Cleansing our deeply poisoned political system

The function of a political storm is to allow a People to change their collective mind, to change their politics, and -- often, most important -- to change the elite, which governs them. Glenn Greenwald, while contemplating the spectacle that is Joe Lieberman, explains the problem:

The reason our mission in Iraq has proven to be so disastrous and corrupt is very simple -- the advocates and architects of that war are completely corrupt, inept, and deceitful. Recognizing this fact and ceasing to accord people like this with respect and credibility is infinitely more important than any specific debates over particular policy or strategic questions. . . .

These are people who are completely bereft of judgment and integrity, and their behavior has wreaked incalculable and arguably unprecedented damage on our country. Holding them accountable, and recognizing them for what they are, is critical not only for cleansing our deeply poisoned political system, but also for averting identical, or worse, tragedies in the very near future.

Greenwald is focusing on Lieberman, on the occasion of yet another idiotic Lieberman WSJ op-ed. Lieberman is a U.S. Senator, newly re-elected, and probably not going away any time soon. But, we shall see.

There's another group, which will have to enter the trashcan of history, before American politics can recover, and that group is the High Punditocrisy of American Media. Bob Somerby of Daily Howler fame, has this peroration on this Monday morning:

In the past fifteen years, the interests of decent American people have been endlessly slaughtered by an indecent cohort. They’re too rich, they’re too famous; they’re much too dumb. They’re a race of insipid, inane “Antoinettes.” But their tribe controls your national discourse. They slaughtered Gore in 1999, and they slaughtered your nation’s interests in the process. Until we explain this tribe to the public, they’ll live on—and they’ll slaughter again.

Lieberman, even if he persists in the Senate, may be neutralized by the evolution of our politics, but how the triumphalism of idiot pundits will end, remains to be worked out.