets to the heart, for me, of what is so disgusting about the current political era.

Obama, Clinton, and the war

What disgusts me in how the politics of this war have played out is the dishonesty. How so many in Washington who supported this war without enough thought to its consequences, who cheerlead policies that are clearly failing, and who stick by their policy of pressure, force, and aggression as some kind of engine for democratic progress, how all of these people cannot give it up, will make tragedy of as many peoples' lives as necessary to maintain it, all because of an intellectually and otherwise dishonest resistance to admit when they are wrong.

It is wrong to use power and to explicitly advocate the use of power as a smokescreen for one's mistakes and failures. It is wrong to make tragedy of the lives of others because you cannot face up to those failures. It is human to ignore the evidence contrary to your sacred notions as a means of avoiding your mistakes of judgment and failures of policy. But it wrong to do so when it means ruining, ending, or otherwise seriously fucking with the lives of others because you are too stubborn to face the greatest pride of people in politics: that they might be wrong, about anything.

And every excuse that I have ever heard on this one is one long self-fulfilling prophecy of why pressure made me do it and pressure is the wave of the future and pressure is the force for democratic change and pressure is why I am not responsible for my votes or my policies or whatever the political case may be.

Force is power. Force is freedom. Force is honesty. Force is progress.

Force is everything but me having to admit that I'm wrong. Because that may reduce my power, my ability to use force. And without me having the capacity to force change, where would this world be?

Put this political period on fast forward for 70 years and you might understand the depth of the deception that was Soviet Communism. Put it on fast forward for almost 40, 50, 60 years and you might understand the depths of the deception of Saddam Hussein's Baathism, Fidel Castro's Cuban Communism, the North Korean Communism of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong Il, or Mao Tse Tung's and subsequent generations of Chinese Communism.

It's dishonest is what it is. Intellectually and otherwise. It is the essence of what people like George Orwell, Lord Acton and the like warned us about power. And there is no opportunity for us to shed its ugly legacy until enough people call it out for what it is.

As someone who doesn't covet power, I seriously underestimated what people will do to have and keep it.

I only hope that I haven't underestimated the ability of more honest folks to see through it.