by MoreThanAFlag Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 08:12:30 AM PST
I haven't been compelled to write my own diary on here before now, silently content to allow those with both more time and knowledge to keep me informed and entertained. But after silently observing the long line of abuses our nation has suffered over the last seven years, and after news that most Democrats still have plans of capitulating on FISA (have I mentioned that I hate Harry Reid?), I cannot take it any longer.
As a beginning note, I am quite shocked that no one (at least to my knowledge) mentioned here on the blogs anything on or about October 17, which was the one year anniversary of President Bush's signing into law of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [ http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:s3930enr.txt.pdf ] to, as the bill states, "facilitate bringing to justice terrorists and other unlawful enemy combatants through full and fair trials by military commissions, and for other purposes" (emphasis added).
Personally, I believe that on that day, October 17, 2006, the American Republic and our democracy finally met its death blow, after having staggered under a long string of abuses at the hands of this Administration and those pathetic souls that call themselves the Legislative Branch--culminating today in yet this latest horror, the use of retroactive immunity to further subvert the rule of law.
I just completing reading "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot [ http://www.amazon.com/End-America-Letter-Warning-Patriot/dp/1933392797 ]" by Naomi Wolf, in which she argues that the last seven years have seen Americans living through what she terms the "fascist shift" of society, in which democratic societies move from the rule of law into fascist states through 10 clear-cut steps. While I highly recommend you read the book yourself, I feel compelled to at least list her 10 steps, and share a few of my thoughts on these and some examples she and others have used to back them up in a short of readable synopsis of the concept. I will argue that while the person I shared the following with yesterday called me an "alarmist" and "unpatriotic", I think it is something that we must examine, for our own sakes if for no one else. I've also noticed an increase in diaries dealing similarly with talk about the death of our democratic experiment and what not, so I figured now is as good a time as any to look into it myself. So I hope you'll bear with me.
As former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once said, "It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies." Daily Kos has been the embodiment of this principle for me, and so I hope you all will continue along side me in that tradition via examining the following:
THE FASCIST SHIFT: 10 Steps Toward Fascism
"But a constitution of government, once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." – John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams on July 7, 1775
"When America gets fascism it will be called anti-fascism." – Huey Long
In the interests of not having this diary become unreadable, I'm going to try and lay this out as a condensed list. I'll explain a few things as I go (might turn into a book, my history being any indication), but what you're basically going to see is an outline of Ms. Wolf's book, and the talking points I've used so far when talking to others about this. If you would like to add to this, or seek further clarification, well, that's what the comments section is for.
Step I. Invoke an External and Internal Threat
I doubt a single person here can argue that 9/11 was not a defining moment in our recent history. And as history has proven to us, every shift toward fascism requires those seeking the change to find the "cause event" for their crusade. For this Administration, that event was most undoubtedly 9/11.
In the ashes of one of the nation's most prestigious buildings, the nation's fearless leader called a press conference, and declared war not on a nation, but on a tactic, terror. Apparently terrorists of middle-eastern decent had meant the nation harm and the nation was now to be on a "war footing." Patriotism exploded, with flags displayed everywhere--newspapers printing flags in their papers suitable for window display. The leader became wildly popular and he began to define a new reality for us all. A small war was necessary, to deal with the terrorists. Europe was divided. Those whom stood with us were called "New Europe" and over complaints of increasing militarism by France, we nation moved to war.
Yes, we all know this story of President Bush's assent, but what many may not know is that this story can just as easily describe Adolf Hitler.
On 2/27, 1933, the German Reichstag was firebombed by a distressed and mentally unstable communist Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch Jew. Hitler used this attack to declare war not on a nation, but on terror. In fact, the very next year, Joseph Stalin himself, after the assassination of communist party functionary Sergei Kirov, would claim "terrorism" as a justification for the mass deportations and arrests of Soviet citizens in the late 1930's. Hermann Goering in Germany said that Germany was now on a "war footing" and those nations that stood with Hitler in this war, the Axis powers (a phrase coined by Mussolini--should I mention "Axis of Evil") he referred to as "New Europe", the same term President Bush used to refer to the "Coalition of the Willing". So, now they were at war with middle-eastern Jews, America just happens to be at war with extremist Muslims from the middle east...
The new reality is that we must fight the "evildoers", who seek new weapons to cause killing on an "unimagined scale". Yes, the Administration reminds us that we are fighting "Islamofascism", or Islamic Fascism for some. Osama bin Laden is the next Lenin or Hitler, a "threat to civilization" itself. The man whom hides in a cave will take down the world's mightiest nation. Interesting thought.
