The Idea: Is the US predestined to slide into totalitarianism?
I
haven't written much about US politics lately, but that doesn't mean I
haven't been paying attention. As distraught as I am about the
extremist ideology of the party in power in the US, I am far more
concerned about the means
they are using to try to subvert the will of the moderate majority.
These are the means of people with totalitarian aspirations,
megalomanic personalities, and undemocratic agendas:
- Hiding extremist, unpopular and inadequately-explained legislation in 'omnibus' bills
- Bullying and threatening the media
- Fomenting fear and hysteria and wars against imaginary and
exaggerated 'enemies' to distract attention from domestic political
subterfuge
- Lying about the ends in order to suppress popular opposition to the means
- Characterizing flagrantly undemocratic political and
electoral abuses like gerrymandering as 'normal' outcomes of a partisan
political system
- Mortgaging the future to curry favour with today's voters
- Unwillingness to study or learn the lessons of history,
almost to the point of taking pride in ignorance and misrepresenting it
as populism
- Orwellian, deceptive misnaming of legislation, as part of a broader, carefully managed propaganda scheme
- Deliberately stirring up xenophobic nationalism by
misconstruing international loathing for a right-wing US regime as
anti-Americanism
- Showing contempt for vital constitutional principles like
the independence of the judiciary and the separation of church and state
- Withdrawal from and subversion of international institutions and agreements
- Refusing to enforce, and compelling public employees to ignore, laws that are inconsistent with government ideology
- Deliberately undermining support for public and private
institutions whose mandate is to safeguard the rights of minorities,
the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised, or to monitor and report on
government and corporate abuses
Governments planning to subvert the will of the people and undermine
the democratic process almost always masquerade as 'populists', using a
charismatic or malleable front-man and applying precisely the
techniques listed above to manufacture a series of crises and paint its
opponents as traitorous, ineffectual or extremist, in order to polarize
the population. The objective is make government, constitutional
liberalism and democracy look so feeble that the people are willing to
at least tolerate corporatism (fascism), abrogation of constitutional
rights and freedoms, and totalitarian control of the levers of power.
The extremists currently in power do not trust Americans to do what
they want done, and all their actions indicate a desperate and
broad-based attempt to permanently consolidate power so that elections
can be orchestrated and rigged and so that this extreme right-wing
cabal can do as it will in perpetuity.
The techniques above work --
they have been used by anti-democratic forces that believe they know
better than people for centuries. And these techniques are working in
America -- whether you believe the 2004 election was stolen or not (and
it is a tactic of anti-democratic groups to show the electoral process
as suspect in order to undermine support for it), a lot of moderate
Americans chose to vote for a bloc of decidedly non-moderate candidates
at every level in the 2004 elections.
Everything is going exactly according to plan. Everything is being done
to manufacture the next crisis -- an economic collapse due to
deliberate mismanagement of the national finances, by racking up the
largest debt in the history of the planet, or a military crisis due to
deliberate mismanagement of international diplomacy, on the pretext,
this time, of dealing with the Iranian or North Korean 'nuclear
threat'. This has been in the planning stages for a decade -- the plan
to bankrupt the federal government and the names of the chosen 'axis of
evil', three countries whose governments everyone loathes and which are
convenient targets for whipped up nationalistic frenzy and fear, were
decided upon long ago.
With the next crisis, look to see the government 'test the waters' by
suspending civil liberties more broadly than in the first trial
balloon, the Patriot Act. Look to see the government ask for permanent
powers in the interest of 'security' that will wrench power from an
unreliable Congress and an even less reliable electorate -- powers that
will include the right to launch 'limited nuclear strikes' (there is
simply no money left for conventional warfare against Iran or North
Korea, as it has all been given away as paybacks to the large
corporations that bankrolled the right-wing coup). And powers that will
include the right to permanently dismantle every part of the federal
government except the military and 'homeland security' in the interest
of restoring government solvency.
It is a shame that in this century where real, long-term global crises
are looming, we seem so incapable of learning the lessons of history,
and so we keep repeating the same mistakes. America's slide into
totalitarianism is the last thing we need now -- it could well distract
the world for decades from dealing with global warming, the dangers of
bioterrorism, and the acceleration of epidemic diseases, all of which
will be much harder to solve than an American dictatorship. What is
most telling, and most frightening, is the silence of the media, the
ignorance of the population, and the denial by all but a tiny minority
that anything is seriously wrong. Take a look at any country that has
fallen from democracy to totalitarianism and you will see the same
signs. This is the calm before the storm.
Is there anything that can be done about it? Probably not. Impeaching Bush
might work, but I wouldn't count on that happening. America's democracy
has always been fragile -- since it was established it has never been
seriously threatened so there's been no need to pay attention to
keeping it robust. It will be a useful object lesson for the rest of
the world. And it will make the authors of The Fourth Turning look prophetic indeed.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
