Horner's Corner

The relevance to the UK of what follows  is clear. We have similar problems about the demarcation of ‘responsibility’ in the UK -we too got up to our necks in neo liberal casino-capitalism. Except ‘we’ didn’t: the vast bulk of us just do our jobs, pay our taxes and live with the consequences of what our masters decree. Now we have been told that the UK (= bulk of working people) will have less schools, hospitals etc in order to pay for the vast debt our country has taken on in bailing out the banks – Chris Horner

Truth and Consequences

How often have we heard Republicans, Conservatives, and Christian fundamentalists preach about responsiblity? Everyone is supposed to take responsibility, personal responsibility. People are supposed to take responsibility for their drug and alcohol use (rehab? no! no! no!); for their obesity, lack of exercise, and failure of will power; for their credit card debt and excess expenditures; for their unprotected sex. Three strikes and you are out, out, out. Unwanted pregnancy? Responsibility means having that baby. The smaller and more personal the transgression, the greater your exposure to excessive punishment, all in the name of responsibility. We are small enough to be allowed to, even encouraged to, fail. If we don’t fail and encounter the consequences, the system can’t work–no incentives to be good (Reagan taught us this back in the 80s by making sure that we saw homeless people all over our cities; he called them welfare queens; the media called them bag ladies; we knew they were that the fate we had to avoid at all costs). We are all supposed to face the consequences of our actions.

But this ‘all’ is actually pretty narrow. Who’s left out? The rich and the privileged, especially if they are white and male. And they get extra dispensation if they are or have been employed in the finance sector or the Bush administration (sorta the same thing, if you think about it). So the finance sector doesn’t have to face any consequences. And it looks like the Bush administration might escape the consequences of its actions as well (I favor a war crimes tribunal and execution, myself; I expect they will escape accountability for running torture and prison camps because leading congressional Democrats were in on it all along; I admit the drawback of my position is that it rapidly escalates into mass hangings).

Which ‘all’ comprises the citizens? It seems clear that the ‘all supposed to accept the consequences’ are the people–but this people isn’t the part of no part. It’s the part that has to be counted, included, and literally made to pay. Those excluded from this all, excluded from the consequences, are the privileged ones, the exception. It’s like a state of exception turned inside out: those who inhabit the terrain of lawlessness are the financial elite and their state arm.

Too many voices of the allegedly pragmatic Democratic left claim that Obama should move on, deal with the economy, and let the crimes of the past remain in the past. This is wrong, severely, unconscionably wrong. The crimes are the same crimes. The economic crimes are inextricable from the crimes of torture and aggressive war. All result from the attempt to escape law, to move beyond and outside it, to persist in exceptional space without consequences.

via I cite: Truth and consequences.