And the Pursuit of Moral Relativism

- A pall came over the White House one night that sucked the very air out of it.  In its place a ghostly, ghastly fog descended, a meteorological anomaly that went unnoticed by all but a few.  There are too many strange occurrences to recount these days and now seem to come upon us so frequently, one atop the other, that even the strangest things have begun to appear normal.  President Bush was alone in his office when the apparition appeared.  It was Nixon’s ghost.   Bush recognized the shade immediately and was awed.
- “Yes, it is I,” the shape intoned Nixonianly.  “Me again.”  He squinted under his eyelids and put his fingers up half heartedly, almost embarrassed, in the familiar double “v”.
- But you are the patron saint of my administration.  Though reviled by the rest of the world, we love you here.  For you we’re like Albania is for me.
- I know, I sensed the homage in your work, that’s why I return.  I sense you have been feeling sorry for yourself George and I’m here to tell you to quit your pouting and whining.  Remember, you have it much, much better than I ever did.  Man, unlike when I was monarch er, president, a large percentage of the country doesn’t even seem to care what goes in their government much anymore.  They’re jaded, man, consumers consumed with their own consumption and they’ve become inured to things like invoking executive privilege, for instance.  They gave me such a hard time when I tried it and yet you do it every other day and they let you off scot free.
- Well we’ve done quite a lot over time to wear the people down.  We’ve worked hard at it, Mr. President.  They expect so little of us now.  Rampant dishonesty, self-serving policies and complete incompetence have become the norm.  Since we know we can achieve that with just a little effort we feel it is our duty to give them what they expect, sir, next to nothing.
- Life isn’t fair.  When I tried all my cover ups the nation was shocked.  When I declared executive privilege and tried to fire a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, my Attorney General and the assistant Attorney General resigned.  Only that dork Bork was dumb enough to do it.  And he wonders why he never made the Supreme Court.  But now here you can just ignore the findings of a special prosecutor, let your man be convicted and then just brazenly commute the sentence of a liar at your leisure.  And then while saying you support the rule of law and the verdict of a jury, in the very next breath you don’t even bother ruling out a pardon to overturn the jury’s verdict to entirely subvert the rule of law later.  
   And your Attorney General, that Gonzalez fellow, comes around lying and wagging his tail and licking your hand like a little whipped whelp.  Man where do you find these guys?  Gonzalez is so used to being in other people’s pockets he’s as loyal as lint and about as flimsy.  I would have given a year’s salary for such a loser on my staff.  I had a few of them to be sure but not enough.  
   And your press and public are so demure today that I can hardly stand it.  Everything you say you can immediately refute with the very next thing you do and nobody even calls you on it or seems to care.  The English language has become a joke to you boys.  You say exactly the opposite of everything you mean to do and nobody even bats an eyelash.  You preach openness and democracy abroad while closing everything down here and subverting democracy at home, you pollute like mad and call it blue skies and illegally torture innocent people and unconstitutionally wiretap Americans and actually say you are doing it to “uphold” law and order.
- “Well,” the current president smirked to the old, “it’s like that old song, our favorite.  We give ‘em the old razzle-dazzle.  We always tell the public the opposite of what we really believe to be true and the opposite of what we intend to do.  We razzle-dazzle ‘em, Mr. former President.  If you never tell ’em the truth about anything ever, even about things you don’t even have to lie about, because we do lie gratuitously around here, then eventually nobody can tell truth from fiction any more and after a while they just get confused and give up trying.  
   We learned this all from you, we did, but where you just tried to hide a few things that you really, desperately needed to keep hid, that only told them exactly where to look, so we cover everything up from the get-go.  We started out in this administration to build an entire stone wall with moats and guard houses and rabid dogs around everything we ever did.  My entire administration is more protected from the people than the country is from terrorists, so no matter what nefarious things we choose to do we already have the apparatus in place to keep them covered up.
     - Ingenious.  Diabolical.  I’m impressed
     - The key is to start your cover-ups well in advance of doing all the things that you’re going to have to cover-up later which gives you an edge over those trying to uncover them.  Unfortunately, now it’s become a little unnerving around here, a bit like a house of mirrors because we seem to keep running into old lies we forgot we told.  Now my entire administration is an ongoing cover-up of all our own old cover-ups and we don’t have time to get anything else done.  Well, not that we had anything we really wanted to do anyway.
