Crimes Against The Party

posted at 12:56 pm on September 29, 2009 by Doctor Zero

The Left is mobilizing to protect Roman Polanski from being extradited to the United States, after his arrest by Swiss authorities for the crime of raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl in 1977, then fleeing from justice. Polanski spent his thirty years in exile from the United States on a rocky island off the coast of Madagascar, where he subsisted on a diet of roots and grubs. His only companion was a mangled Barbie doll with a cracked face, which he named “Natasha.” No, not really. He’s actually lived a life of opulence in Europe, hailed as a great artist, toasted in the salons of Paris. The only thing he’s been deprived of is the thrill of threatening to leave America when a Republican wins the presidency.

Polanski’s defenders cite his brilliance as an Important Director of Important Films as a reason it’s not only wrong, but outrageous, to punish him for his past crimes. This is similar to the arguments made in favor of releasing convicted cop-killer Mumia abu Jamal from prison, a point of view enthusiastically held by at least one high-ranking member of the Obama Administration: that fabled Rohrschach inkblot of liberal stupidity, Van Jones. Mumia’s delicate writing hand is much more important than the one he used to shoot Officer Daniel Faulkner in the back.

The Left also issues Get Out of Jail Free cards to people other than artists. The Polanski defense is a nostalgic karaoke rendition of the 1998 anthem “Perjury About Sex Is Not A Crime,” sung on Bill Clinton’s behalf. Perjury, infidelity, and what the antique feminist movement used to call “sexual harassment” were small prices to pay for Clinton’s inspirational leadership.

You can’t say the Left is entirely soft on crime, however. There are some scofflaws they’ll never stop trying to put behind bars. CIA agents who kept America safe from terrorists, for example. None of the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay was innocent, or thirteen years old, and none of them were drugged, raped, and sodomized, but the Obama Administration is keen on prosecuting the people who interrogated them. If Roman Polanski had covered his victim’s face with a wet towel, maybe his defense would be a bit less energetic.

Another individual the Left wants brought to justice is Karl Rove, for the crime of being Karl Rove. The other charges against him range from being nebulous to absurd, but rest assured, it would be a great day for America if we could frog-march that villain into the vacant cell left behind by a liberated Mumia abu Jamal. Best of all would be the trial and imprisonment of George W. Bush, a fantasy the Left holds with the intensity of a small child shivering through a sleepless Christmas Eve. Bush actually did the stuff Clinton just talked about – liberating the people of Iraq from monstrous tyranny, fighting AIDS in Africa – but it earns him no slack from liberal vigilantes. He did more for women’s rights than anyone alive today – you can ask the women of Afghanistan about it, now that their faces aren’t wrapped in upholstery – but he didn’t do anything really important, like make a movie about the sexual oppression of suburban America.

The Left is primarily interested in prosecuting people guilty of crimes against the State. Not the American government per se – Polanski’s flight from the American justice system doesn’t count, because like all great and fashionable artists, he is a Citizen Of The World. The State stretches beyond the American government – in fact, it was born and nourished overseas, in the writings of European progressives and fascists at the dawn of the twentieth century, and it still draws much of its intellectual nourishment from European sources today.

The State has only one Party, with franchises and local sub-divisions around the world. The Party may have factions that quibble over relatively minor issues of policy, but America is one of the few developed nations where the Party has any serious opposition… and even here, it’s remarkable how deeply the Party’s ideology has penetrated its nominal opponents, and how many of its foundational assumptions and myths they accept. Still, most American Democrats feel greater kinship with European socialists than with the greedy, racist teabaggers staging massive protests outside their windows. The previous Democrat candidate for President, John Kerry, was remarkably honest about this.

The Party makes a very clear distinction between its political masters, the elevated elite class surrounding them, and the little people who provide its electoral muscle. The elite are permitted indulgences that could not be made available to the unwashed masses. No matter how faithfully you might have voted Democrat for your entire life, the Clinton defenses against perjury and adultery would not be accepted from you. Likewise, your odds of successfully fleeing the rape of an underage girl, to become the toast of Paris, are extremely slim. The elite will not join you on the farm, in the socialist agrarian paradise they’ve been designing for the industrialized West. They will still be ferried around in limousines and private jets, long after you’re expected to surrender your automobile. You would serve time in prison, or be bankrupted by enormous fines, for behavior that Obama cabinet officials are allowed to discreetly forget about. Some of this immunity comes from sheer political power, but any Republican who thinks he will be allowed to join Tim Geithner on the tax-evasion ice skating rink is a fool with a big surprise in his future.

The Party is primarily concerned with prosecuting crimes against itself, particularly against its elite members. It has little passion for crime among the little people, which it believes its advanced social-engineering theories can resolve, if it gains enough power to fully implement them. Justice is synonymous with the power of the Party – who’s got time to fret over ancient sexual assaults and silly presidential perjuries when there is income inequality in the world? The elite cannot be expected to rattle around in the labyrinth of regulations they impose on the proletariat. They’ve got important work to do, including the kind of consciousness-raising that requires big name stars and directors.

George Bush’s first offense was denying America the brilliant, socially aware, technocratic leadership of Al Gore. The statue of limitations will never run out on something like that. Meanwhile, forcing a beloved Hollywood director to end his life in the slammer for a little error in judgment, like rape, would be unthinkably crass… as long as his Party credentials are in order. That is why the same people who turned their backs on Elia Kazan weep for Roman Polanski today, and will weep again at his career retrospective, on some future Oscar night. The Party may have changed its name, and adjusted its methods, but it still remembers what Kazan did to it, and his sentence extends far beyond the end of his life.

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