02/22/06 "ICH" -- -- I must
confess that I'm utterly baffled by the lack of
sustained, organized outrage and opposition from
Democratic officials and ordinary citizens at the Bush
Administration's never-ending scandals, corruptions,
war-initiations, and the amassing of more and more
police-state power into their hands.
And so, facing little effective opposition, the Bush
juggernaut continues on its rampage. How to explain
this? Certainly, one could point to a deficient
mass-media, to the soporific drug of TV, to having to
work so hard that for many there's no time for activism,
to education aimed at taking tests and not how to think,
to the residual fear-fallout from 9/11, to a penchant
for fantasy over reality, to the timid and unimaginative
Democratic leadership, to scandal-fatigue, etc. But I
would suggest that even more disturbing answers can be
found by examining recent history.
Just so nobody misunderstands what follows: I am not
saying that George W. Bush is Adolf Hitler, or that the
rest of his Administration crew are Nazis. What I am
saying is that since history often is opaque (making it
difficult to figure out the contemporary parallels),
when the past does offer a clear lesson for those of us
living today, we should pay special attention.
What happened in Germany in the 1920s and '30s can teach
us much about how a nation in a few years can lose its
freedom in incremental slices as a result of a drumbeat
of never-ceasing propaganda, strong-arm tactics,
government snooping and harassment, manufactured fear of
"the other," and wars begun abroad with the accompanying
rally-'round-the-flag patriotism.
In America of the 1980s and '90s, it was extremists on
the far-right fringes who believed the country was
moving toward "black helicopter" authoritarian rule in
Washington, and often blamed big-government liberal
Democrats. Now, as a result of just four-plus years of
the Bush Administration (supposedly anti-big government,
conservative Republicans), huge segments of American
society, including many in the mainstream middle, wonder
what has happened to our democratic republic, our civil
liberties, our time-honored system of government.
THE ENABLING MANTRA OF 9/11
The Busheviks defend the Administration's harsh,
sweeping actions as necessary in a "time of war." The
U.S. was attacked by forces representing fanatical
Islam, this reasoning goes, and the old rules and
systems simply don't apply anymore -- they are
old-fashioned, "quaint." Instead, we are expected to
inculcate the "everything-changed-on-9/11" mantra, the
effect of which is to excuse and justify all. Defense of
the fatherland comes first and foremost, trumping all
other considerations, including the Constitution,
checks-and-balances in the three branches of government,
separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions,
international law, etc. etc. (The Busheviks refuse to
believe that one can be muscular in going after
terrorists and do so within the law and with proper
respect for the Bill of Rights and Constitutional
protections of due process.)
Not only do the Busheviks pay no attention to modern
history, but they seem to have forgotten how our very
nation came into existence and why: Our Founding Fathers
rebelled against a despotic British monarch, a George
who ran roughshod over their rights and privacy and
religious beliefs. Learning that hard lesson, they
established a system of government that scattered power
so that no person or party or religion could easily
reinstate authoritarian rule. Politicians and citizens
would have to compromise and cooperate in order to get
anything done. It's a slow, cumbersome system
("Democracy," said Churchill, "is the worst form of
government ever invented, except for all the others"),
but the system they devised served this nation well for
more than two centuries, making American government a
model for much of the rest of the world.
And now, using the fear of terrorism as justification
for all their actions, the Bush-Rove-Cheney-Rumsfeld
crew within just a few years have moved America closer
to a militarist, one-party state, led by a ruler in whom
virtually all power is vested. In '30s Germany, this was
called the Fuhrer Principe, the principle of blind
obedience to the wise, all-powerful Supreme Leader.
We've seen other such examples in Stalin's Soviet Union,
Kim's North Korea, Mao's China, Saddam's Iraq, etc.
THE GOOD, THE BAD & LOTS OF UGLY
To the Busheviks, there is pure Evil and pure Good, and
because we Americans are pure Good, especially blessed
by God, we can do anything in the service of fulfilling
God's plan, which only we understand. If you're not with
us, you're against us; get on board or get out of the
way.
And so, under BushCheney, we've become an America that
has codified torture in official state policy, that
admits it went into a war under false premises but
continues to keep our targeted troops there anyway, that
spies on its citizens without court orders, that is
willing to out a covert CIA agent (one who was probing
the extent of Iran's nuclear program) for reasons of
political retaliation, that "disappears" American
citizens into military jails and doesn't permit them any
contact with the outside world, that flies suspects in
its care to secret prisons abroad and "renders" others
to countries that use even more extreme torture
measures, that passes laws permitting police agents to
"sneak and peek" into citizens' homes, phone records,
computer databases, library requests, e-mails and
medical records without permission or even informing
those whose privacy had been violated, that neuters the
Congress by saying it will listen to "suggestions" but
that the ultimate decisions are to be made by the Chief
Executive, that emasculates the political opposition in
Congress by cutting them out of the key decision-making
processes, that declares the president has the right to
violate the law whenever he so chooses and Congress and
the courts have no role to play in reining in that
power-grab, that keeps America on a permanent war
footing in a never-ending battle against a tactic
(terrorism), and on and on.