- Hmmm, sounds much like administration was.  Well, son, all I can say is I think it’s just marvelous how the entire country has come to accept a lower standard of morality in office than they did when I was president.  They finally seem to get it and to have come around to my way of doing things.  I knew I was a visionary.  And as much as I’d like to take all the credit for it, it seems like you guys shot for the bottom from the very start didn’t you?  So I take my hat of to you.  That shows marvelous foresight.  I don’t want to brag but I mean I actually had the precedents of better presidents ahead of me to live up to.  You get to live down to the standards I set, and you’re already well south of those.  
   Sure my Vice President was indicted and forced to resign but yours is about fifty times worse and gets to stay on.  Cheney makes Agnew look like Abe Lincoln.  And Gonzalez makes Mitchell look like John Marshall.  So I was forced out in complete disgrace and you’ll get to live out your lush time with hardly a harsh word spoken in your direction.  Do you even realize how lucky you are?
- Sometimes I do, sir.  And believe me I certainly realize I owe you a great deal, Mr. ex-President.  I have modeled my career after yours.
- Well, I have to admit I admire your style and stamina young man.  I mean, how about this for irony?  I got blamed for a war I didn’t even start.  Of course, I lied a lot about it and how I had a secret plan to finish it.  But you, My God, man, you started your own war for no particular reason, lied every day about it before, during and after, butchered its execution and didn’t even bother to say you have a secret plan, because it’s clear you’ve never had any kind of a plan at all.  The amazing thing is that even though your supporters know all this they still support you, don’t even care, what loyalty!  
   I mean do you have any idea how bad I had it back then?  I had protesters out the ying yang, they were everywhere, red with acrimony and outrage.  These Americans today are like cattle and sheep in comparison, pure livestock.  I had hippies besieging the White House vilifying me with that rock and roll and tie dyed hair or whatever and every day our streets were filled with commies and agitators and anti-American Americans and don’t even get me started on the college campuses.  But look at you, all you see is a steady drift downward in the polls.  Who can’t live with that?  It’s like you’re falling gently into a pile of feathers of the very chickens you’ve just plucked.
   Course, now neither of us ever gave a damn about the American people anyway, that filthy rabble, and that they don’t like us just secures us in our low esteem of their judgment.  But my God man, I went for the greatest electoral win in history in ’72 only to be run out of town on a rail a few years later.  While you, you, just squeaked through, twice.  Although (here Nixon stopped and chuckled) though I have to admit your elections were good, classic fear and smear like McCarthy and I used to do with commies in the state department and Hollywood, dirty tricks and all...  man those were the days, and I admit your career has brought back some nice memories for me… but I, I uh, digress, where was I anyway?  What was I going to say? 
- I’m glad you noticed that electoral sleight of hand, sir.  Believe me, I’ve studied your career thoroughly, Mr. President.  To my mind the people get what they deserve.  If they get bad government then it’s exactly what they get for electing people like us in the first place.  What did they expect anyway?
- That’s the spirit.
- But quite honestly our philosophy around here is to never deal honestly with the public at all except when we’re sure there won’t be anybody near who can object.  We leave nothing to democratic chance.  Everything I say is filtered through spokespeople.  Our secret service has almost become the secret police, and they keep anyone away who might speak up.  Even someone with a disrespectful allusion on a tee shirt or a questionable bumper sticker on their car is kept miles away from my august personage.  I never hear a word raised in protest at any of my phony town meetings about of any of my policies.  They wouldn’t dare.  That’s just how dictatorial we’ve become and sometimes even I can’t believe how I’m able to get away with it.  I can’t recall the last time I had to endure the indignity of an unpleasant word in my hearing.  I’m more insulated than an astronaut marooned on the moon.  Your world was so unpleasantly democratic and unruly.  I cringe at the thought of it.
