The bad guys are going to get away

That's been clear for a long time.

They're going to ride off into the sunset, their saddle bags stuffed with loot, whooping and hollering and laughing at the marshalls who can't get their boots in their stirrups to get on their horses to ride after them.  They're going to live out their lives on the other side of the Rio, safe and fat and happy in their haciendas, surrounded by friends and fawning servants and beautiful senoritas with roses in their hair playing the guitar and singing ribald songs about limp-dicked Democrats.

George Bush probably doesn't even know he's loathed and despised and he probably won't ever know.  He'll always be in the company of flatterers and sycophants who will assure him over and over again that he was a great President and he saved the country from the terrorists and children will be singing songs about him for the next three hundred years.

Dick Cheney and Karl Rove know they are hated by all decent people, but they think decent people are chumps and saps and to be hated by them is a sure sign of success.

The many Republican Congressmen and Senators who will lose their seats come November will find high-paying sinecures in the corporate welfare system.

The bad guys are all going to get away.

The only satisfaction we're going to have is knowing that they've been run out of town by the outraged citizenry, even if they don't feel like they've been run out of town.  History will give us little solace.  The history books will be full of wild almost unbelievable tales of their crimes and depredations but we'll still be trying to explain to our grandchildren that they were the bad guys the way we're still trying to explain to half the country that Nixon and Reagan were bad guys.

And come January, Marshall Reid and Sheriff Pelosi and Deputy Steny will stand up on the podiums of the Senate and the House and tell us all what a great job they did cleaning up this town.

Comments

[Doghouse Riley]

Forget it, Lance. It's Chinatown.

[minstrel hussain boy]

“Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil”

robespierre

"Man has the right to deal with his oppressors by devouring their palpitating hearts"

jean-paul marat

"If this be treason, then make the most of it."

patrick henry

“Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.”

georges jacques danton

Waterboarding is like swimming.

kit bond

[Jason Cravat]

Beautifully done, Lance--as most everything you write is. But I will tell you this: I would not care if they got away clean, would not care if they took to their haciendas and lazily stroked one another's egos and leered at the senoritas with roses in their hair. I would not even dream of Pike & Co. riding down there and blowing them all to hell. Really. Except they leave behind a mess that no one, not even Obama with the Jedi ghost of Franklin Delano Kenobi at his side, will be able to clean up. My kids will live with it and their kids. How can one administration have done so much damage? THAT'S why I dream of Pike & Co. and...

[HenryFTP]

From another great, but almost forgotten, movie of the same vintage:

The great Pierre Dux, after he has been indicted by Jean-Louis Trintignant's straight-laced investigating magistrate in Costa-Gavras's Z, yelling at reporters, Dreyfus était coupable!

That chilling characterization was a real precursor for Cheney. And of course those crimes also went unpunished.

[mookie]

Hey, came to your page through Sherry Chandler's page. Good writing, and while a good deal of your subject I won't disagree with, and I won't argue with the Nixon bit, but I fail to see how Reagan was so bad.

[Phoenician in a time of Romans]

. The history books will be full of wild almost unbelievable tales of their crimes and depredations but we'll still be trying to explain to our grandchildren that they were the bad guys the way we're still trying to explain to half the country that Nixon and Reagan were bad guys.

Many of said crimes and depredations were committed before 2004. This ought to lead to some interesting questions from the grandchildren about these bad guys...

[Red Tory]

It certainly doesn’t feel like they’re being run out on a rail by an angry citizenry. How the heck can McCain possibly be almost tied with Obama after almost eight years of the most heinous clusterfuck of venality and incompetence in living memory? Is racism still really that deeply embedded in the fabric of America? I just can’t figure out any other way to explain the closeness of this race.

For whatever it’s worth, the polling firms here in Canada have asked a few times how people would vote in the election if they could and it’s always a massive blow-out for Obama (even amongst Conservatives).

[Judith]

Heck, i still cant get over Bush being re-elected in 2004.

[Campaspe]

I will never get over 2004, never. It was worse than Florida in so many ways. I wasn't in NYC at the time but when I called my friends they all told me they hadn't see people so depressed since 9/11. That's not being flip; people were devastated, they simply could not believe anyone with a conscience could look at the man and re-elect him.

[Lesley]

I've always wondered why bad guys never feel bad. Never. That's just not right. It pisses me off. I want these miserable fucks to hate themselves and feel embarrassed to be seen in public, like the pariahs they are.

[Gary Hussein Farber]

I blame learned helplessness, he said, pimping himself.

[nima]

I'm way late to the party, but hey:

...but I fail to see how Reagan was so bad.

Iran/Contra? The Contras in general? $2 trillion in debt after promising a balanced budget? James Watt? Robert Bork? Ed Meese? Ollie North's White House basement/underground office which gave us Iran/Contra?

Off the top of my head...