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e lot of all those charged with a crime, but which, given the identity of the accused in question, could only degenerate into globally observed torture—high punishment for a crime, which no one, at that point, knew whether or not he had committed. This vision of Dominique Strauss-Kahn humiliated in chains, dragged lower than the gutter—this degradation of a man whose silent dignity couldn’t be touched, was not just cruel, it was pornographic. And it was at least as pornographic (because, I repeat, it’s the same thing) as attorney Kenneth Thompson’s visible glee in expounding on the state of his client’s “vagina” [sic] before the entire world. 2. The Robespierrism of this judicial sideshow. What is Robespierrism? It’s a word taken from the French Revolution, of course, one that describes the way those behind the terror at the time took hold of a man of flesh and blood and dehumanized him by transforming him into an abstract symbol, and, as the literal incarnation of that symbol, tailored his person to fit the skin of all they had decided to purge from society of the Ancien Régime. Well, we are compelled to observe that, regarding the Strauss-Kahn affair, America the pragmatic, that rebels against ideologies, this country of habeas corpus that de Tocqueville claimed possessed the most democratic system of justice in the world, has pushed this French Robespierrism, unfortunately, to the extremes of its craziness. In this case, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was no longer Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He was no longer a singular man gifted with a singular word, one whose version of the facts should have been carefully heard in order to compare it with that of his accuser. No. He was the symbol of arrogant France. He was the emblem of the world of the privileged, odiously sure of their own impunity. He was the mirror of this world of white global bankers that constitutes Wall HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029938