The Devil's Advocate

I've been watching from the sidelines as the sinusoidal news curve dipped stories of major importance below the public visibility level while issues such as "basket-brawls" and the Monday Night Football video overwhelmed us all.

135 plus U.S. soldiers died in November—equivalent to April of 2004 when insurgents and terrorists in Iraq launched major offensives. Fallujah is now a wasteland of decaying hopes and possibilities. More importantly, the possibility of a peace has been fractured while the President of the Free World plays the same record for another four years.

Back in the Homeland, secure with our stockpile of duct tape and with a new legion of officials destined to come into Bush's confidence, the national attention no longer rests on the hypocrises of State—everyone wants an iPod for Christmas, or the leaner, meaner, Hummer which is, by the way, neither.

It's easy to get disgusted and disheartened, I daresay I've been drunk on that ale for a bit now, but it doesn't change the facts. It is not Christian, human, or logical to lie to commit an act of violence even if the ends may seem to justify the means. It is never okay to twist the law to pursue evil; that way only evil remains. It is not sufficient to vote with your moral values; you must vote with your conscience yoked to your common sense. It is not sufficient to consider charisma and character, appearances and platforms; judge by actions and the public record.

One of the greatest indications that George Bush has a dysfunctional moral compass is that he continues to nominate individuals who look good for reasons of ethnicity or educational qualifications but who lack the nerve to remain humane and human. Alberto Gonzales for all his bootstrap bravado is an ethically bankrupt human being for supporting the draconian Patriot Act and for being the author of the "torture act" provisions in America's war on terrorism. This Village Voice article does a damn fine job of showing it.

Perhaps the American electorate will start paying more attention, across their Red and Blue divisions, to the nature of this administration that has used media tactics to gloss over inconsistencies so that its actions can appear far more pure than they are. Perhaps as the year winds down, and we gambol into a new year we will find a way to reconcile our actions with our words and a way to repudiate those who cannot due either to ignorance or indolence.