What is a scandal?

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#politics, benghazi, obama, scandal, trump

Conservative pundit S.E. Cupp touches on one of this week’s bits of skulduggery from the Trump administration — the leaks of Israeli intel to the Russians in this case, although any week’s scandal would do — to briefly discuss the usual response we all know and are sick of by now. The conflicting denials and rationalizations that are quickly detonated by a Trump tweet. The confused media. The Twitter outrage. The ducking-for-cover of Republican congressmen. The lack of resolution by the time the next scandal hits. After all, it took just 24 hours for the Russia-leak story to get buried by the news that James Comey may have notes from a meeting where Trump committed obstruction of justice.

But then she tries to compare the above to the various misdeeds and mistakes of the Obama era, calling them “scandals,” which begs the question.

Even if you accept that the Obama administration was gravely at fault in cases like the bungled Fast and Furious gun op, Benghazi, or Solyandra: Are these “scandals” where Obama stood to personally profit? Or can they be explained as cases of negligence or incompetence?

This is an important distinction. For the average member of the public, the word “scandal” means a politician tried to abuse his position for personal benefit. Whether financial, sexual, legal, or for the benefit of a friend or family member, or to simply look cool and “in the know” to the Russian ambassador — scandals require ulterior motives in order to be scandals. S.E. Cupp and other conservatives may not like this definition of “scandal,” but that’s what the people back home go by.

See, now this is an example of “personal profit” that the viewers back home understand.

And I have yet to see anyone make a case that Obama attempted to personally profit off of Benghazi, or his cowboy approach to drone strikes, or the bureaucratic nightmare that is the VA system. I mean, how does that even make any sense? Prove to me that he was sleeping with an incompetent VA manager or General Atomics was sending him a kickback every time he ordered a drone strike, and I’ll shut up. Otherwise, I suggest we stop calling every case of presidential bungling and screwing up a “scandal” lest that term lose all meaning and we’re comparing Reagan to Nixon over the Lebanon attacks of 1983.

The incident that most closely resembles the s-word was probably the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups for unfair audits. This, unlike most of the Obama-era problems Cupp lists, quite plainly was done in malign intent. But nobody ever proved that culpability extended beyond Lois Lerner and one IRS office in Cleveland, despite the Republicans’ best efforts. This is in contrast to Trump’s various depredations where his personal involvement, and personal profit motive, are not even in question.

Or there was former CIA head David Petraus getting into a good, old-fashioned Washington sex scandal with Paula Broadwell. Now there was a no-brainer case to deploy the s-word. We all understand how he “profited,” same as Fitz and Olivia up there. But on the other hand, that had nothing to do with Obama.

Obama’s mistakes are not called “scandals” by your average voter, and it’s not because of a liberal media pushing fake news. It’s because, absent any damning evidence that has yet to surface, they weren’t scandals. They were mistakes. Let’s stop using overheated terminology. Things are overheated enough these days.

Even the hard left is turning against Venezuelan dictator Maduro

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#communism, counterpunch, jacobin, leftism, maduro, nicolas maduro, venezuela

Every week, new stories emerge about Venezuela’s humanitarian and human-rights catastrophe as that once-proud nation slides into a nightmare of starvation, thuggery and death. Food and medicine go from scarce to unobtainable, and strongman Nicolas Maduro responds to civilian protests with further consolidation of once-democratic powers into his own hands.

Up until now, he has been aided and abetted by the usual characters of the hard left, who never need much encouragement to believe anything bad in the world is the fault of American imperialists and evil capitalists. The Maduro regime’s propaganda that Venezuela’s crisis is the fault of its right-wing opposition and American meddling found an easy home with the sort of people who put the hammer-and-sickle into their Facebook and Twitter profiles.

So it is quite remarkable to stumble upon this piece in Jacobin, a magazine that makes Mother Jones look like National Review, decrying the Maduro’s regime’s slide into authoritarianism, and its gross incompetence at governance. The piece is naturally sprinkled with insults leveled at the hated anti-socialist opposition and other to-be-sures, but it is still amazing that Jacobin would ever state: “Yet while previous claims of Venezuela’s authoritarianism had little merit, this is no longer the case,” before enumerating some of the many anti-democratic moves of Venezuela’s dictator, for that is what he is by this point. And towards the end of the piece:

“Yet the Left cannot turn a blind eye to the government’s slide into authoritarianism, nor its inept policies. This is not out of an unwarranted blind faith in liberal, representative democracy, but because authoritarian rule is incompatible with the beautiful-albeit-contradictory-and-flawed project of building “participatory and protagonistic democracy,” which Chavismo helped advance.”

Any Jacobin writer putting out such a thought even a year ago would have been summarily fired and asked to surrender their A.N.S.W.E.R. membership cards.

Meanwhile, Bolshevist website counterpunch.org, which up to now has been fanatically and predictably pro-Maduro, last month dared to even ask, however tentatively and after however much obligatory America-bashing: “Does Maduro violate those [Chavismo] principles or uphold them?” The writer meanders back and forth without even coming to a conclusion. Anything less than full-throated support for Maduro in this online Pravda is an ominous sign indeed.

And it only makes logical sense for the hard left to turn its back on Maduro. For one thing, he is an embarrassment for them and has been for years, as the right may now hold up Venezuela as a socialist horror story. Wouldn’t it be smarter for the left to just declare Maduro a failure who has let his predecessor down? That it was the man who failed socialism, and not that socialism failed Venezuela?

For another, throwing the Maduro regime off the bus makes the old tankie party line of “true communism has never been tried” easier to defend. Why not just say Maduro was a fake socialist only out to rob the Venezuelan people? Perhaps Jacobin will start pushing “Maduro: Capitalist Running Dog” pieces before this is all over.

But more than anything else, the desperate straits of the Venezuelan people should be the main story here. Responding to stories of starving babies with “oh this is just colonial imperialist nonsense designed to hurt dear leader Maduro, the well-fed guy sitting in the fancy palace” exposes the cruelty of the far left. They should at least pretend to care about the plight of the proletariat, if only for propaganda purposes. Even Stalin and Mao knew that.

Naturally, there will be some dead-enders who will never blame Maduro — there are some leftists who still openly wish they lived in North Korea, after all. But the smarter among them are realizing it may not be best to hitch their wagons to a man who should be hauled before The Hague for his crimes against humanity.

Not that that’s exactly stopped them before…