Elections in the USA: Justice and Perversion

[razors edge]

and the Perversion of Justice
by James Petras
www.dissidentvoice.org
October 9, 2006

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct06/Petras09.htm

In a month in which the US Congress voted to legalize torture, discard the US Constitution by abolishing habeas corpus and increase the military budget to prolong the daily slaughter of hundreds of Iraqis and Afghanis, the big controversy among the mass media and elected officials is the sexual overtures of a Republican Congressman to adolescent boys employed by Congress.



Millions of fundamentalist Christians, who blindly supported the Republican Congress’ deadly War on Terror are in revolt against their Party because of its tolerance toward a single pervert -- overlooking the torture at Abu Ghraib, Israel’s massive bombing of Lebanon and the Bush Administration’s criminal abandonment of the hundreds of thousands of poor (mostly black) citizens in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.



Why do US Congress members and the mass media go into a political feeding frenzy over personal sexual transgressions like Congressman Foley’s nasty e-mail flirtations with teenage boys or former President Clinton’s office adventures in extramarital sex with a White House intern and not over issues of great consequence for peace or war, democracy or authoritarianism, torture or human rights?



Superficial commentators trot out our Anglo-American “Puritan heritage”: a pseudo-explanation, which overlooks the US democratic-constitutional heritage, our recent history of opposing the Vietnam War, and our signing of the United Nation Charter on Human Rights. Since there are numerous historical pasts, there is no single “heritage” that dominates others, especially when the so-called “Puritan” past is overlain with a highly sexualized mass culture over the last 50 years.



interesting, not sure i agree 100%, but still thought provoking.