After the attack, President Bush moved to prepare the nation the adequately address this new threat of terror. His first step was the passage of the USA PATRIOT ACT, which by the time it was completed, passed over 400 pages of text.
I'm not sure many people ever took note of this connection, but at the time, then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy were skeptical of the bill, and had said so publicly. Only a few days before the bill went to vote, weapons grade anthrax was mailed [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/13/AR2006101301417.html ] to both of their offices and the offices of some news services. 5 people died, and over 17 were infected, even more tested positive for exposure to anthrax. The USA PATRIOT ACT passed shortly thereafter (many claiming they had not had sufficient time to read the bill), but the government never solved the anthrax cases, and by then, the nation was focusing on other things...
After the Reichstag firebombing, the German Parliament soon found itself facing the passage of "Clause 2" and the "Enabling Act", which Hitler requested to better fight this new war on terror. Both passed, though the German Parliament claimed they did not have sufficient time to read the legislation before its passage. The "Enabling Act", just like the USA PATRIOT Act, gave increased powers to the executive branch and sought to integrate the police and security services.
President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security to help achieve this, for the first time in American history (that I can recall) using the overly nationalistic and implicatively racist term of "homeland" to describe America. The term "homeland" was first used by Hitler and the Nazi's to describe Germany. In fact, Hitler created his own "Office for the Defense of the Homeland", which we would later come to know as the SS. And while some could hope that the DHS will disappear in the future, I highly doubt it. We now see what I'd call the "Security-Industrial Complex", second only to the Pentagon. The security industry is now worth by some estimates up to $180 billion a year, and over 259 companies [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1007/6159.html ] last year reported having registered lobbyists to the Department of Homeland Security.
And last but not least in this section, a fascist shift requires that the enemy of the state never be destroyed, simply maintained. Bush says we are fighting a global "War on Terror" – war eternal in time and space, apparently by this definition, with no clear end or ability to say "we have won" or "we have lost". As soon as one conflict nears an end, the fascist state must start a new one. We started in Afghanistan, but if we had captured Osama, well, then there wouldn't be a point to continue, now would there? So we give up and move onto Iraq, but with that going to hell we need something else, so, can someone say Iran? Hitler also used this tactic. He first annexed Austria. Then he moved onto Czechoslovakia, and after that, most notably, Poland.
Step II. Establish Secret Prisons
The second step toward fascism requires one to bypass the independent judiciary altogether, either through "people’s courts" or military tribunals. You start with the suspension of Habeas Corpus and then move to facilitate the usage of secret prisons.
President Bush helped set the stage by inventing the new, nebulous, and extremely vague "legal" term of "Enemy Combatant", which is a legal classification used only at his Administration's pleasure.
Fascist societies always start by targeting the "evil" and criminals as normally accepted by society. Yet very shortly after "mission creep" falls into place, when the lines between "us" and "them" blur. You start with criminals, but then what? Civil society leaders, clergy, peace activists?
Yet these people have to be held somewhere, right? Ok, problem solved: Guantanamo.
Long before there were concentration camps in Germany, Dachau and Oranienberg prison camps were set up in 1933 for political opponents of the Nazi's and any others they felt should be placed there. The SS held people in the basements of buildings, all in an attempt to create a parallel judicial system outside the rule of law. Fascism doesn't require ovens to be in existence.
Nazi Germany established "People's Courts", and last year, we established military commissions through the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Once this is done, show trials begin, or even better, secret trails for "security purposes" when the public cannot even know what the case is, let alone the defendant.
Well, when you're capturing people without cause, and you need say you have cause, what is a dictator or would-be autocrat to do? Ah, I know, use torture to make people confess to anything.
1. exposure to extreme heat or cold (110 – 20 degrees Fahrenheit)
2. withholding food
3. hooding for days at a time, naked
4. isolation in cold and dark for periods exceeding 30 days
5. threatening by dogs
6. stress positions designed for "rising levels of pain"
7. beatings
8. psychological abuse and humiliation
9. loosened definition of "rape"
Oh yes, and the "secret memos" condoning further torture and loos[en]ing definitions of such so that Bush can proudly exclaim "we don't torture."
Next you ostracize and attack those who help the helpless. JAG and civilian lawyers have been targeted by the Administration, these valiant individuals seeing their careers stall, or finding themselves fired, or even facing death threats. Now, most lawyers aren't even given access to their clients without promising to make their clients plead guilty.