Even though much of the above transpired in secret and
is only now being revealed, not all of this desecration
of the American ideal happened overnight. As in Germany
in the 1930s, the extremists placed in charge of the
government said one thing in public and did another in
private, slowly slicing away at rights of the citizenry,
to avoid triggering a popular uprising.
THE SLICING MACHINE
In the beginning of their rule, the Nazis would announce
restrictive policies aimed at marginalized citizens (the
mentally handicapped, for example), and if no great
uproar of objection came from any power centers such as
the churches or hospitals or political parties, the
Nazis would proceed to the next slice aimed, say, at
Communists or homosexuals or Jews or Gypsies. All of
these moves were carefully couched in terms of saving
the "national security" of the Reich or purging the
country of "non-productive" or "destructive/dangerous"
elements in society. The Nazi propaganda machine was
clever, intense and all-pervasive, using the Big Lie
technique masterfully -- endlessly repeating its
falsehoods until the drummed-upon populace came to
accept them as truths.
Many ordinary "good Germans" and moral arbiters went
along with these violations of civil rights and
liberties either because they inwardly agreed with the
propagandists or because they were afraid to disagree in
public. Those few leaders in academia, the church and
the press who courageously or even tentatively demurred
or asked too many questions tended to be punished --
demoted, fired, their honors revoked, etc. -- and so
more and more citizens got the message to "watch what
you say." The Nazi juggernaut pushed on, widening its
list of what was forbidden, issuing harsher and harsher
edicts, and treating any dissidents roughly.
Hitler, leader of the rabidly rightwing Nazi party, was
installed as Chancellor in 1933, even though his party
was not in the majority, in the hope that he could bring
some order and stability to a society still reeling from
the horrendous economic/social Great Depression that had
devastated the country during the '20s and early-'30s.
Given the reins of power, Hitler felt free to unleash
policies that most citizens earlier had rejected as way
too extreme. He had written about them in his book "Mein
Kampf," but many thought he would modify his demented
views once he was inside the establishment corridors.
The "Enabling Act" that gave Hitler total control of the
organs of power in Germany was passed in 1933, following
the burning of the German Reichstag (Parliament), an
arson that was blamed on Communist "terrorists." Hitler
"temporarily" suspended civil liberties during this
"national emergency," which of course never ended.
Hitler lied to the Reichstag about his true intentions
in order to obtain approval of the Enabling Act. Shortly
after its passage, Hitler began rounding up tens of
thousands of political enemies and sending them to
concentration camps. Democracy was dead in Hitler's
Germany.
The corporate titans, seeing that there might be profit
to be gained from Nazi economic and military policies,
supported Hitler's rise and rule; those who had
objections to what he was doing thought they could tame
his passions through their immense influence. But
slowly, and then quickly, the Nazis took over one
institution after another; totalitarianism was in full
force. To stamp out any hint of dissent, all citizens
were to spy on each other --"each one of us the Gestapo
of the others," to use Sebastian Haffner's scary phrase
-- and the security forces arrested and tortured at
will. (To learn more from Haffner's contemporaneous
account, see
"Germany in 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism").
Arming itself to the teeth, Hitler's military forces
carried out lighting-quick wars of conquest
("Blitzkrieg") on weaker nations and the fascist German
empire spread over Europe and, in alliance with Japan,
in Asia as well. More than 40 million human beings would
die in the resulting World War II. Hitler's arrogant
belief in his own intuition and infallibility led to his
downfall, as, against all common sense and advice and
military history, he invaded the Soviet Union and wound
up in a destructive quagmire of the worst sort.
THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE
Again, what follows here is not to allege one-for-one
comparisons to Nazism, but to note certain parallel
events and tactics that require special consideration if
we are to avoid imitating disastrous history even more
fully.
In our time, a Leader (who, we later learned, probably
lost the 2000 election) was installed in the White House
by a far-right majority faction of the Supreme Court.
The HardRight had been laying plans for a restoration of
Republican rule after Clinton won re-election; first
they made sure Clinton would be unable to concentrate on
his political agenda by constant iterations of supposed
scandals that, as various probes demonstrated, revealed
no illegality. When Clinton handed the Republicans an
opening by engaging in a sexual dalliance in the White
House, they engineered an impeachment and trial by the
Senate; it didn't really matter that Clinton was not
convicted, as the requisite damage had been done, with a
side benefit -- his Vice President and presumable
successor, Al Gore, was tainted by being close to
Clinton and thus weakened politically.
The point of all this is that the HardRight restoration
forces were planning for a Bush administration far in
advance of the actual 2000 election. There was no one
person's "Mein Kampf," but other writings had laid out
in stark terms what this neo-conservative cabal had in
mind for the country's foreign/military policy should
they return to power, especially in the reports of The
Project for The New American Century: "pre-emptive" wars
of conquest, permitting no rivals for influence, control
of energy sources, etc. (See
"How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer",
where PNAC lays out the sole-Superpower strategy for
achieving "benevolent hegemony" around the globe.)
