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i have been thinking that we are entering the period wherein the claims that those of us who have been trying to work out the logic of bushworld will see whether we have been right or not, and in what way.
the alteration of the legal framework within which fema functions, and the expansion of the notion of "state of emergency" dates from the reagan period. if the scenario that pan outlines were to happen--or anything like that--the legal justification for whatever followed would run along these lines.
an alternative scenario involves iran--and the outlining of the "logic" behind it is still unfolding, and is why i thought the tisdall piece above to be interesting. in another situation, it wouldnt have been: except maybe as yet another indication of how yet another journalist was chumped/used. which must be hard to avoid, given the nature of information control surrounding iraq and things related to it, which we tend to forget about, but which are still very much in place.
there is and has been an authoritarian logic to the politics of this administration. a neo-fascist style authoritarian logic that is made all the more problematic because the actors involved do not even acknowledge the lineage of their own positions, seemingly imagining that fascism is something that other people did to themselves, that we know about from wrold war 2 films, and is therefore a thing either of the past or of far-right uniform fetishists. and the political spectrum in america is such that neo-fascism does not get named as such--rather, it is part of conventional political discourse, associated with all the "values" for which neofascism stands, but with out the name.
the "way of thinking" is obvious, then.
what that could translate into is not.
my suspicion is that the appearance of legitimacy matters to these folk across their internal divisions--there is a more explicitly authoritarian element in the admin (cheney for example) and a more incoherent populist element (cowboy george)--so i am not sure that i see from this (politburo style analysis) anything that would lead me to think that the administration would move to violate the form of the present governmental arrangement. if they did, it would take the form of a coup d'etat--and so at the moment, i dont see it happening. the bush squad seems to enjoy the illusion that it moves with the People to some extent, and so was probably at its most dangerous in the phase directly after 9/11/2001.
so one possibility is that there would have to be something bad that would happen in the states in order to recreate something of that convergence of illusion of public support with the political aspirations of the bush squad.
at this point, i dont see anything that'd lead in this direction.
but who knows.
the other possibility is military action against iran--but in this, i dont see it working as desired because, well, the bush people have fucked up to such an extent that i dont think their narrative will fly. no narrative=no justification=no public support=exposure of any move they could make for what it is.
if the administration is therefore effectively boxed in my its own incompetence and the squandering of whatever capital it once enjoyed, then it could be the case that it is dead in the water and that thre is nothing they can do to change it.
i just dont see these people being willing to violate the form of the existing arrangement...i think they imagine themselves to be defending it in a bizarre extreme-rightwing kinda way, even as they undertake move after move to undermine or alter the legal parameters within that arrangement to their own partisan political advantage.
so i dont know. not yet anyway. but this is how it looks to me at the moment.
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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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