You also need to remove the stigma against torture. FOX TV's show "24" often shows torture as entertainment, and many more programs are doing the same.
Step III. Develop a Paramilitary Force
Need I even mention the name Blackwater? While I don't have official figures, many people estimate that there is at least 1 armed contractor for every US soldier in Iraq.
The first and most obvious alarm here is that groups like Blackwater are wholly unaccountable and outside the scrutiny of Congress. Blackwater's own lawyers argue (apparently quite successfully) that Blackwater contractors are not accountable to the Pentagon’s Uniform Code of Military Justice because its soldiers are civilians. Yet on the flip side, they're not accountable to civilian courts because its soldiers are with the US military.
Groups like Blackwater go only where the money is, and there is no mission other than that behind their motives. Note, our own Founding Fathers had to fight Hessian (German) mercenaries during the Revolutionary War, which was King George's own paid-for army outside of the Parliament-supervised British Military.
And, once you start abroad with these mercenary groups, you then bring them home.
Blackwater has grown exponentially in Iraq. Yet, after Hurricane Katrina, Blackwater was paid $73 million to patrol New Orleans [ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0910-07.htm ] in the absence of National Guard units deployed overseas. And chew on this one: if removed from Iraq this year or next, all 160,000 (estimating on my previous statistics) will return: to America
Political thugs are also important in a fascist shift to "aid" the democratic process. During the Florida 2000 vote recount, white-shirt sporting political staffers [ http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/01/11/21_banana.html ] who refused to name themselves arrived at key recount precincts to intimidate poll workers. These same staffers were on hand at predominantly African-American voting precincts and prevented many voters from participating through intimidation.
Remember the "Brownshirts" in Nazi Germany? Of interesting note, they were banned briefly in some municipalities during the 1930 Reichstag elections. Working to ignore the ban, these "Brownshirts" arrived instead sporting identical white dress shirts...
Step IV. Surveil Ordinary Citizens
The Gestapo, KGB, Stasi, Chinese Politburo and other autocratic societies have all used this step as a vital "security" tactic.
The Chinese often refer to an "iron triangle" – encompassing the whole of our lives, to keep its citizens safe and in line. It includes (related US influences):
I beg to ask, in what other area of our lives to we conduct business? Looks like everything is covered to me.
Something else to note, surveillance is cost effective: not all have to be watched, just think they are.
These illegal programs were "discovered" in leaks to the Press, but are not the leaks perhaps the real effective part of the program? It is one thing not to know that this is going on, it is another animal completely to know. Citizens begin to self-censure, we think a little harder before mass-emailing the "Impeach Bush" emails. We don't discuss certain subjects over the phone with our friends and neighbors. We don't buy certain books, or check them out at the Library (again, the USA PATRIOT ACT monitors this area of our lives).
Step V. Infiltrate Citizens’ Groups
Italian Fascists infiltrated unions, the Nazi’s infiltrated intellectual, religious, and student circles, while the Soviets infiltrated the factories, students, and businesses.
Now days, the FBI, local police forces and anti-terror units are infiltrating local anti-war groups, anti-war protests and other groups that are deemed "suspicious".
The Defense Department in 2006 was openly monitoring the emails of the Veterans for Peace group of New York State.
Note also, that if you're outspoken on issues the Administration doesn't like, you face intimidation. The All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California was publicly scrutinized by the IRS [ http://www.latimes.com/business/taxes/la-me-allsaints24sep24,1,6300942.story?coll=la-headlines-business-taxes&ctrack=2&cset=true ] after the rector gave a sermon characterizing Jesus as "anti-war" – two other churches in New York and Maine have faced similar IRS audits after involvement in Iraq-related peace movements. I'm sure a quick Google search will find even more cases...
... well, I can tell that this is indeed reaching the point of becoming unreadable. As such, I'll leave it here, and tomorrow will continue with the last 5 steps. Again, if you have comments or questions, or want to make additions, or call me unpatriotic, or bat-sh**-crazy, that's what the comments section is for.
Please take it easy, though, 'tis just my first post.
Does The Brownshirt Party Have Aces Up Its Sleeve?
By Paul Craig Roberts
08/02/08 [Feb. 8 '08] "ICH" -- The Brownshirt Party has chosen John “hundred year war” McCain as its presidential candidate. Except for Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and billy kristol, McCain is America’s greatest warmonger.