Some of that planning included an invasion of Iraq. Even
though Cheney still won't reveal which oil executives
were part of his secret energy task-force, we do know
that at least part of that panel's meetings in early
2001 involved the question of Iraq,
with discussion and a map of which companies might
get exploration blocks after Saddam was removed from
power. Further, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill
revealed how astonished he was that at the first
meetings of the Bush Cabinet in early-2001, much time
was spent on the need to invade Iraq.
The terror attacks of 9/11/2001 served as the equivalent
of the "Reichstag Fire" -- or, seen another way, as a
"new Pearl Harbor," the phrase lifted from a
2000 PNAC document. The Bush Administration's
"Enabling Act" came in several key bills passed by
Congress: the unread and barely-debated Patriot Act,
which gave virtually unlimited police powers to the
government in rooting out "terrorism," and the
Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF),
written so broadly as to give the "commander in chief"
authority to take whatever unspecified actions he
considered necessary against those responsible for 9/11.
Attorney General Gonzales recently claimed that the AUMF,
in conjunction with Article 2 of the Constitution,
permits Bush to authorize both the torture of prisoners
and spying on American citizens, without the need to
seek any court warrants, thus over-riding the Fourth
Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
that states in no uncertain terms that ALL such
eavesdropping requires court permission.
REINING IN DISSENTERS & THE INTERNET
Even though the mainstream, corporate-owned media by and
large does the bidding of the Bush Administration,
ignoring and playing down bad news and hyping the
Administration's spin points, full control of the mass
media is still not complete -- even with the Bush
Administration spending
$1.6
billion tax dollars last year on its own
public-relations spin. The few insurgent media outlets
and reporters, and the unruly analysts on the internet,
are still to be dealt with. (FEMA has contracted with
Halliburton and others to build several hundred
detention camps around the country, ostensibly to house
illegal immigrants but easily convertible for
malcontents of one sort or another. See Maureen
Farrell's
"Detention Camp Jitters".
Likewise, the Judiciary. Bush&Co. have placed nearly two
hundred of its HardRight jurists on the federal appeals
courts, and got its new Federalist Society justices onto
the Supreme Court -- presumably tipping the balance in
favor of more rightwing decisions -- but more work needs
to be done to lock down total control of the Judiciary.
The democratic institutions that possibly could still
backfire on the Bush agenda are approaching terminal
weakness: the Republican-controlled Congress has become
a rubber-stamp appendage of Karl Rove's political
office; the Democrats are essentially marginalized with
no real power except to whine and complain and
embarrass.
Plus, and most importantly, election votes are counted
by the same GOP-friendly corporations that controlled
(and appear to have manipulated) the vote-tabulations in
2002 and 2004, that manufacture the computer-voting
machines, and that own the secret, proprietary software.
The one dangerous element that cannot be fully
controlled are the human beings who are the public face
of the HardRight elite. Bush is a simpleton who often
says more than he should, giving away the game; Cheney
is a callous Rasputin whose penchant for secrecy and
power-lust as he runs the government constantly gets the
group into hot water; Rumsfeld is a media-savvy
incompetent whose dirty fingerprints are all over the
Iraq disaster and the torture scandal; Rove, a brilliant
dirty-pool tactician (his grandfather reportedly was an
active Nazi Party supporter in Germany), is likely to be
indicted in the Plamegate scandal. Others Administration
heavies, such as Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales
are little more than toadies for the big boys.
WE'VE BEEN WARNED
So, let's see: a Supreme Leader who has taken his
country into blitzkrieg ("shock & awe") attacks on
foreign nations, bogging down in an ill-advised invasion
quagmire in Iraq; who has traded historic civil rights
and liberties for defense of the fatherland; who has
destroyed or rendered toothless his nominal opposition
party; who has wrapped himself in the flag and
questioned the patriotism of those who raise questions
about his policies; who has engaged in a Big Lie
propaganda strategy to move his agenda; who has
demonized internal enemies; who violates the law to get
what he wants and claims that he serves a higher power
in doing so; who has marginalized the other two branches
of government; who effectively controls the voting
process; and so on.
What's scary is that it didn't take much verbal
stretching to come up with those parallels, even
admitting that life in Bush's U.S.A., however comparable
in many areas, can scarcely be equated to life in
Hitler's Germany.
Even so, history has presented its warnings to us. Will
we understand and act in time to return our country to a
more moderate balancing point, thus making us better
protected in terms of national security? It's up to each
of us.
This bungling Bush crew seems to have a reverse Midas
touch; virtually everything they touch turns not to gold
but to foul-smelling waste matter. They are so out of
touch with the American mainstream that they've brought
their own poll numbers down into the 30s, and key
Republicans in self-defense are racing to separate
themselves from BushCheney before the November
elections. Bush&Co. may be reckless bumblers,
endangering America's national security and economy and
environment, but they still wield the levers of power
and they're not about to give them up; indeed, it
appears they are willing to take us all down with them
as they fall.
That's our challenge, to get rid of them as quickly as
possible -- by agitating for impeachment hearings now,
or moving for impeachment and a Senate trial after
taking back the House in November -- and help bring
America out from its current dark cave to the bright
light of hope and civility and reality-based governance.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government &
international relations, has taught at various
universities, worked as a writer/editor for the San
Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis
Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment, write
crisispapers@comcast.net .
