What Really Matters Is the Appearance of Appearances

Start with the suicides of three detainees at Guantanamo--one of whom had been cleared for transfer.

Compound that with (Assistant Deputy Secretary of State) Colleen Graffy's comments to the BBC that the suicides were a "good P.R. move" and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause."

It looks bad, and the administration realizes it looks bad. The problem, of course, is not that what Graffy said was completely appalling to civilized humans; the problem is that it didn't work. She certainly wasn't off the reservation:

Graffy's remarks were sharper than those of other U.S. officials, but not entirely off-message. The camp commander at Guantanamo, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, told reporters Sunday that the detainees "have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own."

"I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us," Harris said.

But it isn't playing well, so at this point they back away from Graffy's remarks. But even in this story, there is a line that highlights the utter disgrace that is this administration:

Graffy's unscripted remarks threw a monkey wrench in the administration's careful plan to demonstrate concern over the deaths andrespond to rising criticism of the U.S. operation of the prison. [emphasis added]

Note: it doesn't say that the administration is concerned; it says they have a careful plan to demonstrate concern. Not because, you know, it's bad when inmates commit suicide...but to respond to rising criticism.

It's like they're not even pretending anymore; they're just pretending to pretend, because we expect them to pretend. "An administration spokesman today acknowledged that they had erred in allowing the public to see their true face, and assured reporters that they are taking measures to put the mask back in place." That's what we're dealing with here. That's what this story is saying.

And beyond the outrage there is the meta-outrage, the 'where is the outrage?' outrage. Because every day reporters report, newspapers print, stories like this one--stories about the post-modern presidency, about an administration that no longer bothers to conceal the fact that there is nothing at all behind the mask--and it goes largely unremarked.

The damage these people have caused goes far beyond the concrete effects of their catastrophic corruption and incompetence; what they have done is corrupted the entire culture. They have conditioned us to shrug at the indefensible, to expect the unimaginable. They have normalized deception, abuse of power, invasion of privacy, corruption, aggressive warfare, torture. They have turned the moral universe upside-down and made us their accomplices.

It's going to take a long time to recover from this...and if when this is over the public at large remains as indifferent as they have been, if we do not recoil in horror at the things we allowed to happen, then the nation will never recover.

[Cross-posted at Property of a Lady]

[That's all, folks]