On the pseudo-political critique of leaders' abuses of power

To criticize a problematic feature of a social world is not to accuse some one of a crime.

The very idea of evil is as problematic in historical explanation as it is necessary for governance.One problem with the liberal model is that it distorts the possibilities of thought.

This is because thought’s powers of criticism tend to be reduced to competition between individual elites. The good life reduces to enforceable morality and justice to law.
This works in a media society where ordinary citizens confront possibilities of the political through representations.

If a person is observed to have written a book we can learn from, and participated in some crime, why do we judge the book by the crime? Everyone wants to judge and punish all the crimes, does anyone want to think?

The principal models and images of governance today are liberal. This is why scandal today has become the principal tactic of staged political conflict.
This is related to the use of rhetoric and tactics in place of arguments.

Liberal and democratic images of social life are distinct possibilities.
They may be realized in combination or separately.
The liberal model thinks social life as relationships between individuals.
It is based on markets.
The democratic model thinks social life as communities that may be more or less ‘rational’ (thoughtful).

In the liberal model learning takes place through reactions and authority uses sanctions.
The political leader is an entrepreneur.
He is scrutinized in the public eye for his morals.
To succeed he must be perfect.
The least crime is sufficient to take him down.
The political faction is impugned by finding a crime in its leaders.
Factions are corporate individuals.
Political activity in civil society is managed my corporations, normally non-profit ones.
Liberal political thought needs leaders.

The old socialist idea of criticism/self-criticism (which had origins in classical thought and later monastic life) is a model of how the moral possibilities of social criticism (that is, those bearing on possible actions and judgments as to their value) can be taken up in a way that subordinates enforcements based on sanctions to reason and discussion.

The theoretical figure driving the Cold War ideologically was the opposition between bureaucracy and markets, and the democratic and liberal models.
The models were combined, everywhere, and badly.
The victorious faction mostly chose not to learn from its critics.
Yet a political thought that criticizes abuses of power but not forms of social life is not political at all, nor a genuine form of thought.