Incredulity

I sometimes fear losing my righteous sense of incredulity. The ugliness perpetrated on a daily basis by the collection of semi-sentient greed monsters in Washington is just too outrageous. How can you stay outraged so long? Their bad acts seem without end.

And the really bad acts also serve to diminish the impact of the lesser bad acts, until you get caught up in their game or relativism. Something like the hurricane Katrina failure is so vast and devastating that it makes other more modest failures seem nearly successful.

And so it is with Gitmo. The Washington Post editorial board says that Gitmo isn't such a bad place any more - there are lots worse. But it should be closed for symbolic reasons - because it has come to symbolize the stunningly misguided American anti-terror policy. But there are a bunch of American detention facilities that are far worse. And that's the problem.

Isn't that sliding the rule the wrong way? Gitmo is excused because they're building new facilities, not taking new prisoners, and have made a much bigger mess elsewhere? Really? That makes it okay?

Secret detention facilities where prisoners are held indefinitely with no charges and no access to law and regularly tortured - all that is anti-American. It's against our laws and our beliefs. And our government is doing it right in front of us. The Germans - perpetrators of the Holocaust - are lecturing us about it.

To say that we need to establish real justice and stop torturing and allow the Red Cross in - isn't that where Americans are supposed to start?

It's where we used to start.

But the worst thing we can do now is allow our moral and ethical barometers to be recalibrated by the actions of the Junta. Don't stop being American and demanding American law just because the ruling Junta has lowered the standard to an unrecognizable depth.