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manipulating paranoia is the only argument the bushpeople have to justify their actions. in the case of the nsa spying programs, the administation clearly ignored the law and so finds itself confronting a problem, which it has this week been trying to address in a way that is perfectly consistent with the above...so for the right, violations of law are political matters (when they themselves are doing the violating): legal restrictions are apparently to be understood as not applying to them substantively because they see a state of emergency that requires a Response from a Leader who is not encumbered by pesky things like democratic process or law.
so it is not surprising at all to see that most dysfunctional of codependent couples--bush and bin laden--at it again: it is as if both are trapped in an endless rerun of a honeymooners sequence and the conflict between them is over who gets to be ralph. each wants to be the one to say the best line:
"to the moon, alice..."
each deriving maximum publicity benefits from the other, each using the other to legitimate themselves....following this logic, you would expect to see another attack on american soil if the administration finds itself in intractable legal trouble for its incompetent arrogance...and--to my horror-this does not at all seem farfetched: think about it--last week, rove surfaces at an rnc meeting to fill in the leading brownshirts that the "message" in the midterm elections should be VOTE DEMOCRAT AND DIE.
there are basic problems with how the bushpeople understand and/or market the hobbyhorse they call the "war on terror": for actions like tightened border controls to even make sense requires that the "war on terror" be assimilated into a conventional war paradigm, one that involves nation-states and continuous conflict--something that the bushpeople can recognize and think about--a "war" with "terrorists" would be by definition irregular--sporadic conflict, irregular targets, etc.: you cant really defend against that as if it was a conventional war. it is not even an aspect of conventional war--it is something wholly other than that. whence the functionality of the bush-bin laden codependency--its media manifestations are regular enough, the threats repeated enough that, marketed properly, the videos and audio tapes can serve to enable the bushsquad to assimilate this "war" into a frame that they understand and can use to legitimate themselves. those who support the administration find this slide to be compelling, for whatever psychological reasons: those who oppose the administration do not find it to be compelling enough to justify its actions.
i have had no luck here trying to get folk from the right to explain to me why they find this paranoia compelling--that is to outline how they see this "war on terror" thing--what makes them imagine it to be something like a regular war that would legitimate authoritarian responses from the executive branch that not only violate individual laws but also the whole constitutional seperation of powers. i see it as entirely different from a regular war and so as nothing that justifies going outside the law. i see no contradiction between trying to adopt come defensive positions and respect for law.
nor have i had any luck trying to get folk from teh right to square this: in matters of economic policy, most on the right buy the absurd line that the state is nothing other than a source of irrationality, but when it comes to the "war on terror" they are most docile with reference to the state--they kinda like an authoritarian state. i dont get it. i figure it must be the appeal of boys in uniform. but how can the state be wholly irrational in one sphere and to be trusted in the other? it either is irrational or it is not.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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