- Don’t I know, I know and it was a shame and a pity.  I’m dead in awe of these present times. I listen to that fraud Tony Snow and all your other little shills, and you are ten times more blatant in your insouciant dishonesty than I ever could get away with.  All your critics do, when they do anything at all, is tsk, tsk, here and tut, tut, there, a bit of a sneer on the side, and meanwhile they print everything you say just as if it actually has to be taken seriously and at face value.  This is amazing to me.  I had a real press corps to contend with where you get a press corpse, comatose.  What are they waiting for, the rapture?  Man when I think what I could have accomplished in your world.
- Around here we like to think of our blind support as the children and grandchildren of your supporters.  We’re all Nixon now, that’s how much we feel we owe to you.
- I mean, my God, boy, you have actually gone before the Supreme Court and argued that you ought to be able to arrest any American you want for as long as you want in suspension of habeas corpus, rule of law, even denying them rights to an attorney, the ability to hear the evidence against them and notification of their own families where they went and keep them as long as you want.  You wanted to make them all disappear, man that’s radical, man, that’s Man in the Iron Mask type of authority, that’s pure, unadulterated tyranny, and you weren’t even laughed out of Court and run like a dog out of office.  Man, oh man, that’s Nixon’s dream right there.  My enemies list would have turned into arrest warrants over night, so fast it would have made their heads swim.  Now you didn’t quite get away with all that but you’re my hero for trying and you’re able to do the next best thing with Guantanamo Bay.
- Well thanks, I am proud of what I’ve been able to achieve I…
- I mean they let you torture people merely because you redefined the word torture! And then you pretend it’s you who are on the moral high ground!  In my day we never could have changed the law merely by rewriting the dictionary as it suited us to do it!  Believe it or not, son, in my day they would have actually made me obey the law!  Can you believe that?!!  And I mean even members of my own party would have politely suggested I obey the law.  What a bunch of sneaky little snivelers I was surrounded with in those days.
- I know, I saw it on the History Channel once, sir, and couldn’t believe my eyes.  I sympathize with you for being alive, Mr. President, in those primitive, early times in our democracy.  Unfortunately for you, you served long before we had a true understanding of what the Constitution secretly meant, between the lines if you know what I mean. But, let me tell you, in large part because of what happened to you, we have spent many years in rewriting our Constitution ever since and making sure that we can find judges who think of themselves more as Republicans than Americans. Needless to say all our lapdog members of Congress already think that way.  They rubberstamp everything I tell them to do.  And now at last, I think we finally have the Supremes packed with just the yes men we have always craved for the legal battles down the stretch run.  They’ll do everything we ask of them but dance and sing on key.  The question is whether or not it is too late.  So, though we do have a little more leeway now, I still regret the battles we’ve lost.  We still have some way to go still before we have made the president the king.
    But you are right I mustn’t feel sorry for myself, I still find solace in my eunuchs and friends.  My V.P. and my buddy Karl always encourage me to think of myself as KIMOM, king in my own mind, and I do my best to keep myself in that imperial frame of mind at all times that you were so famous for.  So I get by.  But to actually have you, sir, the dauntless hero of both Watergate and Viet Nam to take time from your busy schedule to provide me encouragement like this, is one of my life’s highlights.  I can’t tell you what this means to me.  It’s true when they say that all of us really do just stand on the shoulders of giants.  I can’t wait to see who stands on mine.
- Yeah, but signing statements and the unitary executive nonsense or whatever you call it, I’m telling you son, that stuff is ingenuous, when I think what I couldn’t have done with such innovations.  I’d still be President, I tell you.  And all my mortal enemies would have paid immortally for crossing me, I can tell you that for sure.  
   The ghost suddenly became giddy at this thought, proceeding with a crazed chuckle to rub his hands together madly at the very thought that despotism invariably inspires in the unrepentantly tyrannical.
- I have no doubt, no doubt at all sir, that you would have accomplished great things.  And I can assure you Mr. President that we have been doing everything we can to fulfill your legacy and make this country as Nixonian as we can.  Yeah, but, but, I’m afraid it’s begun to turn on me, Dick.  I feel my powers waning.  I don’t know, maybe it’s just not as easy to destroy democracy the way visionaries like you and me wanted to.  Just when we think we’ve got it beat, democracy begins to rouse from its deep sleep again.
