Stoopid Stuff

At LEAST Half Empty

I'm more pessimistic about the future of this nation than I've ever been. Indeed, I can't think of a time in history, at least since Washington fell in 1814, when not just America, but the concept of America has been under such dire threat.

I've been mostly concerned about Iraq. The idea of America as a nation that invades and occupies other nations is one that simply cannot stand. The idea of America as an aggressive, fascist rogue nation is unacceptable to me, and I've been focused on trying to bring this vicious, counterproductive foreign policy to a close.

Then came the Democrat's unseemly and wrongheaded capitulation on FISA. Now it's clear. America's reputation in the world as a force for good has already been trashed, if not beyond repair then to the extent that it will take generations to repair it. The failure of the American Democratic political system, the utter inability of the other branches of government to restrain the excesses of the Executive, the collapse of the rule of law, the unsustainability of the American economy - these are all issues with major implications for the survival of America as something we'd recognize. But the real threat to America, not as a country, but as an ideal, is from within.

In particular I have noticed the rise of two groups within the American population that function as a real threat to our way of life, but perhaps even more importantly represent the kind of destructive ideologies that make American democracy such a fragile entity today.

The first, and most obvious of these groups is the Neo-Racists. Sure, America has always been a place where the more virulent forms of racism could take root and grow. It's something that comes out of our puritanical, provincial nature, our attraction to insular communities, our history of arriving on these shores as oppressed refugees, our religious extremism, and of course, our modern history of slavery and apartheid. Much of America is built on the three legs of militaristic nationalism (we call it "patriotism"), rigid fundamental christianity and racism. In a sense, it could be fairly argued that in "small-town" America, that sense of community, of belonging, is nothing more than the manifestation of those attributes.

But recently, a number of trends have come together to bring out an enhanced, ugly form of racism. The Republican party has always been about a thinly veiled racism, at least since the civil rights battles of the fifties and sixties, and with the Republicans contesting and winning elections over the last decade or so using the Karl Rove playbook of slurs, taunts and code-words, they have institutionalized racism, giving a veneer of acceptability. Then there was 9/11. By that time it had become all but unacceptable to use race to attack or demonize another person. Americans were still divided by racial hatred, but it was concealed, pushed beneath the surface, as the community determined that certain words and concepts could not be used in public discourse. But once it became clear that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out by Muslims, it was suddenly perfectly alright to hate muslims as our enemy, just as we had hated the Japanese in the second world war. And Americans, who love to be able to indulge their hatreds in public, almost as a bonding ritual, jumped at the opportunity to hate an entire population of people they didn't understand, deeply distrusted, a people who most importantly were not like US. Finally, there was the ugly, depressing battle over immigration reform fought not between well meaning legislators, but between the exploitative corporatists and the racists. In the current environment, is it even surprising that the racists won? And not just by a narrow margin - the racists won a resounding victory. The things that are being said openly, primarily about Mexicans, have pushed the battle against racial hatred in this country back a hundred years. And that's the beauty of the American style of "one size fits all" racism - If it's Mexicans today, it can easily be Chinese tomorrow, for the only litmus test is "are they different from us?"

The second group is a little harder to spot, but you'll find them inhabiting the same fetid haunts as the Neo Racists. These are the Neo Authoritarians. Now, while I think I understand the roots of racism in this country, I'll confess I'm at a loss to understand this movement. These are people who claim to love their country, who frequently invoke the founding fathers, who speak in glowing terms of the American contribution in World War II, who shout to the rooftops of the benefits of democracy, of human rights, of freedoms of speech and education and religion. And yet they stand and cheer every step the current administration takes toward dismantling the constitution and everything America ever stood for, everything it ever meant. It's as if they've read history, but failed to understand it.

They have cheered from the sidelines as America has abandoned everything Americans ever fought for, and adopted a regime of torture, indefinite detention without due process, the elimination of the 4th amendment requirement for probable cause and warrants, the elimination of habeas corpus. These are people who never understood comunism, and in their minds conflated it with a totalitarian police state, and railed against that as antithetical to all it means to be a modern democracy like America. And yet, the model they seem to aspire to recreate resembles nothing so much as the Soviet Bloc. A surveillance/police state where people are imprisoned for their beliefs and trials are merely for show, arriving in short order at the predetermined outcome.

I would at least entertain the theory that they don't actually want to live in a police state, but rather are supporting their dictatorial President in all his mad endeavors, perhaps secure in the belief that these extra-judicial practices will never be brought to bear on them or their families - indeed will only be used against the worst of the rabble. But they stood firmly against the administration when they felt it's position wasn't sufficiently racist, so it cannot be said that in their most base desires they are in lockstep with the political leadership.

It almost doesn't matter now. The disastrous legacy of this administration is to have started effectively dismantling the most sacred parts of America. Not as a nation, although they have done irreparable harm to the nation also, but rather to the concept, the ideal of America. No part of the political leadership of the United States will ever be the same again. Not the vaunted separation of powers, not congressional oversight, not the election process, not the integrity and political independence of government itself. Future presidents will have to decide whether to use the whole litany of extra constitutional tools created by Bush/Cheney and their coterie of pliable lawyers or to set them aside and fight through the "old fashion" way, negotiating, compromising and coming to consensus. When the leadership can violate their oath without sanction, violate the law with impunity and act on their own base desires rather than the good of the nation and find themselves re-elected, that is not likely to be a difficult decision.

With America's utterly unsustainable military and economic policies, the decline is as inevitable as it will be precipitous. And the reaction, sadly, will be led by these groups with their inflexible ideologies and deeply held prejudices. And in her time of extremis, as the desperation becomes palpable, the increasingly violent policies will be truly horrible to watch. The irony, of course, is that these very same people cheering the death and hate will be swept up in the necessary fallout of their own rigid policies, and locked in camps without trial or a lawyer, executed behind the barracks without appeal for "insulting the leadership", they will cry out "What has happened to my beautiful America". And I wonder, if in a brief moment of clarity before the darkness closes in, they will see that all along, while they wanted to eliminate the protections America promised those "other people", the dark ones, the ones who prayed differently, or not at all, the ones who loved differently, they were actually killing America herself, leaving behind something dark, and unrecognizable...

posted by mikey @ 7:52 PM