Big Lies, high crimes, and scot free...

Vincent Bugliosi has a post in this week's Alternet on the possibility and/or likelihood of prosecuting George Bush for taking the country to war under false pretenses, adding his voice to many others. Much as been made on the cravenness of the US Congress for not holding the president to account, on the lack of outrage on the part of the American people, and the propensity of the media to print only trivia. And while Bugliosi, I am sure, makes a case with his usual gritty enthusiasm, I think he misses the point. He (and a host of others like him) gravely underestimates our citizens' intelligence and the scope of the problem.

But this is not a political blog. If it's about anything, it's about words, their magic, and whether we should believe them or not.

Early on, in this whole war debacle, a child of three could have seen through Bush's unholy eagerness to make a case for war, particularly a case for war with Iraq. You had only to view the size of the protests against it. Even then, millions and millions of people had already seen through that frail tissue of lies used to justify war against a bad country, a tyrannical leader and its mostly blameless citizens.

But then, 9-11 had occurred, and it seemed terribly important to do something. Everyone agreed on that. We had to do something, didn't we?

My only comfort on 9/11 was that I'd already lived through much worse: the assassination of JFK. Since that black day, the worst in my particular life, I've watched with a sad interest how long it has taken us to accept that on November 23, 1963, a lonely man with weird historical delusions shot John F. Kennedy through the head. A whole number of folks have never accepted that. Surely, such a momentous event would have immense organizations behind it: right-wing Cubans, the CIA, the mob, and a then-vice president. Surely, a single socially inept man couldn't shoot a president. Surely, though, he did.

In Granta, issue 93, there is a photo essay on para, tetra, and quadrapalegics. What is most striking about this essay are all the homely ways a life can be forever changed.
These people were hideously crippled because, variously, someone put down a heavy weight wrong, slipped in a wading pool, placed an ornament on a Christmas tree, slipped while shopping, fell in a parking lot, or dived from a boat.

It is only in novels, stories, movies, and comic books that everyday evil is plumped up into something large, frightening, and accompanied by rolling peals of organ music. The reality is usually small, innocuous, and pleasant-enough to slide right by.

And that's why George W. Bush will never be dragged up before the Hague as he no doubt deserves. It will take this country many tearful years to accept that a sociable if dim-witted US president lied to an entire nation for reasons of vengeance and greed. The lie was too big for one small man, we thought.

But that's how evil is. It's always small.

At first.