- No, don’t give up.  Never give an inch.  I think you’ve given it a hell of a run, son.  Just as I did my best in my day.  I couldn’t be prouder of you.  One thing though, don’t make the mistake I did.  Don’t let them make you get out of Iraq.  Bad wars are the key to abuse of power.  It's all of a whole. War makes even sane people crazy. That’s the whole key to calling into question everybody’s loyalty who crosses you and that’s still your best security.  then they'll let you do anything. When I let them talk me into starting to wind the war down, I was cooked.  You will be too, boy, so don’t let ‘em do it.  Hold on to the bitterest of ends.  It’s the only way to survive.  Surge, surge, and surge again, that’s what I say.
   Oh and by the by, I appreciate it that now they are calling your presidency the worst of all.  Much as I hate to relinquish my spot, I couldn’t wish for a better guy as my replacement.
   Other than that, don’t worry about the future, it’s ours for sure.  I think this country’s done.  I’m sure there’s someone out there just as avid to fail the test of time and not learn the lessons of your presidency just as you refused to learn the lessons of mine.  We’ll get this country cowed yet, my boy. Don’t give up hope. Our kind are eternal and God knows you and I have done our part to lead the nation down the path to its own perdition.  I mean you’ve done far worse things than me, and have sold out the country as completely as any president could and they still haven’t got you.  You’re still in office.  You can leave with your dignity intact, whereas I had a harder time with that.  I had a harder time with that, the honesty of the country, I mean, but your constituents, Holy Cow, as long as they get theirs they don’t even care about the country do they?
   I mean when I listen to your most conservative supporters justify their calls for your guy Scooter Libby’s pardon when far lesser crimes and trifles by Bill Clinton were derided as presaging the decline of the nation, I’m so proud.  Countless jeremiads and imprecations were hurled by these charlatans at a nation that would maintain its basic of support of Clinton even through all the twists and permutations of the impeachment process.  And they almost pulled it off too.  The Republican Party was almost able to engage in a change of government by other than electoral means.  And it was all hook and crook and smoke and mirrors.  I loved it, all the phony self- righteousness made my heart soar.  
   And now the same people say that Libby should be pardoned for crimes far worse, four felonies, perjury and obstruction of justice as part of an ongoing cover up of malfeasance in the White House.  God, where were supporters like these when I needed them, I mean I had a few but I’ll tell you boy, that some of those miserable Republicans back then actually loved their country and the Constitution more than me and got all namby pamby and moral, and turned against me.  This group you’ve got in Congress today will gladly let Americans die overseas and not even blink an eye, oh well, I guess we had a lot of politicians in my day who were willing to let troops die pointlessly in Viet Nam too, even though we didn’t have a plan there either, so maybe that hasn’t changed so much; but I’ll tell you clearly that in matters of law breaking and putting their country second to their party and their own back pockets your political supporters have it all over mine.
   And now the same people who professed not to be able to understand why anybody could support Clinton and still call themselves Americans and Christians now say they support Libby and the entire Bush corrupt war and all the lies and cover-ups connected to it whole hog and then pretend to not notice the stench of hypocrisy that emanates from the reeking sty of their own countless duplicities. I mean to tell ya, boy, I had thieves and swine around me too, but man these people today are priceless, worth their weight in infamy, I say.  With people like this, brazen and corrupt as they are, who needs morals at all?  God I could have worked wonders.  What a curse I was born too soon.  I get teary at the thought.
- You still did pretty well for yourself, Mr. Nixon, sir, pretty well indeed, even with what you had to work with.  As for me, I had good training.  Ford pardoned you, my dad pardoned everybody connected to Iran-Contra and I’ll pardon all my own people as I go out the door.  Sweet deal our Party has going that enables us to pardon ourselves all our own mistakes and as we never have to pay the price for them we get to keep repeating the same old corrupt acts over and over. That’s why we all love and admire you even now, sir, you started it all.
   You had your Liddy and I’ve got my Libby: potatoes, tomatoes, I’d say.
