In the last week, it is almost as if the entire American moral landscape has been turned upside down in eerie fashion — in matters that vastly transcend fornication and adultery. The Petraeus-gate matter is the stuff of tabloids now; but soon the real issues relating to when and what Eric Holder knew, and by extension the president, and how exactly Benghazi (the crime of indifference to the besieged, the cover-up of the truth, the actual mission of our consulate and annex) fits into this labyrinth of deceit, both petty and fundamental, may overshadow the present sensationalism.
Nothing seems real anymore, not preelection federal data on jobs or food stamps or the release of such “facts”; not foreign-policy information like an Iranian attack on a drone; not the supposedly competent federal relief in response to Hurricane Sandy. Even Saddam Hussein’s plebiscites could not achieve margins like the 19,605 to 0 we saw in 59 Philadelphia precincts. Does anyone care?
How can all this suddenly explode on the scene, just 72 hours after a national election, in a supposedly transparent country with a free, watch-dog media? Have we become a Russia, Venezuela, Cuba? Is there one honest person in Washington left?
Davis asks two questions in the excerpt above (in red); I will answer them both:
2-No. See the last sentence of the paragraph above. It is our political class, with a big assist from the media, who redefined the concept in the first place.
For some reason, this quote from Atlas Shrugged seems relevant...it's a snippet of a conversation between a naive young lady and the imposing Francisco d'Anconia:
"When a politician or a movie star retires, we read front page stories about it. But when a philosopher retires, people do not even notice it.”
“They do, eventually.”
And when the truth retreats to a corner, to sit and watch? I think we'll notice it, eventually...
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