The Question of Repudiation

Last Thursday Scott Ritter, never one to mince his words, posted a Truthdig report entitled, "Repudiation, Not Impeachment." This report has attracted so many comments that the bulk of them now extend to two Web pages. Unfortunately, almost all of them are about impeachment. This should be no surprise. My guess is that "repudiation" was not in the working vocabulary of most of Ritter's readers; and, in light of all those comments, it would be fair to say that he did not do a particularly good job of bringing them up to speed on the concept. Nevertheless, one reader, Mark A. Goldman, decided to take a stab at trying to figure out what Ritter was actually advocating. Here is the comment he wrote:

In once sense Scott Ritter is correct. He didn’t really say this, but I think what he meant to say, or at least would agree with, is this:

the reason that impeachment is inappropriate now is because as a people we have been complacent and neglectful to the point of now being complicit. And so to impeach Bush and Cheney would be incomplete and in this sense unjust. They would only be scape-goats. For we are all to blame for the crimes and the treason committed. For now we can see that they have actually represented us all along. If they hadn’t we would have stopped them a long time ago. Our half-hearted complaints do not obsolve us from responsibility. And so what is necessary for us to do is not to impeach but to take responsibility for our crimes. And this means to acknowledge what was done, to tell the whole truth about what has happened and what part we played in it and to demonstrate that we understand where we failed… and then to recommit ourselves to the ideals we left behind. What is needed is a complete telling of the truth so that everyone in our society understands what crimes were committed and what values were sacrificed. So, in fact, impeachment is not enough. We have lost our moral compass and our moral authority and the only way to get them back is to demonstrate to the world… to our children… and to ourselves, that we understand what has happened, we know where we went wrong, and we know what we need to do to redeem ourselves. We need to tell the truth. And we need to make amends.

http://www.gpln.com

Goldman wrote this comment yesterday morning; but it has had little effect in keeping the discussion "on message." In keeping with the strategy behind many of my own posts, I decided I had better consult my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. The primary definition of "repudiation" is “Divorce (of a wife).” This makes for a great metaphor, but the second definition is more attuned to the Truthdig discussion. It, too, has two parts, one general and one specific. The general definition is “The action of repudiating someone or something; the fact of being repudiated; rejection, disownment, disavowal.” The second part is specific to legal usage: “Refusal or failure to meet with the terms of a contract; a denial or serious breach of contract.” (Note that this reflects back on the primary definition in the context of those cultures in which a marriage is “sealed by contract.")

What strikes me as most interesting about these definitions is that the agent doing the repudiating is essentially rejecting (or disowning or disavowing) some decision or action committed by the agent in the past. An agent who repudiates is essentially saying, “I screwed up, and I now disavow the decisions and actions that brought about this mess.” If we now move from denotation to connotation, then the agent is saying something else: “I screwed up, and I am committed to undoing the mess I made.” For me this cuts right to the bone of the question of what it means to repudiate, what turns the noun from the abstract concept on which Mr. Ritter has expounded to specific actions to which we commit.

Unfortunately, such commitment requires the strength of will; and, as I have proposed both in Truthdig and on this blog, we are far too comfortable to muster such will. Regular readers know that I thank Russ Feingold for prompting my thinking along those lines. He was the one who, after Congress caved into to the White House on troop funding, accused all of his colleagues, regardless of party, of placing their own political comfort above the voice of their electorate. Vonnegut also wrote about our lack of will for getting out of the messes we make. Unfortunately, a nation whose citizens who lack individual will is easy prey for a dictator who has it in ample supply. Guess what?