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i am not surprised.
i am surprised, however, that this matter seems to have as much traction as the range of--um---problems associated with the iraq debacle.
and even more that a country so "free" as this is facing yet more time under the aegis of this administration.
these people make a very strong case for systemic change, one that would perhaps involve the possibility of a vote of no confidence or some other mechanism to depose an adequately corrupt/inept/criminal administration.
two strange logical loops:
1. an edito in this morning's ny times outlines the problems created by this for the bush people---the endlessly repeating statements about leaks "damaging the nation"--squared with the leaks from bush direct in this matter---the conclusion: this administration understands itself to BE the american nation, to BE the american people. its partisan interests and those of everyone are identical. by damaging the bush administration's absurd case for war in iraq, damage was being done to the american nation. so the leak follows, as does the apparently inconsistent actions at once leaking and deploring leaks.
2. in the past couple days i read somewhere a survery of various legal folk who were called up by a reporter and asked about the legal problems this revelation might cuase for bushco---among the responses were: the action is legal because the president is, himself, the source of the distinction between classified and not classified documents. so he cannot really break the laws against leaking classified information--because the act of "leaking," carried out by the president, amounts to a de facto declassification of the information.
this reflects a strange and dangerous quirk in the legal thinking of the administration itself--their reliance on carl schmitt---you saw this in the glorious trail blazed by john yoo in the context of the "creative" reading of the word torture for example--for schmitt, sovereignty resides not with the people--as it is alleged to in this fine american pseudo-democracy--but rather with the person of the sovereign. who is the source of law and so is positioned both within and outside the legal system itself. by this logic, violations of law by a sitting president could be resolved in the direction outlined above with reference to the leak--as the source of law, the sovereign cannot be held accountable within the frame that he grounds.
schmitt's legal theoretical work is mostly about the state of exception or emergency. it is a critique of parliamentary democracy--and the idea that sovereignty resides with the people by extension--on the grounds that it is too diffuse, too slow--it relies too much on debate--a state of exception requires Decision and only a single individual--a sovereign, a Leader, a Dictator--can make Decisions.
democracy is all blah blah blah....
so in a state of exception, the Leader *is* the nation, his interests, partisan or otherwise *are* the interests of the nation.
the alarming thing is that you can lay this schmitt business over the actions of the bush squad and it makes sense of their actions.
if the administration really operates through this set of assumptions, then the diagnosis that would accompany the recent wholesale collapse of any credibility enjoyed by these folk outside the confines of the hardcore right could easily be linked to problems in the perception of the state of exception.
so, it would follow that, since the interests of the administration and those of the people are identical, the people's interests could be best served by a renewal of the perception that they are, in fact, in a state of exception.
at this point, the only real hope would be another big explosion.
it worked out pretty well in september 2001.
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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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