|
CounterPunch
December
28, 2002
How 9/11 Events
Helped Democracy to Evolve Toward Perfection
by JONATHAN SWIFT
We export Democracy big time, in the form of ideology
(hold elections like ours and you'll take a step toward political
health or risk joining the axis of evil), entertainment (see
Bay Watch, Dallas and Jerry Springer the finest quality T&A,
treachery and hilarious loss of dignity scenarios Hollywood can
produce) or "free market" capitalism (dare to restrict
our capital and products and you'll get what coming to you).
We Americans take democracy for granted.
We've overcome slavery, segregation (a few remnants remain in
the Senate perhaps), and all kinds of ethnic, racial and gender
biases. We're not perfect, but we're about as good as it gets.
We know bad guys when we see them, like
Saddam Hussein that fascist who makes us feel morally indignant.
Indeed, some truly zealous believers have joined President Bush
in his call for war against Iraq and maybe Islam in general.
In this war democracy might finally conquer Islamic fascism (not
like the half baked Crusades of centuries ago). Saddam the secular
fascist or the Al Qaeda-Taliban-Wahabbi theocratic thugs they're
all haters of western civilization and therefore dangerous.
In light of some recent events, skeptics
suggest, shouldn't we ask questions about our democracy before
aggressively promoting its export in all forms especially military?
A review indicates how our democracy
has evolved. Go back as far as 2000, a year that made democratic
history when less than a plurality of voters (about 23% of the
eligible electorate) chose the president. The Supreme Court ruled
that a republican form of government like ours, didn't require
vote counting to choose a president. So, Bush won. Some bitter
liberals claim that the Court's five Republicans simply outvoted
the four Democrats out of partisan politics. I admit that the
Court counted its own votes more precisely than those of Florida
voters, but that's only natural.
In 2002, the Bush Administration modified
our system by replacing a slightly open government with a truly
secret one. It's more efficient. The new Administration tells
Congress to stick its head in the toilet when it doesn't feel
like sharing secrets of state, or whatever. And Congress barely
complains, After World War II, our leaders bent the Constitution
a bit to erect a national security state on the back of the Republic
in order to meet the threat of Soviet aggression. After the Soviet
Union slipped away a decade or so ago, our leaders faced narco-traffickers
and terrorists by maintaining and making more secret that structure.
Fighting dangerous enemies requires secrecy.
Thus, the Administration claims executive privilege to withhold
policy discussions from Congress. And, under Bush (43), democracy
has fully evolved from a government of law to a government of
men and a few women as well.
Making "war against terrorism"
meant that the US government had to license itself to execute
people without trials, hearings or other legal niceties. Some
CIA officials apparently objected on the grounds that other nations
could reciprocate. But their pleas went unheeded by the hardheaded
realists. We only murder those we know deserve it.
In early December, we dispatched an Al
Qaeda official in Yemen. Before the CIA's drone fired its lethal
rocket, unidentified intelligence sources had clearly identified
him. Five others died in the car with him. Collateral damage
in the war on terrorism! To get one bad guy, you may have to
kill five others. Yes, the evolution of our democracy may have
roots in the wild west.
Bush has cleverly stretched the meaning
of democracy to attune it to concepts once considered undemocratic.
For example, he and his advisors discovered "enemy combatants"
a term designed to strip people of all human rights. Later, we
confirmed that some of those reptiles were actual human beings.
The December 22 Los Angeles Times reported that "The United
States is holding dozens of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay
who have no meaningful connection to al Qaeda or the Taliban,
and were sent to the maximum-security facility over the objections
of intelligence officers in Afghanistan who had recommended them
for release, according to military sources with direct knowledge
of the matter."
When civil liberties lawyers tried to
get them released, or when judges objected to their incarceration
without access to habeas corpus, government officials sneered
because they knew these men were hardened Al Qaeda terrorists.
Okay, mistakes happen!
