Advance warning: I've become pretty bored with the Democratic primary of late, so this post is about something else.  Also, I apologize for the blunt, crappy lede, but I'm not feeling well at the moment and I can't really think of a better way to say it right now.

Outside of the funhouse-mirror world that the Democratic primary has become restricted to, we've had some interesting developments in the last couple of weeks.  We had Petraeus and Crocker explaining that the surge, as it is called, has more or less been successful in reducing violence, but that this is a brand of progress which we may see reversed if the wind changes.  We were also given definitive documentary evidence that Bush and his NSC were directly involved in signing off on the selective application of the Geneva convention with respect for bringing the techniques of torture to bear against our designated enemies.

The Iraq war is now five years old and the Bush administration is well into its last year of pressing forward in its application of the theory of the unitary executive.  It has become perfectly clear that we will not see the Democratic opposition take any decisive or meaningful action on any of these fronts before the year is out.  There will be strongly worded letters.  There will be, perhaps, hearings.

There likely won't be indictments and so there won't be convictions.  Even if there were, they would be answered back with pardons.

There won't be impeachments.

So we can, I hope, start to see why Bush was so typically nonchalant about the startling revelation that he had green-lighted torture (as if we ever should have believed that such initiatives simply arose organically at the bottom of the hierarchy of command).  When Nancy Pelosi promised that there would be no impeachment under her leadership, when she took impeachment "off the table" as she said, what she was really doing was putting impunity on the table, a particularly comical concept when taken in consideration of the absolutely cavalier group to which her comment was addressed.

It would seem that I am somehow supposed to find solace in the likely prospect of increased Democratic leadership in the coming year.  I am told that impeachment or any proceeding with actual teeth would simply be a waste of time, but underneath it all is the implication that any such dealings would put at risk the prospects of further Democratic wins this November.

However, this is not comforting to me.  I am being made a sort of promise that leadership will someday arrive by the hands of those who refuse to take any risk in leading right now.  I am being told essentially that if I and others will only grant them more power then they will finally do what is right.

I do not like this bargain and I do not like the feeling that it gives me.  It strikes me as Faustian.  I particularly don't like that I have little other choice but to trust that these promises will be made good.  I remain weary of the taste that will arrive upon my tongue if it comes to pass that I've played the rube.

Happy Tax Day.