Those of us enchanted by politics are largely dreamers. Like Robert F. Kennedy, we dream of things that never were and ask why not. We ache for some magic wand to realize those dreams. In a society where it too often seems greed is glorified and corruption is congratulated, how dearly we imagine a utopia where the good prosper and the evil perish. If only I were God, as the refrain goes, poetic justice would roll down like waters and vindictive righteousness like a mighty stream.
Yet perhaps I am of insufficient faith. A close reading of the news suggests that the God of delicious irony and just desserts has been hard at work, bending the moral arc of the universe toward sweet, comedic payback. When did this first become clear? Some will reach back to when Vice President Cheney, renowned NRA advocate, shot his lawyer in the face and promptly gave an apology. Others point to last fall, when the Republican co-chair of the U.S. House Missing and Exploited Children Caucus was accused of exploiting children, or when family-values conservatives discovered that the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals was dealing meth with his gay prostitute.
Law and order Republicans can't keep up with the indictments of their own, as scandal leaps from the legislative branch to the executive. And Newt Gingrich, who deserves some credit for our new Irony Age, recently confessed that while railing against President Clinton's marital transgressions he was pursuing his own dalliance with infidelity.
The list truly does seem endless. Right-wing scion Mary Cheney is not only a lesbian but is pregnant and plans to raise a child with her partner. On "Hardball" last week, Tom DeLay, adamant that Chris Matthews has lying eyes, denied that he described Dick Armey as "drunk with ambition" in his new book. When Matthews handed DeLay his own book to read the line himself, the disgraced ex-congressmen paused, then murmured "I don't have my glasses." Not ironic, perhaps, but certainly sweet.
Tragically, some of the accounts have turned more deadly than humorous. After vilifying Iran as an Axis of Evil member, the Bush administration promptly decimated its two neighboring rivals (Afghanistan and Iraq). Additionally, as the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof noticed, we've provided Iran a helping hand in amassing regional influence by backing Israel's summer folly with Hezbollah, which in fact strengthened the Iranian-backed militia. And now the U.S. is propping up a sympathetic (to Iran) regime in Baghdad. All the while reducing our own power by blindly pursuing our own power at the expense of a necessary and effective multilateral coalition. The God of irony must be Iranian!
The results are no better close to home. Compassionate conservatives, after a heckuva job responding to Hurricane Katrina, made way for the support-the-troops Republicans to treat our wounded soldiers to the cesspool of Walter Reed. While keeping an eye on the Scooter Libby perjury trail, which detailed just how political the war has been all along, this group voted against a requirement that troops be certified as properly rested, trained and equipped before they're tossed back into the battlefield.
And lest the Justice Department complain of neglect, its scandal merits mention, as well. Instead of admitting that the federal attorneys were fired because they had the audacity to investigate Republican corruption, the administration has (most recently) decided that they were dismissed for failing to scrutinize "voter fraud" - which is the GOP's favored euphemism for suppressing the poor and minority vote.
The long-awaited conservative comeuppance is hardly a dream for many of reality's victims. How many neo-con fantasies are buried with the Iraq dead? How many right-wing illusions were swept away with New Orleans when the levees broke? If only tax cuts and military adventures could secure wealth and safety. We can always dream.
Jacob Shelly is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