In a McCain Regime, Cheney will be back in office with another stint as Secretary of War. Norman “Bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran” Podhoretz will be Undersecretary for Nuclear War with General John “Nuke them” Shalikashvili [F6 note -- http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=26499302 ] as his deputy. Rudy Giuliani will be the Minister of Interior in charge of Halliburton’s detention centers into which will be herded all critics of war and the police state. billy kristol will be chief White House spokesliar.
The whole gang will be back--Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmster, Feith, Libby, Bolton. America will have a second chance to bomb the world into submission.
With the majority of voters sick of war, sick of lies, sick of fraud from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, and sick of stagnant and falling incomes, McCain is poised to capture 20% of the vote--the Christian Zionists, the rapture evangelicals, and the diehard macho flag-waving thugs who believe America is done for unless “Islamofacists” are exterminated.
The accumulated lies, deceptions, war crimes, the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons, Bush’s police state assault on civil liberty, countless numbers of Iraqi and Afghan men, women, and children murdered for the sake of American and Israeli hegemony, and the collapsing US economy indicate a political wipeout for the Brownshirt Party. In a country with an informed and humane population, the Republican Party would be reduced to such a small minority that it could never recover.
What will happen in America? Polls show that Americans have had it with Bush, and the 2006 congressional election showed that the voters have had it with Republicans. But the Republicans have seen the message and ignored it, and the people and the Democrats have continued to tolerate and to enable that which they claim to oppose.
Meanwhile Bush holds on to his determination to find a way to bomb Iran, dismissing along with the neocons the unanimous NIE report that there is no Iranian weapons program, just as Bush and the neocons dismissed the Iraq weapons inspectors who reported truthfully that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. What the American people and the Democrats have not understood is that a party with an agenda could care less for the facts. As Lenin declared, truth is what serves the agenda.
The Democrats are far from pure, but they lack the fervor and determination that only ideology can provide. The Democrats might have issue-specific ideologies, but they lack an over-arching ideology that makes it imperative for them, and only them, to be in power.
In contrast, the Brownshirt Party is fueled by the neocon ideology of American (and Israeli) supremacy. The neocon ideology of supremacy is more far-reaching than Hitler’s. Hitler merely aimed for sway over Europe and Russia. The neocons have targeted the entire world.
Neocons have prepared plans for war against China. They are ringing Russia with military facilities and paying millions of dollars to leaders of former constituent parts of the Soviet Union to sign up with NATO, which the neocons have turned into a mechanism for drafting Europeans to serve American Empire.
All this work, the neocon Project for a New American Century, the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the demonization of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, the ghettoization of the West Bank and Gaza, the police state measures that Bush has succeeded in putting on the books, the concentration of power in the executive branch, these are successes from which the Brownshirts will not walk away.
Possibly the neocons and their Brownshirt followers are so delusional that they do not realize that their glorious aims are not shared. Maybe they are no different from Americans, maxed out on credit and unable to make mortgage payments, who believe that next week they will win the lotto.
On the other hand maybe the Brownshirts have a plan.
What could the plan be?
They can steal the election with the Diebold electronic voting machines and proprietary software that no one is allowed to check. There are now enough elections on record with significant divergences between exit polls and vote tallies that a stolen election can be explained away. The Democrats have been house trained to acquiesce to stolen elections. The voters, whose votes are stolen, dismiss the evidence as “conspiracy theories.”
Or what about a well-timed orchestrated “terrorist attack” to drive fearful Americans to the war candidate. False flag events are stock-in-trade. Hitler used the Reichstag fire to turn German democracy into a dictatorship overnight.
And what about the widespread spying on Americans? The Bush regime’s explanation for its violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes no sense. Bush’s violation of the law is clearly a felony, grounds for impeachment, arrest, indictment, and a prison sentence. Moreover, no intelligence purpose was achieved by Bush’s illegal acts. The FISA law only requires the executive branch to come to a secret court to explain its purpose and obtain a warrant. The law even allows the executive branch to spy first and obtain the warrant afterward. The purpose of the warrant is to prevent an administration from spying for political purposes. The only reason for Bush to refuse to obtain warrants is that he had no valid reason for the spying.
Does this mean that during the presidential campaign we will hear from Attorney General Michael Mukasey that candidate Hillary is under investigation for a Whitewater related offense, or that candidate Obama is linked to an alleged crime figure or Islamist?
