They are always with us …

Glenn Greenwald cites Law Professor Jonathan Turley in listing the assaults on the Bill of Rights taking place in the post 9/11 environment, first brought on by the George W. Bush Administration and now intensified by Obama:

1. Assassination of U.S. citizens;
   
2. Indefinite detention;
   
3. Arbitrary justice;
   
4. Warrantless searches;
   
5. Secret evidence;
   
6. War crimes;
   
7. Secret court;
   
8. Immunity from judicial review;
   
9. Continual monitoring of citizens;
   
10. and Extraordinary renditions.
    

Any student of post-war America realizes that all of this went on from VJ day forward. The US was in a position of unparalleled power, and the people who ran the country were no less susceptible to absolute corruption than anyone before. It happened quickly, with passage of the National Security Act of 1948, changing the name of the War Department to “Defense,” and conversion of the wartime OSS into the peacetime CIA. Soon thereafter came McCarthyism and the attack on civil liberties in the name of anti-communism. Wars, major and minor, were routine.

But 9/11 is a marker in time – things were different before and after that Reichstag-like event. All that went on before in secret came out in the open and was legitimized, and is now being codified. Obama’s recent signing of the Defense Authorization Bill allowing indefinite detention of American citizens without charges or hearing (his ludicrous “signing statement” aside) is meant to permanently cement disappearance of domestic enemies.

It’s all part of the relentless march of totalitarianism. It’s not new, and comes about naturally in those scenarios where power perceives itself to be omnipotent. It cannot resist the urge vanquish opposition. Prior to 9/11 the great unleashing event was the fall of the Soviet Union. It had served as a weak counterbalance to US power, so it should have come as no surprise that as the USSR receded, the US went on the attack, Iraq in 1991, the Balkans in the 1990’s, Serbia in 1999. The only force holding them back was an unwillingness on the part of the American public to support total unending war. The jackals screamed at Clinton to launch the Iraq attack in 1998, threatening his presidency, but they were shouted down and had to fall back. That attack would not come until 2003. After 9/11/2001, everything was possible.

Ingamar down below proudly cites Bill Kristol, permanent war architect, noting that Americans (in an unscientific poll) supported the pissing on the faces of dead “Taliban fighters.” In a footnote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, preface to the second edition, Hannah Arendt notes

No doubt, the fact that totalitarian government, its open criminality notwithstanding, rests on mass support is very disquieting. It is therefore hardly surprising that scholars as well as statesmen often refuse to recognize it, the former by believing in the magic of propaganda and brainwashing, the latter by simply denying it … A recent publication of secret reports on German public opinion during the war (from 1939 to 1944), issued by the Security Service of the SS (Meldungen aus dem Reich. Auswahl aus den Geheimen Lege-berichten des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1939-1944, edited by Heinz Boberach, Neuwied & Berlin, 1965), is very revealing in this respect. It shows, first, that the population was remarkably well informed about all so-called secrets—massacres of Jews in Poland, preparation of the attack on Russia, etc.—and, second, the “extent to which the victims of propaganda had remained able to form independent opinions”. However, the point of the matter is that this did not in the least weaken the general support of the Hitler regime. It is quite obvious that mass support for totalitarianism comes neither from ignorance nor from brainwashing.

And that, I think, explains the passivity of the American people as their liberties are stripped from them before their very eyes. They are not democratic by nature, but rather a lower breed of common people who make up the bulk of the population of the planet. As Napoleon reminded us, ” … men are not born to be free. Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men.”

I look at a map of North America and am struck by the existence of that line on the 48th parallel. It’s not an accident or the result of negotiations. It exists as a tribute to British power. The United States invaded Canada on five occasions, each time rebuffed. That line is there because Americans could not breach it. Some will say that Canada is effectively conquered now via economics, but the line still exists, and life is different and better up there than down here. Canadians managed to preserve their way of life in spite of the incessant ambition of the Americans to conquer everything around them. If even the country in the shadow of the empire can preserve its way of life, there is hope. There is always hope.

So two events have shaped our new century – the fall of the Soviet Empire and 9/11. These events have served to release the wild men in the wings. What lay ahead – who knows? Resistance, violence, chaos, oppression, injustice, American terror. We live in uncertain times. As always.