Cablegate: A shining city on a plain

No matter how passionately the Palinites might scream, American exceptionalism remains revolting and meaningless.

With each document uploaded to the internet by Wikileaks, the dream of America’s beacon-of-moral-light-on-a-hill for other nations dims.

Wikileaks’ “Cablegate” offers an insightful, nuanced view of human beings acting as human beings do; in some instances, with subtle aggression, in others, with a sense of unchecked ambition.

Sunday’s leak of more than 250,000 documents is the check of democracy.

It is the balance to a system that grows from half spoken lies, intermingled world players and painful bargains for the price of global domination.

While some will argue for political points in this debacle, one cannot ignore the implications across the political spectrum. These documents offer a form of transparency only dreamt of in the smoke of campaign promises. This leak speaks to the demand of honesty by the represented.

It is creating a loud voice of opposition in the place of what was once an uninformed consent.

There are those who argue this leak is classifiable as treason.

The action of leaking this document was not treason. However, those who read its thousands of pages might be inspired to commit such a crime. The only enemy being aided by these documents is the one made up of citizens who demand to be informed by those who are acting in their name.

These documents offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a paranoid and complex system of governmental relations.

Others will paint Julian Assange, the director of Wikileaks, as a radical, and to that point, I agree. Assange is presenting a radical alternative to a carefully created sociopolitical reality.

The word radical is defined by going to the basis of a problem or argument. Assange is offering information that tugs at the roots of Americana and its own dream of exceptionalism. The truth of government superpowers is complicated and disgruntling, but a sliver of it can now be accessed.

Looking at these documents can do little more than draw disgust for the actions that take place in the name of democracy and the free world. Yet, there might be some comfort in hoping that the same level of disloyalty to the idealized principles of human rights and personal freedoms is being acted out by our global partners.

The United States cannot be the only bad guy. It will be interesting to see our increasingly polarized political system justify its actions by juxtaposing them against those of nations across the world.

Perhaps the next big leak will reveal France’s inner embassy workings; the leak could be ripe with painful details and unbelievable missteps.

Wouldn’t that make us all feel better?

Wouldn’t that place Americans in a club of nations who do what they have to do, damn the moral consequences?

Wouldn’t that be the perfect sidestep to American exceptionalism even the Palinites would be glad to embrace?


E-mail: schammoo@indiana.edu