The neocons control most of the print and TV media, and the right-wing radio talk hosts are no friends of Democrats. As Americans have fallen for every other fraud perpetrated upon them, they are likely to be suckers as well for “investigations” or rumors of investigations of the Democratic candidate. Hillary is widely disliked and easy to distrust. Obama is a new face with which voters have little experience. He is partly black and has a funny name.
John McCain is a war hero, a graduate of the US Naval Academy. His father and grandfather were admirals. On his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam in one of America’s orchestrated wars, he was shot down and injured. A POW for 5.5 years, he was tortured by communists due in part to traitorous actions by Democrats like Jane Fonda.
McCain has been in Congress and thus in the public eye since 1983. The only scandal with which he is associated is that he was one of “the Keating five,” one of five senators associated through campaign contributions with S&L owner and real estate investor Charles Keating and alleged interveners in his behalf. Keating was framed by prosecutors, but was later exonerated by a federal judge.
Adolf Hitler never had the support of a majority of the German electorate. In the November 1932 election, he received 33.1 percent of the vote. His peak was March 6, 1933, with 43.9 percent following the Reichstag fire a few days before on February 27, blamed on the communists. Hitler’s minority support in a democracy did not prevent him from becoming dictator of Germany [F6 note -- http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=13127379 ].
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.
It’s easy to look at the events of Election Day and draw the wrong conclusion. It’s tempting to conclude that what happened after a long cruel and repressive eight years is that our democracy simply worked once again and proved to be self-correcting. Easy to breathe a sigh of relief and turn back to cultivating our regular pursuits.
Easy — but wrong. The right lesson to take from this election is NOT that the system is in working order without our active and radical participation. Rather, we should understand that we were, as a people, in direct engagement with other actors who sought to subvert our liberties in a dynamic and delicate feedback loop. Our actions checked their actions; our decision making on the part of thousands and millions shifted the landscape so that the worst could not take place — so that their decision making was likely to have been altered.
What do I mean? I have said that since October 1st we have been in a situation in which a coup has taken place. I stand entirely by that statement — with the update that we have taken steps to counter the further progression of that coup FOR NOW. This is cause for both rejoicing and caution as well as for understanding the lessons learned. Even such established historians as Chalmers Johnsons have described Bush’s subversion of the rule of law as ‘a coup d’etat’ and I argued that with the deployment of the First Brigade — four thousand battle-hardened warriors — onto US soil, that coup had gone from a theoretical legal nexus to one that could be activated in military terms with the stroke of a Presidential pen or a simple Presidential statement. Those who follow my posts know that, from my study of the history of closing societies, I was worried about a closely-fought election, made close by the multiple attempts at vote hacking and vote suppression which the Republicans had set in motion, and I was worried about citizen unrest as an excuse for an assertion that we were in a ’state of emergency.’ Many serious historians, most recently the author of Angler, have noted that Cheney’s interest in Continuity of Government processes that suspend the Constitution, draw dissidents into detention and deploy military for domestic security dates back to his active work on such plans in the 1980’s and many others note that some aspects of the COG plan were indeed temporarily set in motion on Sept. 11. Many have noted the proliferating legislation — from the Military Commissions Act of 2007 to Bush’s signing statement refusing Congress’ limitations on military deployment — that would make such a step easy.
