A Crime to Tell the Truth

“Fantasizing limitlessness is a bipartisan practice, almost a constitutional norm, and if there is one consistent lesson from American political history, it is that those who point to limits usually lose.” Jedediah Britton Purdy

Julian Assange has finally been dislodged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he lived in exile, and increasing isolation, for seven years. A lot can be said about Assange, good and not-so-good, but one thing is certain: Assange and WikiLeaks pissed off some of the world’s ruling elite with the publication of documents they wanted kept secret, and we all know how much the elites depend on secrecy and controlling the narrative. It didn’t help the US cause in Iraq, for instance, when we learned from WikiLeaks that American helicopter pilots fired on unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists. That distracted from the feel-good, every-soldier-is-a-warrior/hero story the Pentagon sold us through every means possible. Noble, democracy-loving American soldiers would never indiscriminately shoot unarmed non-combatants.

But of course they would, and do, just like American military personnel participate in torture, extrajudicial killings, and other forms of barbarism. In this regard, Americans are not different or special. Americans believe we run the world because our country is the richest, freest, and most militarily powerful, our system of government the best, and our technological prowess second-to-none.

We love our foundational myths. The rugged individualist who relies only on himself. The “self-made” man. The risk-taking entrepreneur. The benevolent capitalist. The beacon of hope for the world’s tired and poor. Though the myths are tattered and worn, laughably so, and so clearly a pile of BS, many cling to them because accepting limits is difficult, if not impossible, for the American character. Limits? America doesn’t recognize limits. Donald Trump, his fans and congressional enablers, the hacks he has surrounded himself with, think they are in the process of re-creating a great American age, one without limits to American hegemony. An age where the US answers to no other country (except Israel, of course). Where we reserve the right to extradite an Australian citizen for publishing material we didn’t want published. We apply laws that favor us, ignore all that don’t.

Trump and his henchmen are trampling the rule of law; they dance in the gray zone and do their shady deals in plain sight, confident nobody can stop them. Congress can’t, the courts won’t, at least not yet, and the corporate media are incapable of anything except propaganda and celebrity gossip. How much more blatant must the corruption become? Or is there no longer a ceiling? We know the floor is gone, dynamited by Trump the minute he set foot in the White House. President of some of the people, some of the time, and a majority of them white, scared of losing their privilege, their place in line, and their mythology of being better than others based on skin tone alone.

In this age of robust and incessant lies we need truth-tellers more than ever. Journalists and whistleblowers are targeted because they write and publish and leak information that contradicts the Big Lie narrative. Julian Assange. Edward Snowden. Chelsea Manning. If Assange is extradited, indicted, and imprisoned, there will be more names added. Even the mildest forms of democracy perish when it becomes a crime to tell the truth.