Materials released by the Justice Department revealed that leading business and political figures had enduring relationships with the disgraced financier.
Materials released by the Justice Department revealed that leading business and political figures had enduring relationships with the disgraced financier.
I mean, I’d have to dig up the article, but Slavoj Zizek posited that this was the case around the time that Edward Snowden leaked all his information, and Chelsea Manning had already released all hers, and the evidence of the USA committing torture in the middle east was readily available. He made the case that for some reason, putting the truth out there just didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t cause revolutions, it didn’t cause people to rise up, and it didn’t change anything. A small number of low level soldiers were imprisoned for the torture, but the architects of the program and authors of the legal reasoning all still walk free and are often writing Op-Eds, such as John Yoo. The first post on reddit ever was The Downing Street memo which laid out the US and UK’s plans to manufacturer a reason to invade Iraq. Obama himself said “we need to look forward, not backward” in regards to the idea of prosecuting the Bush administration officials with signing off on torture, which they most assuredly did. Nothing fundamentally changed after the Snowden leaks, either, we’re literally living through the mass surveillance of Americans being turned into a sprawling plan to control and abuse the populace right now. AT&T never got in real trouble for handing over their communications to the NSA without a warrant. To quote Joe Biden “Nothing will fundamentally change.”
Outisde of the USA it happens, too. Nothing really happened to all the people in the UK government who were breaking COVID quarantine protocols partying it up while their citizens were being forced to shelter in place. Nothing really came of all the evidence that they were having full-on parties during this time.
I don’t think Zizek ever came up with a reason why this is happening, but was rather just noting that it was happening. That at this point in history, leaking information on corruption by governments by and large didn’t change anything about how those governments operated. I agreed with him then and I agree with him now. I’m a little surprised that people continue to be surprised.
It’s really rather that with each disclosure the powerful get more brazen in what they can get away with, Trump himself seems to be a symptom of that.
Given the current state of things we need to look backwards with extreme prejudice.
Including finally admitting that we need to hold those who failed to do their duty in holding these people accountable just as accountable.
Obama was a good President in a lot of ways, sure, but he didn’t dismantle the surveillance state under which we are now living. He paved the way for someone like Trump by not wanting to look political in pressing his DOJ to prosecute the architects of the US extraordinary rendition and torture networks. Biden is culpable in handing the reigns to Merrick Garland and never replacing him with someone who was going to take this threat seriously.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think the people who frankly abdicated their duty to hold these people accountable are absolutely just as accountable because their lack of action led us down this dark path just as much as the horrible actions of those directly responsible.
It’s all about money, and the power having it brings. Nothing else matters anymore because that’s all the vast majority of the upper echelon care about.