- Well thank you for those kind and admiring words, this old dead man appreciates them, but still what I want to tell you is don’t let them get you down.  Even if things occasionally seem bad now, you are far more corrupt than me, and have come closer to getting away with it.   I particularly like the flat, blithe, bland way in which you lie.  You all look straight into cameras and then just lie like rugs.  My guys were not so good.  When we lied, everybody knew it.  They could see us sweat.  I think we still had some of those persistent ethics, truth you know is a stubborn thing.
- Oh, excuse me, sir, just a word, we flinch a little around here at the use of that nasty word. 
- Oh lie?  What you don’t mean you’ve got tapes running do you?  Because if you do…
- No, no Mr. President, we learned better than that from you too.  We have enough trouble trying to keep all our e-mails hid.  Court orders or no, those are really hard to destroy. 
- Well, OK, good then.  Cause God I hate tapes.  But what I want to say to you in conclusion is this, you guys, you all lie - or I mean, you all utter statements that are less than perfectly true with great frequency - as if it’s second nature to you, as if you born and bred to the ability.  I watch you guys and I swear, on television you can’t even tell.  And if anybody’s an expert it’s me.  Your brows don’t wrinkle, your eyes don’t shift.  You don't shift from one foot to another.  You don’t show a bead of sweat anywhere which would indicate you have the slightest conscience anywhere about your deception.  Though, if I may, along the lines of “it takes one to know one,” if I may make one brief suggestion?  
   You have a bit of a tell, George.  See, when you lie, your eyes dilate and glaze over a bit.  You unfocus your eyes and fixate them and stare straight ahead and as you go blank and, I assume because you are emptying your head of state of all contradictory thought, that’s when I know the lies are really going to start to fly.  Don’t get me wrong you are very good, It’s just that I have a very well practiced eye.  But this is why, when you lie, because you practice the empty mind technique of deceit, well known where I reside, people don’t understand that is what you’re doing, but misinterpret what they are seeing and think you are just not too bright.  You and I know better of course, you are not nearly as dumb as you are dishonest.  
   Anyway, forgive me, an old man, my advice, I assure you I only proffer it because I wish you well and hope you can succeed where I eventually failed.  I like to think you guys have learned from my sad tale that it was not the lying or the cover up but some residual honesty, that damn pernicious truth, which finally tripped us up.  And though I have to admit you guys have refined the process a bit beyond us a bit, I’m afraid that devilishly troublesome imposter truth has not yet been fully exorcized from out of the daily business of government yet.  Until we have cured the world of that deadly disease of honesty none of us will be safe.
- I like to think we are getting close though, Mr. President.  Unlike my attitude toward the people, I’ll be honest with you.  What we are really after here is pure moral relativism, Dickie.  I’m not smart enough to get all of it, my handlers have to explain it to me in pieces.  But here is our credo.  We have politicized everything we do.  Therefore, everything our political opponents do, no matter how right for the country it is or what truth or logic it is composed or if it all that is good and holy in the world, for our purposes it must be false and be denounced.  On the other hand, everything we do no matter how wrong it obviously is, must be right and true.  We like to think we are raising a perfect generation of politicians to superimpose just this sort of moral relativity as a way of life on our political system. Do you understand, Mr Nixon, sir?
- Do I understand?  My God, yes, man.  This is my paradise.  This is perfectly perverse.  It is exactly what I’ve lived my whole life to hear.  I am so inspired, I can’t say.  I’ve never felt so alive.  I can’t speak I am so emotional.  How ‘bout, like Kissinger and I used to do, what’s say we drop to our knees right here and now and pray a little, shall we?  Let’s?
- No sir, no thanks.  Now days we canned and canny politicians only pray in public, never in private.  Otherwise it’s perfectly impolitic, and may confuse us to our message.
But wait, Mr. President Nixon, what’s happening to you?   You seem to be breaking up a bit, as if your molecules are beginning to separate.
 - Yes, yes go I must, I got a secret little pardon from my boss down below to get up here and help you along.  That scrooge approves of everything you are trying to do so he let me go.  But I can’t stay longer.  I must go.  Bah, humbug.  Curfew, you know.  Good luck to you boy keep up the bad work.
 - Yep, yep, and there he goes.  Come again any time, Mr. Nixon sir.  This is the validation for my work.  You know you are always welcome here as long as I am. In my White House may your memory always be revered.