Sometimes, we seem to perpetuate what we loathe the most. I
detest the idea that guilty criminals are arrested but often go unpunished. Equally,
abhorrent to me is that some people vote for and elect people with whom they do
not agree. The question has to be, “Why?”
While living in Belize, there was a young criminal attorney fresh
out of law school who rapidly developed a reputation of being a “good”
attorney. If police arrested anyone, even the poorest of families immediately scraped
together the money needed to hire the “best attorney”, the person w ho would “get
them off”—popular demand resulted in his fee escalating. What the attorney had
been doing was using the lack of training and the inexperience of a police force,
recently independent of colonial rule, to have case after case thrown out of court
for improper handling of evidence, such things as proof of an unbroken chain of
custody of evidence. In addition, he use of police procedures against the legal
system. An alleged package of dynamite was submitted too a laboratory for testing,
at trial, he proved the package had been opened without “police” witnesses
present; therefore, could have been contaminated: therefore, was thrown out as
evidence. Another example, a scruffy looking street punk shot the daughter of a
prominent family in the front seat of her car with eyewitnesses. A clean-shaven,
individual without dread lock, dressed in a white shirt and tie with a suit
jacket appeared in the police line up; not one of the witnesses could not indentify
him as the killer.
All of a sudden, this changed. His guilty clients were being
sent to prison. No one but him can know why he stopped doing these kinds of
things—as Belizean are prone to say; why “he
stopped being tricky”. I like to think that he realized he was working
counter to justice; he was defiling his own profession. Belize has many people
who really want their country to flourish; I assume he was one of them.
There seems to be a parallel United States politics. Techniques
of campaigning for political office in the United States have change rapidly
and markedly over the past few years. I think the change can be traced directly
to one man, #Karl Christian Rove. His true “tricky” political character emerged
early; at 19 yeas old, he sneaked into Democratic headquarters, stole 1000
sheets of letterhead paper, and used them to print fake campaign fliers
promising “free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing”. He distributed
them to rock concerts and cruelly to hungry people in homeless shelters.
Once started, he has not stopped. Every campaign he has been
involved in has brought charges of electoral malfeasance; but significantly, he
has never paid a price, which of course is the benefit of being the winner especially
in politics. He won the Phil Gramm senate campaigns (1982, 1984), the campaign
for Bill Clements (1986). He won the Rick Perry, Ag. Commissioner campaign (1990)
as well as John Ashcroft (1994), and senate campaign for John Cornyn (2002). Most
famously he is credited with the gubernatorial wins for George W. Bush (1994-1998)
followed by the presidential campaigns (2000-20004).
He used his cleverness, and there is no question he is
clever, to corrupt the office of the president in such ways as initiating the office
of the faith based initiative to gain votes. As a presidential advisor, he was
caught stacking federal courts by influencing the firing liberal federal judges
and replacing them with radical right wing judges. He was caught but not prosecuted
by Pelosi, as he should have been. He was guilty of appointing political
operatives in government agencies to disrupt the working of that agency: the
office of the Surgeon General for example.
He developed the technique of building up “negatives” by attacking
the opponent’s strengths; consequently, each campaign became more and more disingenuous
or “tricky”. He is behind the patriotic
sounding “American for Prosperity” ads that are completely and unequivocally false
with actors and actresses telling lies about Obamacare, candidates saying the
have lowered taxes when they have raised taxes, or saying the protect the environment
when the want to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency, or want to save
public education, etc. He has perfected the technique of placing ads in sports
events and rock concerts, and anywhere else where the people who see them are
politically ignorant; therefore, are influenced the most.
There is no limit to what this man will do. Unlike the attorney
in Belize, there is no evidence of remorse for what he has done; crooked politicians,
like guilty criminals, will keep hiring the “best” they can find. They will
keep hiring him to win their campaigns knowing they cannot win by being honest
and telling the truth. That would be bad enough if it stopped there but it doesn’t;
the Koch brothers have found they can hire Rove, the best, and he will use his all
dirty tricks, and even invent new ones, to elect their personal puppets for
them and; as for Rove personally, he will just keeping adding to his personal
fortune of 6.6 million dollars.
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