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there has long been a tension between more authoritarian and more democratic-ish elements within the us--think the "national security state" that was rationalized by the cold war. the more authoritarian strain surfaces across arguments that "security" and the rule of law can be antithetical. within the general framework of the cold war, this claim was kind of spread out in that for some reason the symbiotic relationship between the us and ussr (which worked to the benefit of the ussr, which i think would have imploded much sooner had the us not provided it with a reason to divert so much of its resources into military production and to use that to maintain internal repression) seemed to require it. and of course, there are nukes, which seem to be the ultimate rationale for bypassing the rule of law. they exemplify it. and nothing functions as a better expression of the internal logic of the national security state itself than thermo-nuclear weapon systems. mutally assured destruction, with the result that the only things left standing would be little tyrants in bunkers far underground controlling an imaginary country that they themselves had reduced to ash.
anyway, the bush people are a direct extension of this authoritarian aspect of the cold war american state--the ugly semi-secret side of it, the one that lives inside the hallucination that its lunatic policies "won the cold war". they are also an expression of political incoherence--unable to break away from the logic of the cold war, the bush people have used the 9/11/2001 attack to resurrect it in a new and improved form--no longer is there a discrete or even extant Other--now we are in a permanent war on ghosts.
it gets wearisome to post the same thing over and over again, but AGAIN: the bush people are committed to using a permanent state of emergency to advance a politics that tends toward dictatorship. in the name of democracy of course. but a state of emergency, as carl schmitt argued with respect to older forms of fascism, requires a "decider" and not the complexity and slowness of anything like an operational democratic system (or its shallow inadequate parody, which we live under, but which--for all its faults--is certainly preferable to bushworld).
and the article in the op is the logical extension of the cheneyclaims that the office of the vice president is not part of the executive branch.
this politics of the state of emergency---screen name="the war on terror"--function=to create the illusion of such a state of emergency---is not new. the only thing the bush people have managed really is to force all of us to confront it. and we confront it by watching television and making snarky posts in messageboards.
and of course capitalism trembles.
i could connect this tendency to run away from change to any number of underlying cultural processes in the united states. start with the debilitatingly reactionary educational system which is geared far more toward inculcating and maintaining political docility than it is to helping people learn how to face and cope with change. (aside: this running away from change is duplicated--NOT addressed--by the privatization of education). go from there. its easy. its depressing.
the only hope i maintain is that this period will function ex post facto as a massive demonstration of every last reason why fear of change and its correlate in the collapse of education into ideological management (to keep with the one example above) is a very very bad idea and so will open onto a space of radical transformation. if it doesnt, then we are in for a long slow collapse.
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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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