In
the political, media-driven scandal that marks the latest allegation of calumny
against the now-departed ex-president, Bill Clinton, once again the forest
is being missed, by acute examination of the trees.
While the major media plays the story as if it is some kind of "breaking
news," and therefore grabs our attention (at least until after the next commercial
break), the Marc Rich controversy is, in fact, hardly controversial. For,
as a first-year law student will easily attest, the U.S. Constitution grants
wide, absolute, and unreviewable pardon power to the President. The Constitution's
Article 2, Section 2, which sets forth the powers and duties of the President,
grants him or her the unlimited power to pardon or reprieve anyone charged
with an offense against the United States, with one single exception: in
case of Impeachment.
Thus the media-made brouhaha, the TV glare, the hyperbolic inch-high headlines,
are each and all, what Shakespeare once called "Much Ado about Nothing."
Neither Congress, nor the U.S. Courts, nor the Justice Department, can do
anything about it. So the noise and volume mean, really, nothing at all.
Nor is it somehow remarkable that Clinton gave his presidential power of
pardon to a really, really rich guy (named Rich). Most of those people, who
are able to retain the legal talent and political connections necessary to
get it done are-surprise-rich guys.
Does it really seem weird?
A review of the Reagan, Bush, Carter, Ford and Nixon- era pardons will undoubtedly
reveal the same basic profile. Rich guys.
In truth, rich white guys.
So, this last minute Clinton pardon is hardly historically objectionable.
That's how the game is played.
What's really disturbing, is not who did get pardoned, but who didn't.
The 8 years of the entire Clinton Administration will be long remembered
for the explosion of the nation's prisons and jails. With upwards to 2 million
men and women entombed within the confines of the prison- industrial-complex,
it is the forest that is compelling, not a few, isolated trees (the relatively
few people pardoned).
By concentrating on the one or two "bad" (meaning those many politicians
wouldn't have agreed on) pardons, the outlines of a truly repressive system
are left in place, unquestioned, and therefore accepted as somehow normal.
The Clinton rate of pardons, in number, or kind, is not remarkable.
And when placed in context to the rates of mass incarceration, that's what
makes it truly remarkable. What a contrast.
And this, the media-business class, never notes, for it is a norm, with which
they are in agreement.
Why no pardon of the ailing, veteran warrior of the Lakota nation, Leonard
Peltier? His unjust apprehension, trial, and incarceration has broken more
international, (and national) laws than can be ignored.
But, ignored he was, for Clinton, in essence, a conservative, would never
have used his political capital for a poor Indian. Pardons for the Rich are
safer.
The Clinton Administration was the height of political irony in that way,
for despite the massive support shown them by those at the economic and social
lower rungs of society, it has always sought the interests of the wealthy
and well-to-do, first and foremost.
Therefore, millions of people voted against their own interests, caught in
the spider's web, of the lesser evil. The lesser evil is still evil, and
thus, we always end up voting for our own repression.
It's as illogical, and as insane, as putting our own hands in handcuffs,
or locking ourselves up-when we, the people, hold the key!
We must break the bonds that tie us to two-party politics, a vast pendulum
swing that sends us from one party to the next, and never at home; never
in a body that protects our interests. It's time to build the change that
we want to see.