Virtually Pathological?

As much as anything else, what fueled the extreme hostility towards the Bush/Cheney administration were their imperious and radical efforts to place themselves behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and above and beyond the rule of law. It would require a virtually pathological level of tribal loyalty and monumental intellectual dishonesty not to object just as vehemently as we watch the Obama DOJ repeatedly invoke these very same theories and, in this instance, actually invent a new one that not even the Bush administration espoused.

Erst kommt die Eloquenz, Mr. Bones, dann kommt das Fressen!

"Virtually pathological" is not a tool that clean-limbed liberals and democrats and disciples of M. Pascal need to think with. One does not, sarcasm apart, proclaim wingnuts and wingnutettes and Weekly Standardisers and Hoovervillains to be ‘sick’. This by-law is not imposed for the sake of the bozos and the sweet puppies, naturally, but for the sake of decent political grown-ups. We make life far too easy for ourselves by allowing (pseudo)diagnosis to pass for argument.

The derogatory prefix placed in parenthesis is optional: the diagnosis ploy would be improper even on the supposition of genuine clinical pathology. She who lives by a medical analogy ought to be prepared to die by it, and die by it she must, for even if a diagnosis is entirely accurate, it still fails to be any sort of argument at all. Let Dr. Schweitzer, ably assisted by Mother Teresa, examine some miserable victim like General Lord George Will and (quite correctly, me judice) decide that what the patient has fallen prey to is syneidetoma mutilans, a malignant tumour of the conscience, that remains only a description of His Lordship’s moral and mental disability. If the bad news were brough directly to His Lordship's attention, he would reject it as hostile defamation in two seconds, never dreamin’ for a nanosecond that he might ask some neocomradely quack at Wingnut City for a second opinion. Sick or whole, the prize jerk over at the The Washin’ton Neo would manage to see that it is not that sort of opinion, not, indeed, the sort of opinion it pretends to be. That discrepancy is why it was so extremely counterfactual of me to imagine St. Albert of the Historical Jesus playing the sort of game that Mr. Glenn Greenwald wants to play. [1]

So much for ‘diagnosis’. Mr. Greenwald's innovation is more with ‘virtual’. Exactly what value is added, or intended to be added, by that term is a slightly tricky question nowadays, when one’s immediate response to it is to think of some connection with WWWonderland rather than of the virtus Catonis Iunioris or il virtù del Signiore Macchiavelli. There is also the possibility that it is sheer tautology, a noise with no meaning of its own: ‘pathology’ being a figure of rhetoric to begin with, if "virtual pathology" means no more in context than "General Holder is not really sick but he might as well be," it looks to me as if Greenwaldian VP comes to little more than "an avowedly rhetorical figure of rhetoric. " Celà ne vaut pas le voyage, don’t thee know, Mr. Bones?

___
Descending from Form to matter (or call it Fressen), thee will notice, sir, that G. Greenwald, Virtualis Medicinæ Doctor, does go on provide a little more information about the virtual patient’s virtual infirmity. General Holder and those who applaud him suffer from "tribal loyalty" and "monumental intellectual dishonesty." It is especially alarming to Dr. Greenwald that these same virtual symptoms were characteristic of the militant extremist Republicans back before they were so happily deprived of the Executive Branch just the other day.

Now here again we must distinguish, Mr. Bones. It would be thoroughly Pascalian and therefore edifying to warn us good guys, in a general way, always to endeavor to think better than lowly denizens of Hooverville and Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City manage to think. So far, so good, but when Dr. Greenwald starts specifying particular defects in the (pseudo)intellectation of Bozodom rather than allowing each individual good guy to play diagnostician for herself, I begin to reluct a little. Being countersuggestible, not to mention a Tammany Hall or Cook County Democrat, I find myself wishing to say something nice about "tribal loyalty."

