Fast and Furious Demonstrates 'Ruling Class,' Country Divide

Apart from CBS News, the mainstream media has essentially ignored “Fast and Furious.” Instead of reporting on the illegal sale and transport of more than 2,000 guns, the hundreds of deaths in Mexico that resulted, and the nearly sixty Fast and Furious weapons that have been recovered at crime scenes in the United States, they have simply continued business as usual: fulfilling their self-appointed role as defenders of the ruling class.

There is no other ready explanation for why a supposedly “free press” looks the other way when “the DHS, IRS, DEA, ATF, ICE, and the Obama Justice Department” are all named under oath as being tied to Fast and Furious in one way or another. The same media personalities that still get a sparkle in their eye when talking about Watergate staunchly refuse to report on what could and should be the biggest scandal in the last fifty years.

As I type, the talking heads on MSNBC are clearly more worried about Michele Bachmann’s promise to reinstate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should she win the presidency than they are with ascertaining who oversaw the sale of the weapons used to kill U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Ultimately, the mainstream media ignores Fast and Furious for the same reasons they report the supposed racism of the Tea Party. They don’t want to do anything that might undermine the ruling class and usher in a changing of the guard.

For the record, members of the ruling class can be found in both parties. Those in the Republican Party are of the “establishment” stripe, while those in the Democratic Party are proud to count Barack and Michelle Obama, Eric Holder, the Kennedys, and Senator John Kerry among their numbers.

Angelo M. Codevilla alluded to this bipartisan nature of the ruling class:

America’s real divide is certainly not between the Republican and Democratic parties. Rather, on one hand, there is a class of people who dominate both parties as well as academe and the media.

It should come as no surprise that John Kerry is mute on Fast and Furious or that Chris Matthews has yet to mention it. Obama only talks of it in response to questioners, and even then all he does is defend other members of the ruling class from charges of being involved. In response to a post-press conference question on October 6 regarding Holder’s misleading statements to the congressional investigators, Obama said:

With respect to … Fast and Furious, I think I’ve been very clear that I have complete confidence in Attorney General Holder in how he handles his office. … He’s indicated that he was not aware of what was happening in Fast and Furious; certainly I was not. And I think both he and I would have been very unhappy if somebody had suggested that guns were allowed to pass through that could have been prevented by the United States of America.

Of course, 90% of what the president said in defense of Holder consisted of fluff or falsehoods — there’s tangible evidence that Holder knew about Fast and Furious at least as early as July 2010. Yet that doesn’t matter to Obama. What matters is defending the other members of the ruling class, of which Holder is one (for the time being).

Consider the words of Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County. He is not a member of the ruling class, and looks upon Holder and the rest of those involved in Fast and Furious with rationality:

It is insanity that they [ATF/DOJ] could try and rationalize this and still withhold and try to cover up information that implicates them.

He went on to say that those who were involved should “absolutely” be labeled and charged as accomplices to the murders associated with the operation.

The members of the ruling class feel themselves sufficiently insulated from the physical dangers of Fast and Furious, and they are quick to provide alibis to spare themselves political danger as well. On the other hand, those charged with the duty of living in the real world and facing the threat of being shot with a gun that Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, or the ATF’s William Newell knew about aren’t easily appeased with the excuses and contradictions that characterize the good ol’ boys club on this one.

Fast and Furious demonstrates a chasm between the ruling class and the people. And the quickest way to bridge that chasm is to follow Sheriff Babeu’s recommendation and start filing charges.