They only spent about 154 days in illegal
detention. Now, the Times cites "classified intelligence
reports" that say that "dozens of the detainees are
Afghan and Pakistani nationals." They were "farmers,
taxi drivers, cobblers and laborers. Some were low-level fighters
conscripted by the Taliban in the weeks before the collapse of
the ruling Afghan regime."
"None of the 59 met U.S. screening
criteria for determining which prisoners should be sent to Guantánamo
Bay [where the Navy had constructed a concentration camp], military
sources said."
"But all were transferred anyway,
sources said, for reasons that continue to baffle and frustrate
intelligence officers nearly a year after the first group of
detainees arrived at the facility." The government is not
perfect, but I'm sure it will compensate these people for its
minor mistake.
Homeland Security has become another
new feature added to American democracy in the 21st Century.
Previously, our democracy included a rigorous defense of human
rights. But on December 19 Attorney General John Ashcroft modified
that old fashioned notion and brought us into the modern democratic
age. He ordered the arrest in southern California of some 2500
men and boys who had volunteered to register with the INS and
get fingerprinted. But they volunteered, whined the civil libertarians.
Hey, in our democracy no good deed goes unpunished. These people
paid a price for their blind trust. Any study of our democratic
history will show that confidence in authority is misplaced.
Our democracy is based on hard-nosed realism!
Indeed, Bush and Cheney both have taught
solid lessons in modern realism. They include in their understanding
of American patriotism activities like shopping and taking vacations
in Disneyland. They pressured Congress to pass a "Patriot
Act" to "protect us." Indeed, the Bush Administration
had presented Congress with classified material serious enough
to raise the hair on a dog. Congress, showing a proper lack of
skepticism, accepted Bush's version of "the threat,"
defying the wisdom of the late and great journalist I.F. Stone
who said: "Never believe anything government officials say.
They're all liars." Maybe so, but they're certainly patriots.
George Jean Nathan once called patriotism
"the elevation of real estate above principles." Well,
Bush understood that all elevation means reaching greater heights
and he included as patriotic the passing of a fast track for
free trade in Latin America, to help our wealthy investors make
more money faster.
We chuckled over such witticisms and
laugh aloud over George Bernard Shaw's "democracy substitutes
election by the incompetent many to appointment by the corrupt
few." Or, Robert Byrne's "democracy is being allowed
to vote for the candidate you dislike least." Those quips
may have tickled a rib or two in the United States and Britain
in the 19th and 20th Centuries. But as 2002 comes to an end,
it's no longer funny to make fun of our democracy. Your name
could appear on the "No Fly" list, the names of dissenters
whom the government has warned airlines not to let on planes.
Many of these "no-flyers" have missed important flights
because they get searched over and over again.
And thanks to the USA Patriot Act our
democracy has removed distinctions between names of people the
FBI or CIA gathered during secret intelligence investigations
and laws that once protected these people. The government can
easily wiretap them and open their mail. Don't you feel more
secure when the state shows its power?
Real power, however, means ability to
dip into the public trough. The Administration buys lots of things
and makes lots of contracts. Some call this looting. But such
talk besmirches our beloved Armed Forces, which does a good share
of the purchasing. Air Force Lieutenant Colonels for example
order $50 billion a year or more of military paraphernalia. Given
their job description, they should be leading squadrons. But
thanks to the productivity and flexibility of our democracy we
have produced many times more officers of that rank than squadrons,
so they buy instead of fly. Voicing opinions against new weapons
descriptions, they learned, does not enhance their post-military
careers as vice presidents of defense companies in charge of
purchasing. That should teach people how American democracy actually
works. "Be all that you can be," I believe the motto
says. Or "get all that you can get." Whatever!
Our electorate can choose theoretically
between candidates who want more weapons spending not exactly
defense because no country is attacking or plans to attack or
those who want to invest in health, education, environmental
cleanup or dealing with poverty. Some 42 million Americans lack
access to medical care, they say, tens of millions live in environmentally
compromised areas and millions live on the streets. President
Reagan believed they preferred the streets, and many patriots
believe that by making health care available government intrudes
on peoples' personal choices.