"Monumental intellectual dishonesty," taken at face value, is far outside the Pascalian pale, indefensible altogether. Yet thee and I, Mr. Bones, have long pondered the mysteries of precisely when it is appropriate to accuse the typical Homelandic pol of lying (or of ‘cynicism’), and Dr. Greenwald runs afoul of us a little in that quarter also, I think. In short, I incline to accept our virtual quack's virtual diagnosis of "tribal loyalty," but to deny that the condition is ‘pathological,’ whereas with "monumental intellectual dishonesty," I allow that the condition would be virtually pathological if actually present in the patient, but incline to suspect Greenwald, V. M. D., of a virtual misdiagnosis.

At the same time, he does seem to have a pretty good feel for what is problematical about General Holder and his groupies. To phrase the crucial point entirely independently of questionable Greenwaldisms, the Attorney General of the United States of America evidently thinks that Cheyneyoid Unitary Executivitarianism™--"efforts to place themselves behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and above and beyond the rule of law"--is OK when we donkeys do it, but was not OK back when the militant extremist GOP used to do it. Unremarkably, it is not difficult to unearth wingnuts and wingnutettes who double-standardise in the diametrically opposite direction, makin’ that Big Party pond scum of theirs, Neocomrade Gen. A. Gonzales, Esq., out a noble goose, with Mr. Holder the silly goose who presumes to wield high prerogatives obviously reserved to her prescriptive natural betters.

These virtual symptoms, I take it, are what get virtually diagnosed as "monumental intellectual dishonesty." But this V. D. is entirely wrong at least insofar as Hooverville and Wingnut City and the militant extremist Republican Party are concerned: they sincerely believe that their own OnePercenterdom, as represented through America's Otherparty, is better than the rest of us. They thought so when they were Federalists with Gen. Hamilton, Esq.; they thought so when they were Whigs with Generals B. Harrison and Z. Taylor; and they have though so as the Party of Grant or Grand Old Party ever since 1869, every day in every way right down to when they became, temporarily, the Party of 1LT Bush of the TX Air National Guard.

There has, perhaps, been a slight modification of why our Homelandic ganders suppose themselves far better than the average goose, but never any waverin’ for even an instant in the fact of their self-preferrin’. Under these circumstances, the question of "monumental intellectual dishonesty" has arisen only when general electoral necessity or an ill-judged ‘idealism’ on the part of individual ganders has led them to conceal or even deny their obvious betterness. These aberrant episodes have happened frequently enough, because in order to function as a North American political party rather than a Venetian conspiracy of oligarchs the militant extremists of the Otherparty can rarely [2] be quite frank about their own Coriolanian betterness in public places where the beastly mob of cobblers and donkeys might overhear them. They mastered the requisite ‘populist’ humbug by 1840 at the latest, and have been keepin’ it up admirably ever since.

Hence Dr. Greenwald is mistaken to virtually diagnose "monumental intellectual dishonesty." The ganders honestly believe that noble ganders are better than silly geese and therefore obviously ought to have more power. When they pretend otherwise to Televisionland and the electorate, their pretence is so old and so ill-camouflaged that nobody who cares enough to stay awake and pay a little attention can be deceived by it. Thee and I, Mr. Bones, have long agreed that the Ganders Only Party are not to be called ‘liars’ when they emit noises like that in judicious (?) defiance of their subjectively sincere self-esteemin’. Dr. Greenwald virtually diagnoses "intellectual dishonesty" which is not verbally the same as ‘lying’. I am not entirely certain whether or not there is any material difference. Can the militant extremist ganders be acquitted on the grounds that certainly do not deceive themselves in foro interiori about their own natural and prescriptive superiority? I should say Yes, but perhaps Dr. Greenwald or some other cultivated despiser of Hooverville and Wingnut City could make a respectable case to the contrary. God knows best.

The central question is not about America's Otherparty, but about whether General Holder, presumably himself a silly goose and a loyal donkey, must be found guilty of "monumental intellectual dishonesty." I suppose it is just possible that the presumption is wrong, that our Attorney General is, in his heart, no liberal and democrat and Democrat, but something else altogether, possibly an illiberal antidemocratic Socialist or Technocrat. (Or why not an antidemocratic and illiberal Reformed Zoroastrian?) If so, he would be off the Greenwaldian virtual hook exactly the same way in which the militant extremist GOP are off the virtual hook: General Holder would "know in his heart," à la B. Goldwater, that he is better than we are and must therefore have powers that it would be madness to entrust to us silly geese. But if there is any positive evidence to that effect, I have not heard of it.

