Why some get off

A recent entry at Confessions of a Libertine has sparked some rather heated discussion over there and given me pause for thought. There are minor points that I might like to argue, but here I will stick with the central issue, which is The Capt's question (or accusation) about why there is such a fierce outcry against Michael Vick while Bush gets away with starting a war under false pretenses and criminally mismanaging the government through cronyism (I'm elaborating here on what The Capt actually said--not unfairly, I hope) and corporate corruption goes almost unchecked.

His answers to the question seem to center on race: a rich black man (Vick) is fair game, while rich white men aren't, at least not for a full-on assault. I think it's undeniable that there are both overt and more passive forms of racism still extant in our nation, and it's fair to say that those elements will be present in some reactions to Michael Vick, but I think in this case an explanation that centers on race misses the mark. 

What it comes down to, I think, are two things. First, there is the degree of perceived wrong. It's easy enough to agree that the sort of cruelty that Vick apparently inflicted on these dogs is bad in itself and indicative of a sick personality. Now, what about Bush? Some will say that the same is true. At Bush's feet it is possible to lay far more lives--human lives--if we consider him culpable for the thousands of men, women, and children on both sides who have been killed because of a war that many now agree he lied our nation into. At Bush's feet, it is possible to lay lives lost in the Louisiana and Mississippi--not the lives lost directly to Katrina, because no one expects even the President to have control over the weather--but the lives of those lost in the mismanagement of the disaster relief: a mismanagement which seems to follow Bush's pattern of governing, placing people into important positions based more on cronyism and ideological agreement than on competence.

So how does Bush get a mostly-free pass? In part, it's because he has certain cultural mechanisms in place to defend him. Step back for a moment and consider the morality of soldiering. If a soldier kills a "legitimate enemy combatant," our culture doesn't call that murder. If, in pursuing war, a soldier kills a civilian inadvertently, our culture doesn't call that murder. Only if that soldier, say, massacres civilians on purpose outside of military objectives or orders, only then do we call it murder. Of course, the dead and their families may very well see things differently, but as a culture we have accepted that death is a result of war and that war is at least sometimes okay. Rightly or wrongly, a president is similarly absolved of the killing that comes from war--even, it seems, an illegitimate one. 

But that's where "plausible deniability" comes. As long as Bush can say that he was the victim of faulty intelligence rather than the manipulator of it, who can nail him for it? News agencies are 1) sensitive to charges of partisan politics and 2) owned by the corporate elites, who have an interest in the power structures essentially as they are. Why the democrats haven't been more active in their denunciation of Bush is another matter, and not one that's entirely clear to me. In any case, he can say with a straight face that he was just doing what a President is supposed to do, acting in the best interest of the nation and doing his level best, and for whatever reason, people are inclined to believe him. They may judge him to be incompetent, but not immoral; being President gives him that much of a shield.

Further, the public in general has a certain vested interest in giving our politicians the benefit of the doubt. Despite the lessons of history most clearly spelled out with Nixon but true of many of our presidents, people seem to want to believe that we can basically trust our politicians. I don't understand this myself, though I suspect that it's ultimately just too depressing to believe that the daily functioning of our lives in largely in the hands of corrupt interests--a judgment which I suspect applies as well to the quickness with which the general public has accepted the idea that Enron is an isolated instance of corporate corruption rather than business as usual. 

It was either Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn who I read one time reflecting on the following phenomenon. While driving from one speaking engagement to another, he tuned in to local radio and heard a sports call-in show. He was amazed by the sophistication of the questions asked and analysis offered by "regular people" calling in. Political issues, he mused, are largely not more complicated than the ins and outs of a 3-4 defense running a zone blitz or a West Coast offense, so why don't "regular people" put the same kind of passion and brain-power into understanding and discussing politics as they do into sports. Now, an obvious answer to this is that sports are inherently more interesting with their action and excitement, but this writer suggested another explanation. He suggested that the average American feels powerless to have a meaningful effect on politics; we live in a choose A or choose B democracy where C-Z aren't even options, and voting for A on issue 1 also means essentially voting for A on every other issue, even though you might actually want B for some of them and other options not given for others. We live in a democracy where our politicians are more accountable to corporate interests than to voters, again making the average American feel powerless in politics. In such a situation, why not choose football or baseball to occupy your attention? In either case, you are essentially powerless to do more than analyze and predict without affecting the course of events, so doesn't it, in fact, make more sense to choose the meaningless one, because it just hurts too much to devote all that time and energy to something you feel powerless to influence but which nonetheless profoundly affects your life. 

Dwelling too much on such things as politics or the ways and means of corporate America--these things are too important and yet seemingly beyond our influence, and so we tune them out. Where's the outrage against these things? What's the point? If we're going to engage in impotent outrage, it's much easier to direct our emotions at Michael Vick--or any athlete or entertainer, regardless of race--than it is at the real villains, because at least there's some hope that the bastards there will face justice.

Now, all that said, I'm not advocating this outlook, so much as trying to understand it. It's a rather self-fulfilling outlook, because it starts from a position of accepting powerlessness and then refuses to act, ensuring continued powerlessness.

Your thoughts are, as always, welcome. I'm trying to get at deeper causes here, but I can't claim any certainty that I'm either seeing the whole picture or seeing clearly what I do see. 

tags: michael vick  george bush  enron  sports  justice  

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