David Broder, the "Villagers' Idiot"

He has been one of the pundits most reliably falling into the category of "ignorant," "stupid," and "jis' plain wrong" over the 20 years since the Raygun left office.

In that time he's become the quintessential "Villager" (and its official "Idiot," now the Chimp is gone--well, except for Buchanan, Barnes, and the cabbage-Mallet and the rest of the Rightard, wackloon fucknozzles, including Wan Williams and the whole crew of sold-out panty-waists and toadies at NPR). He reinforces is status as the pundit dumber than George Will today in his column in the ODIOUS WaPo (FP: Obama's new puppy?) today, where reprises the same refrain as to questioner in a recent on-line exchange with bloggers:

“I understand the reluctance to open a wide-ranging probe of past practices. It seems to me we are better off focusing on cleaning up the policies and practices for the future than trying to settle scores for past actions.”

This is the official line, uttered by the Villagers predominantly, but echoed by the Obamanistas, however somewhat less loudly.

I know I am not the only one who mentioned it during the various recent campaigns, but I have been saying quite insistently since at LEAST 2007 that, whosoever the winner were, the official refrain would be "Don't Look Back." Broder's framing the potential for prosecuting the various, numerous Bushevik crimes and torts as "settling scores," however, is pretty ignorant, even for Broder. It's nothing less than a plea for simultaneous blanket immunity, forgetfulness, and forgiveness in the teeth of incontrovertible, and in many cases, self-incriminated public testimony, public records, and first-person depositions testifying to the crimes.

Yes, crimes: Start with the illegal and unwarranted invasion, conquest, and occupation of Iraq. Following therefrom, torture, murder, kidnapping, warrantless spying, war-profiteering, graft, bribery; to say nothing of the missing BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

Those are things for which some sort of score-settling is deserved, from any even remotely objective standard.

And in civilized societies, when we 'settle our scores,' it's called "Justice." We "settle our scores" by bringing the accused before the Bar, indicting, and trying them and then, if they're found to be guilty, punishing them. The law is, when you get right down to it, merely a somewhat more abstract means for 'settling our scores' than a bullet or a rope, or tar-and-feathers.

Of course, Broder led the charge against Bill ("Clenis") Clinton, accusing him, in effect, of defiling the sanctity of the Village with his libido. Broder was far less disprobatory of the Busheviks, whose blood-baths, thefts, and other manifest illegalities he not only tolerated by actively celebrated. The Villagers are far more hostile to sexual than to legal 'indiscretions.' And some folks profess confusion a this apparent hypocrisy.

But actually, it is pretty easily explained--if not forgiven. Sexual peccadilloes actually implicate only the individual principals in illicit or embarrassing behaviors.

Whereas, when when legal indiscretions come to light, they cast the glare of publicity on the whole array of corrupt and unethical-- if not down-right illegal-- activities in which the whole Village is always already actively implicated, merely by the nature of their profitable participation in the corrupted system.

Americans do not respect history, mostly because our mythology--led in the recent past by the likes of Broder, Will, Friedman and a passle of others who should have known better-- encourages the blinding optimism of American Exceptionalism. It's the optimism of a dedicated drunk convinced he's the one going the right way onto a freeway ramp full of on-coming traffic.