One easy guess is that the good General supposes himself to possess, not an across-the-board prescriptive betterness like that of the wingnuts and wingnutettes, but only an ex officio betterness. Any goose or donkey could in principle be Attorney General, but the one that actually is so must eo ipso possess extraordinary powers, perhaps even to the point at which Dr. Greenwald can be relied upon to virtually diagnose "an impenetrable wall of secrecy ... above and beyond the rule of law." Something along those lines must be conceded by America’s party, assuming we do not wish to repudiate our descent from general Jackson. (There were some distinct Rulalaw questions about our foundational hero, were there not, O Democrats? Though despair not! many of them were about other countries’ Rulalaw, which is rather a different subject than the one Dr. Greenwald has raised.) But how much concession shall there be, and what shall it consist in, exactly?

Dr. Greenwald is broad-minded enough to refer to a very hostile second virtual opinion which goes like this:

But where — as here — Obama embraces the very same extremist secrecy and immunity powers which provoked such intense criticism when Bush claimed those powers, any minimally honest person will react how Booman did. It is simply impossible for X to have been a hallmark of lawless tyranny when Bush did it but an understandable or tolerable action (or, worse, a routine fulfillment of one’s duties) when Obama does it. It is simply impossible for X to have been a hallmark of lawless tyranny when Bush did it but an understandable or tolerable action (or, worse, a routine fulfillment of one’s duties) when Obama does it.

That really will not do, but unfortunately Dr. Leon H. Wolf cannot virtually diagnose the Greenwaldian pathology correctly. What is really wrong with that quotation is merely that Dr. Greenwald lays down his Rulalaw simpliciter rather than secundum quid: lots of "minimally honest people" can assent to those abominations, a difficulty arises only if they also profess to be liberals and democrats and Democrats. ’Tis a happy thought that everybody ‘honest’ must reject the goose-and-gander shtyk and be a sound Kantian! Yet a happy thought is all it is: the empirical woods are full of categorical imperative rejectionists; to accept advice to ignore them as dishonest would only needlessly unfit one for coping with the real world.

The Wolfian virtual diagnosis is rather legal than medical:

In light of the indisputable (by everyone other than Olbermann and other leftists who are clueless about the law, some crackpot law professor from GWU and Greenwalds) presumption that the Government is immune from suit in the absence of a clear and express waiver, the DoJ really had no choice at all but to raise this defense. Anyone who says otherwise simply does not understand how lawyers are supposed to do their jobs.

Wolf, Esq., looks to be in fact what I just fantasized that Gen. Holder might be, an illiberal antidemocratic Technocrat whose special technê is jurisprudence. Since Rulalaw can mean pretty well anything and its opposite, as thee and I noted in conjunction with the late Neocomrade Representative H. Hyde's ever-immortal bloviation during Impeachmentgate, sir, few things are less surprising that Wolfian Rulalaw and Greenwaldian Rulalaw should have little in common but the label. ’Tis rather like hot-and-sour soup, don't thee know, Mr. Bones? No way of guessing what ingredients will go into either product at the next restaurant one visits for the first time!

Happy days.

___
[1] At the exalted, but specialised, level of St. Albert and Mother Teresa, the best thing to do with a General Lord George Will, or a Neocomrade Vice-President R. B. Cheney,or, in the case at hand, with General Eric Holder, is, as I conjecture, to mutter in a devout whisper, but one loud enough to be easily overheard, "There, but for Father Zeus, go you and I!"

That ejaculation is not, I think, at bottom significantly different from this humble keyboard's own "prize jerk" above, but thee must admit, Mr. Bones, that the ecclesiastical path is a good deal tonier. Either way, the actual information content is merely that His NeoPostal Lordship is ethical and intellectual pitch, a substance not be touched by anybody who would mind being defiled.


[2] Naturally it is always a pleasure when complete frankness does break out in the Otherparty, as for instance when Buckley Minor went about hawkin’ his favourite political proverb, Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi. Still, it cannot be an acident that he did so in the decent obscurity of an extinct tongue.