So, issues related to helping poor people
rarely appear in modern campaigns. Those who raise these themes
incite class warfare by harkening back to the New Deal of the
1930s and The Great Society of the mid 1960s. Thanks to the evolution
of our democracy, only a minority of House and Senate Democrats
continue to push for these outdated programs, but they have little
hope of realizing them.
The "incompetent many" stayed
home in the last federal election. The "corrupt few"
known as the elite in Washington -- now manipulate the electoral
system and continue to insist that the majority voted for them.
Under Bush the word majority has evolved and now means between
10 and 25%. Face it, most eligible voters focused on more important
issues decisions involving shopping priorities or were too depressed
to vote. Some didn't find the candidates interesting enough to
dislike them.
Those A-type millionaires who did vie
for the few "contestable" congressional seats campaigned
through clever albeit negative and downright nasty spots on TV.
These short cuts to dealing with "issues" cost lots
of money but they apparently hit home with viewers, especially
those who have become hooked on shows like Jerry Springer. That's
the entertainment version of our democracy in action enjoying
watching other people lose their dignity on national television!
"Voting is a pain the ass,"
said a friend. In other countries voting takes place on Sundays.
Here, we make it difficult and besides, said my buddy, "voting
doesn't matter." Gore Vidal cynically said that American
democracy is the most brilliant system devised for the rich to
steal for centuries from the poor and convince the poor they've
voted for it."
"If voting actually changed anything,
they'd make it illegal," another wit remarked. We've refined
that adage. If voters do make the "wrong" choice, our
CIA in collaboration with the US-trained military helps de-elect
the candidate. Some examples of this successful export of our
order are: Mossadegh, overthrown in Iran in 1953, Arbenz, ousted
in Guatemala 1954, Goulart, removed in Brazil, 1964, Allende,
killed in Chile, 1973.
So, we export our democracy. Several
less developed nations now have candidates who spend millions
to win office, put nasty ads on TV and refuse to discuss so-called
issues. If only those Middle Easterners or old Fidel Castro in
Cuba would dance to our political rhythms, they could experience
the satisfaction of our kind of elections. What fun it would
be to watch millionaire Arabs or Cubans insulting each other
on TV! If these less blessed peoples could grasp our optimal
way of life, we could probably normalize relations with them
well, if they do exactly what we say.
Many have modified the word democracy
with adjectives like "imperfect," "changing"
"class-based and race-based," but barely anyone challenges
the word itself in our great country. When bin Laden and his
conniving minions tried to sow fear and thus force us to undo
the protection for dissent, minority rights and accountability
in government, we showed him how we could quickly modify our
political culture. Thanks to our agile leaders, we've adopted
a balanced mixture of police state practices against resident
aliens and dissenting citizens with continued tolerance for modest
protest provided it is benign. Abroad, we have shown the efficacy
of raging disrespect for law, including authorizing murder, and
that's what democracy is in 2002.
Those who long nostalgically for a return
to the unfettered shopping mall-freeway culture of yesteryear,
when "commerce uber alles" was the slogan of the day,
are utopians. Security first and shopping second is the rule
under our post-national security state democracy. We have met
fear and loathing with genuine fear and loathing. We have bent
our democratic principles to meet all contingencies. So, export
away Senor Bush. Let the world feel our power and don't forget
the babes on Baywatch!
Jonathan Swift
is the indolent pseudonym of a commentator for Counter Punch.
He can be reached at: swift@counterpunch.org
Yesterday's
Features
Kathy Kelly
Crossing
Borders
Christmas in Iraq
Kurt Nimmo
North Korea: Calling Bush's Bluff
Elaine Cassel
How the Grinch Stole the Pardons
Cairo Declaration
Against
War on Iraq and in Solidarity with Palestine
Norman Madarasz
Secular Steps in Preparing a War:
an address at Cairo
Gary Leupp
Notes on the Cairo Conference
Neve Gordon
Christmas
Eve in Bethlehem
Kenneth Roth
An Open
Letter to President Bush on the Torture of Al-Qaeda Suspects
Pierre Tristam
War Toys and the National Character
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|