Reflections From a Murky Pond

Rep. Pete Olson (R-TXs) and 10 other House Republicans have drafted four articles of impeachment against Holder. They plan on introducing these articles of impeachment as early as today, though the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) won’t commit to moving forward with any of the resolutions of impeachment.

Yet Rep. Goodlatte has little or argument with the content of these resolutions. He’s just unlikely to act upon them.

Under Attorney General Holder’s watch, there has been a lack of leadership and a politicization of the Justice Department. Scandals from the Fast and Furious gunwalking operation to the seizure of reporters’ emails and phone records in national security leaks investigations have undermined the Department’s credibility and the American people’s trust. Attorney General Holder has also politicized the rule of law by refusing to enforce laws he doesn’t like.”

The only way to restore credibility at the Department of Justice is through an improvement in the quality of leadership. President Obama should make a change in the leadership of the Department of Justice to restore the confidence of the American people in our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

This combined with the expected utter lack of support from Speaker John Boehner (“R”-OH) means that the efforts to impeach and remove Attorney General Eric Holder from office are most likely doomed from the start and that Holder will remain protected from the consequences of his myriad high crimes and misdemeanors.

A Moral And Philosophical Divide

Perhaps prophetically, the House is divided morally and philosophically on the matter of Impeaching Holder or Obama.  The House Republicans fall into two camps: those who adhere to the philosophy of Deontology and those who follow the dictates of Consequentialism. With the Senate, still being firmly in the hands of the Democrats, very unlikely to convict Holder no matter what he has done there is no point beyond doing the right thing for its own sake for the House to indict him.

Obviously, the deontologists want to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and the fact that nothing will come of it doesn’t really come into the picture insofar as they’re concerned.

Conversely but equally obviously, the consequentialists want to do the right thing but only if doing so will produce a beneficial and ethical result, which any attempt to impeach Holder won’t do since, even of the House indicts, the Senate won’t convict.

With such a fundamental philosophical and ethical divide, the House is unlikely to take any action against Holder.

The Politics of Hate and Othering

Of course, one must not make the mistake of attributing too much devotion to people, especially professional politicians. Most people don’t have a strong tendency towards letting their ethics and morality cause them to put themselves at risk. This is even more true of professional politicians since they want to keep their jobs.

This tendency towards amorality in favor of survival is exacerbated by Obama’s success, with the aid of the ever-complicit Lamestream Media, in the politics of division, hate, and othering. He’s has both successfully redefined bipartisanship and labelled any GOP dissent from his agenda as obstructionist, classist, and racist. That inherently has a chilling effect on many Republican politicians – as Obama and his handlers meant it to.

This has, from what little we’re allowed to know about him, has always been Obama’s preferred modus operandi. He divides people, gets his side to think of the opposition as the Other, and gets them to vote against them rather than to vote for him.

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So, for both philosophical and materialist reasons, I sincerely doubt that the impeachment of Eric Holder will move forward at all. Most likely it won’t even be heard or debated by the House Judiciary Committee Chairman.

Tags: America | Consequentialism | Crime | Democrats | Deontology | Ethics & Morality | Holder | Impeachment | Justice | Law | Obama | Philosophy | Politics | Republicans | US House of Representives | US Senate

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 14th, 2013 at 11:16 am and is filed under Ethics & Morality, Philosophy, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.