Messenger v. Message

Really.  Is anyone surprised that the U.S. government maintains poorly guarded secrets about its diplomatic relationships with the rest of the world?  The country's ruling class can't tell its ass from an urgent need to rescue the middle class from predatory lenders who continue to feast on the rickety bones of families struggling to stay in shelter.  Thus, Congress carries on with all efforts to cover its ass but leaves families swinging floppy sticks at their mortgage holders from their front porches.

Most recently, we've seen the Senate hijack all commonsense and future financial security by stonewalling tax cuts for the middle class if the richest 1% of the population doesn't get their cut too.  Obama capitulated with the Republican hijackers, allowing them to ensure that those making over $564,000 per year will get at least $70,000 in tax savings instead of the paltry $27,000 in savings they would have seen had their tax bracket been increased from 33-35% to 36-39%.  By contrast, a family earning the median income in the country, or $55,000 per year will owe about $2,700 less than they might if the tax cuts were permitted to expire.

The best horrible thing about all this?  Congress and the White House agreed that the across the board tax cuts will simply be added to the national debt.  This, see, is the only way the politicians can cover their asses for the 2012 elections some 700 days off.

Crash.

Similarly, the Senate sits comfortably on its luscious, well guarded ass at yet another impasse-- this one confounding most observers who give a damn (including Condoleeza, HW and maybe a handful of U.S. citizens who really should tell their neighbors to get more involved) as it delays the ratification of a new treaty to reduce the nuclear arms capabilities of both the U.S. and its Cold War dance partner by another name, Russia.  The Senate Republicans argue that the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is insufficient because, basically, they just don't know if Russia is going to play by its terms.  The same Republicans don't seem to remember that the treaty is a product of the quintessential Republican leadership of Ronald Reagan.  When it comes down to it, the tragedy of the New START is the same as that keeping the American people hamstrung by debt: the Republicans don't want to play with the Democrat kids on the playground because the Democrats could, potentially, swat their fat asses later... in that looming election still two years off.

So, it's with a heavy, indulgent hand that I turn to Wikileaks and all the meat it's tossing into the digital media, be it juicy (Putin and his minion, the Russian President, need some superhero underroos), dry (Prince Charles isn't as respectable as the Queen), stringy and unpalatable (Afghani leaders ask the U.S. to cover up the hiring of young dancing boys for American contractors), or really, really, really, shockingly rancid (American troops have been killing people in Yemen and Pakistan but the government denies it).  The information exposed in these cables may or may not help the U.S. if it chooses to pursue its neo-imperialist strategies around the world as it has since 9/11... that is, by obscuring its desperate pursuit of its enemies through a more desperate cultivation of fair weather friends who support those enemies in order to take advantage of the U.S.'s greatest vulnerabilities: oil addiction and a behemoth debt.  It probably won't help, actually, and that's why the freaky neocons and their lesser educated Tea Party friends are calling for the death of the messenger, rather than engaging in a more deliberate consideration of the information revealed.  Deliberation could expose too much information to a population that seems to prefer darkness to light.  Isn't this a distinct condition of an oppressed people?

Well, Julian Assange and his impressive network of skillful collaborators has presented the U.S., and I mean its people, not its government, with a really appealing opportunity.  We the People could make a choice to engage in our democracy, to review the shape of our nation's footprint internationally and to deliberate on that impression based on our national values.  We have a chance to kick our government in its over-protected ass, not for god or christ or the second amendment, but because we share a decent moral commonground that may not want to be oppressed or to oppress.  Right?

We aren't a bad people; we just don't seem to know better sometimes.  Now, we do.  Or, we have the chance to.  Read the cables.  Pass them around.  Think a little.  And don't call out for the death of a man who puts a light in your hand.  Instead, use the light.