So… if… executive privilege was claimed in a lonely forest and no one was around to challenge it with a subpoena – would we hear any outrage?

‘Course not. We’re living in the first decade of the New Millennium. And we’ve lost all sense of righteous indignation. At this point, it’s doubtful we could react correctly to infamy even if… well... even if it landed on our heads like a felled tree.

We’ve come to reflect the intent and direction of our New Social Reality: We’ve heeled, fetched and rolled over too many times… and now we’re playing dead.

The President has claimed immunity in re his office very often in the past few years, but never has the elite arrogance suggested by his stance been more insultingly displayed than in last week’s appearance by former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who smugly asserted to the House panel investigating White House torture evolution that during his service he was “the President’s attorney” and his counsel should be protected by the privileges of the Oval Office double-secret mojo.

"My communications with the president are privileged communications," Ashcroft repeatedly repeated, in a manner almost a chant.

…And we churlish peasants can go boink at the moon.

Aside from the fact that he was the nation’s attorney – and not merely Bush’s – Ashcroft’s dispiriting performance before the House Judiciary Committee also was gratingly dismissive… and utterly unsurprising. At one point, Ashcroft spent about seven minutes of grilling by Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA)  – not telling her (or us) squat.

In an all-but-furious statement after the hearings, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) noted:

"During my questioning of Mr. Ashcroft, he refused to answer my repeated direct questions about the so-called ‘principals meetings' he took part in with Vice President Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Alberto Gonzales where these key officials reportedly approved detailed interrogations against specific prisoners that included torture techniques, including waterboarding. Despite the fact that much of this information is in the public record, Mr. Ashcroft stubbornly refused to answer my legitimate questions, and instead decide[d] to ‘keep faith' with the Bush Administration and keep secrets from the American people and the Congress of the United States."

Part of  the callousness and cynicism in our reaction to Ashcroft's nose-thumbing is our realization that it’s not about to stop. Ashcroft is now seen as merely the Justice Department progenitor of an ongoing, imperious Bush management style that went from him through Alberto “I Dunno” Gonzalez to the new AG, Michael Mukasey. The unswerving devotion to executive privilege Mukasey has so far evinced has left his Democratic vetters – notably Sens. Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein - simultaneously scratching their heads and scrambling for ass-cover.

In a breathtaking example of media enabling, no less a redoubtable player than the New York Times... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/washington/23mukasey.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin ...seems to indicate that such slavish Constitution-shredding might be Mukasey’s most prudent course. Much of the story's slant is captured by the headline, “Mukasey’s Wary Start Dismays Ex-Backers”. Readers less in awe of Mukasey’s allegedly sterling CV may ask how nine months of stonewall obstructionism in service of a lame-duck President could be described as a “wary start”; those of us falling under that rubric want this disappointing jackass to start warily for the door.

Under Bush, the Justice Department, apparently has been thoroughly politicized to become a de facto extension of the RNCC: One of the lasting impressions from Gonzalez’s long, uninformative appearances before Congressional panels last year is that the White House is less concerned with upholding the nation’s laws as it is with remaking the American political infrastructure to Karl Rove’s specifications. The department has given its shell-game imprimatur to torture application, and has even purged its ranks of any its own operatives who seemed dedicated to actually performing their mandated jobs.

Nevertheless, the Times puts its sum-up paragraph this way, quoting David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer who served in the Reagan and first Bush administrations:

“The fact that he is not willing to open investigations into everything the Democrats want should not be particularly surprising,” he said. “Where you sit is where you stand. He’s not a judge anymore; he’s the attorney general of the United States. He’s defending the president’s prerogatives.”

Gee, thanks. So, we have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi willing to hold moot-court impeachment, as long as no actual feet reach any actual hineys, and presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s camp demurring proposals for future criminal prosecutions once this Administration has finally, thankfully, hit the road. That just about buttons it all up. There is no crime if there are no accusers; our best and brightest are laboring mightily turning us all into Kitty Genovese witnesses to a national tragedy: the murder of our political will and national charter.

And… nothing. No angry crowds in the street. No passion, no subversive acts to throw a pipe-fitters wrench in the corrupt machinery. We are impervious to outrage. We are incapable of principled opposition.

Part of this… what?...moral sedation?... stems from the sheer volume of the offenses we must countenance. Each evening, Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” rounds up the “50 revolving scandals” besetting the Administration in his intoned “Bushhhhed” segment. It is a regular, expected part of the hour, and viewers anticipate some new atrocity bubbling down to us from the White House. It is routine. It is part of the normal way our Chief Executive and his cronies do business. It is as if every component of the Bush Presidency, right down to the doorknobs and push-pins, are crooked and compromised.

Take any fractional part of the Administration, turn it over, and out scurry creepy-crawlies. Just about any agency or office you pick is either under investigation or the subject of Congressional probes. Names like Scott Bloch, Stephen Payne and the convicted Jack Abramoff, as well as luminaries like Lurita Doan, David Safavian and Alphonso Jackson, have become such superstars on TPM Muckraker and like-minded sites it would not be outside the realm of possibility that jailhouse groupies and Manson freaks would someday fling themselves at their pricey Balmorals for conjugal visitation quality time.

Some of these untersleazen are quite memorable: Nothing so grates like the sneering rectitude of a Bush flunky like Stephen Johnson, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, who sneeringly responds to occasional Congressional inquiries into why he’s so cavalier about industries poisoning our air. And the paradigm is long-lived since Inauguration 2001: PBS’ “Frontlline” report “Secret History of the Credit Card” from 2005 features an interview with then-acting director of Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Julie L. Willliams in which she gleefully – gleefully - recounts how her office does nothing – NOTHING - to protect consumers from credit predators.

But no hollers for justice from talk radio. No brave stands at the barricades. We just let it all… wash over us.

And as long as we’re bringing up shock jocks and our thoroughly tabloidized media, we should remember that the incessant background noise of politics, the heart murmur of the national zeitgeist, has become as more and more sectarian and vituperative as it’s become fake. In his Atlantic.com blog, Marc Ambinder notes that the phenomenon of phony outrage has played a profound part in corroding our indignation quotient:

“Outrage is often phony; major campaigns contrive their outrage precisely for effect. (When I ask about these contrivances, I am told that they are "part of the game.") But outrage is often phony even if it seems real. Phony outrage is outrage for the sake of feeling outraged; it's a comfortable outrage, an outrage that serves to reinforce feelings of solidarity and get rid of feelings of dissonance. Outrage is a covering emotion, like its close cousin, self-righteousness. We love to be offended. We love to feel affronted.

“Everyone is so outraged, outraged, outraged all the time that we're defining outrage down. If our outrage meter hits 10 at every conceivable sleight or remark, then when something really outrageous happens -- something truly morally despicable or cowardly takes place -- we're numb. Outrage moves votes and changes opinion. But if everything's outrageous, then nothing is.”

His piece is at:

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/enough_phony_outrage.php

When we’re asked to raise up on our hind legs every time a Fox bimbo connects an Obama knuckle-bump to international terrorism, we’re going to weary of the vitriol after awhile. Like the little boy who cried wolf, when the real awfulness hits the blades of our emotional air conditioners, we’re so tuckered out by cheap theatrics that we we’re unable to give voice to honest calumny. Seemingly, we can't turn it around. Outrage fatigue.

Maybe that’s the intention…