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the rationale for scalia's dissent is basically the same as that behind the bush people's "war on terror"--a state of exception which "requires" the suspension of usual processes and legalities in favor of a dictatorial-style executive. a state of exception need not be a war--it can be and usually is a sense of political crisis--but crisis can be generated from any number of sectors for any number of ends. it seems to me that first there is a real question of what a "war on terror" means and in what way it can possibly be understood as a war in anything remotely like a conventional sense. if you accept that it is a state of "crisis" covered over by metaphors of war, then the logic of scalia's dissent collapses, because it moved in the opposite direction, assuming that the "war on terror" is somehow understandable as a way in a conventional sense.
this is another way of making the point i was making earlier: what has changed really is the sense of "crisis" or hysteria--which in this case came to the same thing--the political implosion of the bush administration has taken down the hold of its gloss on a "crisis"/hysteria as "war"--it no longer has purchase--and i think that loosening of an ambient sense of "crisis" opened the space for this ruling.
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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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