America's corrosive lack of accountability

The mainstream media’s self-image as a respectable, serious steward of fact is not remotely consonant with their behavior over the past decade and a half. Even today stentorian tut-tutting about fake news is published alongside a grossly irresponsible and paper-thin story accusing several honest left-leaning sites of being Russian stooges.

Or consider the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program. This was, according to the president of the United States and the nation’s top law enforcement officer, a program of torture. Torture is illegal under U.S. law, punishable by up to 20 years in prison — and is a capital crime with no statue of limitations if it causes a death, which happened multiple times. Yet the idea that someone at the CIA should face a criminal investigation, let alone prosecution, was an impossible thought.

The media, the president, and nearly all of the rest of the political class have internalized the idea that the CIA (and the rest of the security/intelligence apparatus, most likely) is literally above the law. Prosecuting anyone there for a very straightforward crime — one of the worst in the criminal code — is, for the American elite, simply a thought which cannot be allowed to surface. That’s why in the process of confirming that the CIA did indeed commit acts of torture, President Obama also delivered a pious lecture about not being too “sanctimonious” about the “patriots” who had a “tough job.”