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this is kind of a funny thread:
the op tried to generate a non-partisan discussion on a kind of abstract question concerning civil liberties and what resulted was a long thread that gave the lumpenconservatives the chance to rehearse all their favorite memes: in this case:
the bush administration is a priori incapable of violating civil liberties.
the clinton administration was a priori incapable of not violating civil liberties.
the result of this little syllogism: accusations concerning the violation of civil liberties are a pure partisan issues.
they mean nothing in themselves.
the lumpenconservative set seems to be fine with this, not so much because the position is coherent, but because it dissolves one of the legion of trajectories across which fundamental critiques of the bushsquad could be elaborated. but this interpretation assumes a certain distance, a certain cynicism with reference to questions of civil liberites. but there is no such distance in the posts above from the lc-types.
on the other hand, when it comes to the officially sanctioned rightwing relation to the clinton administration, questions of civil liberites are concrete and violations everywhere.
it seems absurd to hold up the criterion that the violation of civil liberties can be indexed via the personal/emotional sense of being-violated--which is, both above from the far right loyalists and in general in conservativeland, the standard against which this question is evaluated.
for the lumpenconservatives, this line goes directly to tautology:
this administration cannot violate civil liberties because it is headed up by Our Guy, made up of Our Guys.
the relation to Our Guy is properly infantile: in this scenario, george w bush is something of the Spectral Father---and the lumpenconservatives like children who see in the Father powerful, near omniscient--the source of Authority, the Protector-Dad---because rooted in some kind of identification with the Father, the administration's motives are necessarily understood (if at all) as pure---it follows then that the actions of the Father are necessarily rational---He is trying to protect his flock from chaos, destruction death and other Bad Things---He is motivated, like God, by an infinite love for us, his Children---so violations of civil liberties are impossible----particularly if you hold up the sense of being-violated as a legitimate measure.
so for many of the more rabid conservatives above, the matter of civil liberties has been entirely instrumentalized---it is a tactic, an issue to be raised and taken seriously at certain officially sanctioned moments, and to be dissolved at other officially sanctioned moments---the idea of civil liberties means nothing in itself.
that way you get to avoid pesky questions of law.
but then again, law that would be violated by Our Guy is linked to the state as source of Irrationality....civil liberties are legal limits on power, articulated to check the actions of the state---so long as Our Guy is at the helm, these checks are themselves irrational--questions of violation of law are in the case of Our Guy irrelevant--anything goes---particularly if you take seriously the lumpenconservative claim that what really matters is the personal sense of being-violated---because support for the bushpeople is so deeply elaborated as a type of identification, it follows (again) that meaningful violations of civil liberties are impossible.
if an Enemy is in power, however, these same checks are fundamental.
the martyrologies of waco and ruby ridge are both repellent indices of the devolution of the conservative coalition during the clinton period: waco was an index of the assimilation of extreme right religious organizations (centered on assimilating a sense of being-martyr), weaver an index of the assimilation of the militia movement into the main stream of conservative ideology. across the revisions of both into incidents in a far right book of martyrs followed a reinforcement of the image of bill clinton as the Evil Persecuting Dad---the offically sanctioned emotional response to the Evil Dad is a sense of being-violated at every point---threatened by a malevolent Father, the children displace their anxiety onto a symbolic conflict concerning possession of the Phallus--in this case, guns--which serve as a fundamental signifier in the playing out of this tedious extreme right scenario of politics as Family Drama.
the conclusion: the conservative Children play out delusions of autonomy across the matter of Phallic power--this is of a piece with the truly bizarre combination of complete, often abject, support for the actions of Our Guy and its correlate--the impression that many on the right can hold that their abject relation to the Conservative Father is in fact the opposite of the abject, an expression of Free Will, a positive Choice. all this functions to do is to dissolve any problem that folk who identify with the lumpenconservative set could possibly raise about the nature, quality and implications of their particular mode of interacting with the Political.
i would worry about this dissolving of the notion of civil liberites into a pure tactic.
on the other hand, it is not surprising to see so many conservative loyalists above
not worried at all. they support the right to possess guns, the commodity that means Freedom. possessing Guns, the commodities that indicates Freedom, means that they have the problem of civl liberties sussed out.
anything goes.
Dad wouldn't hurt us.
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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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