Obviously that did not take place –- nothing like it did. But why? Should we never have been concerned about these laws being crafted and lying around like loaded AK-47s? I would argue that it was our caution that prevented any such disruption. I have been saying for two years now that in a closing society the one sure protection is for millions of citizens to draw the line at the same time in multiple ways. This creates a ‘herding cats’ effect, making it far more difficult for threatening plans to be set successfully into motion. Other elements that protect citizens at such a delicate time are awareness — so they can’t be lied to or shocked or intimidated by an official story line as easily — and the threat of prosecution. When would-be dictators realize their actions, if they have even a chance of backfiring or proving not successful, will lead to real jail time for them and their cronies or worse — they tend to re-strategize and choose a less risky path. History is full of plans for coups — including ’stealth coups’ like the subversion of foreign elections or intimidation of the opposition in other countries by US operatives (see John Perkins’ work on this, for instance) that were averted or revised or abandoned because the atmosphere became more dynamic — the people were vigilant — and the legal and judicial system had stepped up its own threat level against those who would subvert a constitutional system. What happened last week? The people stepped up on multiple fronts at once. They were, for once, not passive. Many hundreds of grassroots voting rights activist had toiled for years to investigate vote tampering. These citizens faced ridicule, neglect and marginalization. But in one of those moments of critical mass that you get when enough people speak up, the culture shifted — there were some major stories in the mainstream news media about vote tampering — and Mike Connell was subpoenaed to testify about having allegedly hacked the vote in Ohio after Stephen Spoonamore had come forward and blown the whistle on Bush/Cheney’s history of vote suppression and election fraud. So even as hundreds of examples of vote-flipping, machine shortages and other oddities — all of them, with few exceptions, benefiting the Republicans — popped up throughout the nation, all over that same nation citizens THIS TIME were observing, recording and reporting them to the voting rights’ groups’ hotlines. And their work was strengthened by media scrutiny: because the media finally understood from citizens’ raised voices how broad a base of support for such investigation there was, THIS TIME CNN set up a bold and to-be-duplicated initiative, that let citizens report vote theft or tampering on a national platform in real time. Mark Crispin Miller, one of the true unsung heroes of this era in history — a vote-theft documentarian who was obsessively, tirelessly and in the face of what has until lately been a media blackout been tracking these stories for years in town after town and region after region — argues persuasively that it was the combination of high turnout, mass voter scrutiny, multiple legal actions, and the Connell subpoena that allowed Obama to prevail. (On Monday evening, just a few hours before Connell’s deposition, Rove suddenly reversed himself, forecast ‘an electoral landslide’ for Obama, and thereby ‘pulled the plug’ on the attempt to block Obama’s victory.) And their work was strengthened by media scrutiny: because the media finally understood from citizens’ raised voices how broad a base of support for such investigation there was, THIS TIME CNN set up a bold and to-be-duplicated initiative, that let citizens report vote theft or tampering on a national platform in real time. Mark Crispin Miller, one of the true unsung heroes of this era in history — a vote-theft documentarian who was obsessively, tirelessly and in the face of what has until lately been a media blackout been tracking these stories for years in town after town and region after region — argues persuasively that it was the combination of mass voter scrutiny, multiple legal actions, and the Connell subpoena that led to the counter-coup.
I would say the background drumbeat of ‘prosecute’ helped a great deal as well. And for the first time the ‘prosecute’ call — which I am proud to say the American Freedom Campaign has been out front with for more than a year — has been given real teeth by the promise of Charlotte Dennett, in her campaign for Attorney General in Vermont, to draw up the indictments of Bush and other high officials. Such prosecution is not dependent on her victory: she and Vincent Bugliosi spelled out a clear roadmap to prosecution that any AG can follow in any of the states. And Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights has an important new book out demonstrating how to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld. History shows that this drumbeat of a real threat of prosecution does more to deter would-be coup leaders than even the mass activation of the people’s voices raised in saying No.
So all these elements came together — and gave us that miracle, a mostly transparent, mostly accountable election and the prospect of a peaceful transition. (Though I will relax fully only after Inauguration Day, especially since Bush stressed helpfully how much terrorists like ‘transitions’ as times of ‘vulnerability’ for a nation. He soothingly added the examples of Madrid and London, both of which were struck by attacks soon before or after a national election. It is like the end of a horror movie in which you think the villain is dead but he rises up and just keeps trying to threaten the fleeing babysitter with a machete).
Then — just to remind you that we may have won the battle but we are in a war — the day after Obama’s win — the military announced that two more brigades would be deployed to the US to set up a permanent military beachhead on our soil. Unless these are disbanded by Obama, unless he restores Posse Comitatus, they — or their who-knows-how many brothers and sisters to join them — are ready for use by the next Republican president. Just like the aspects of legislation that have been seeded ‘like bombs in a minefield,’ as Frontline producer and director of Bush’s Law Michael Kirk noted, so deeply, or buried in secret directives that no one is likely to find all of them who does not know they are there; he argues that these too can be activated by the next Rovian protégé in power.
Practicing proactive citizenship — citizenship undertaken in a revolutionary spirit by people who are aware of how fragile democracy is and how easily it can be subverted or even overthrown, and who, above all, take personal responsibility for their and the nation’s safety — is like practicing safe sex. In both cases, you can never know for sure exactly what kind of horror exactly you have averted for yourself and for others. But if you don’t take such steps you are suicidally stupid and irresponsible. And if you do, you can know that you are taking the wise steps, the grown-up steps, the steps that do avert horrors.
In the case of the millions of Americans who said No to a stolen vote or worse, it is that personal responsibility, that decision to take an action step, that brings about real, healing, saving change.
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