Never Again

It frightens me. How implacably can we oppose our fellow citizen’s access to power before we find ourselves at war, and not just metaphorically? How much can we despise our fellow citizen’s choices before we grow to hate them personally? Are we in danger of becoming a society divided against itself? I won’t claim to know any answers. I’m not even sure I want to ask the questions. What prompted my musings is reading the following exchange between two Republicans on a blog:

"If the GOP has any principles, we would not lionize him [Bush], we would kick him the hell out of the party."

"The hell with that. We had principles in 1992 when we jumped ship to go with Perot, and all that got us was Bill Clinton for 8 years. That will not happen again …. ever."

Never again? Never again 8 years of prosperity and relative peace and safety. Never again 8 years of real economic gains by the middle-class. Never again to have a policy driven Administration that tries to implement policy that improves people’s lives, not just supports the Administration’s poll numbers or pays back its donors. Clinton was far from perfect, and did a lot of damaging things I did not favor and do not praise, but he did not threaten the Constitutional order, act in an egregiously anti-democratic manner, or overtly threaten the long-term well-being of the nation.

To prevent another Democrat from taking power, the commenter is willing to throw away all principles. He will endure all indignities to his nation, so long as its molester is a member of his own party. How can one reconcile oneself to be a fellow citizen to one who consciously rejects all principle just to prevent the other party from having any power or influence?

Is there a line that they won’t cross? Already the Republicans gladly suffered the theft of an election, claiming all the while that it was Gore who wished to steal the election. Already they have hailed a President who stole the authority of Congress with lies, broken international law with a sneer, murdered thousands of Iraqis in an inexplicable rush to war, and swept away the most fundamental of American liberties with hardly a qualm to insulate himself against any charge of being "soft on terror". Daily the evidence of the perfidy and corruption of Bush Administration mounts, yet a core of Republicans continue to stand by their leader. Not in ignorance, not in denial, but in defiance and with contempt for the very standards they claim to love. The party and the voters of the GOP stand fast with a President who is quite simply a criminal. "My country, right or wrong," has become, "My party, right or wrong." They have abandoned the ideals of democracy for the lure of power.

How can one resist despising such hypocrisy? How can one resist hating the hypocrites? How can a nation continue, divided by hatred and contempt and a dearth of shared values? I have heard the current era compared to the Civil War era, and truly there are parallels between the two. That era was also one of great economic and social change; modernity was emerging in the North, at odds with the agrarian economy of the South. The corporation was emerging as a subject of Constitutional protections and growing into it’s role as society’s primary economic form.

Today, we face another turning point. A decision is being made whether the primary political unit of organization will also be those corporations. Having already achieved a political status above individuals in international agreements such as NAFTA, those controlling the corporations, and most of the wealth of our society, are making a final push for political mastery of our society.

The GOP abets that design, so do some in the Democratic party; but many still resist and seek to take back control of the party. The result of this struggle will utterly transform our way of life, win or lose. The stakes are just as high, the values at stake just as fundamental, the positions just as implacable as ever they were in the Civil War. The question now, however, is not whether some Americans will remain in bondage, but whether all Americans are to enter it. Our system of democratic government is nearly gone. The empty fiction that remains is nearly impervious to reform. Only those who agree to play by the rules of the moneyed interests are allowed access to any significant amount of political power.

Once the issue is clear and the sides are drawn, the question becomes why is anyone (other than the 5% or so of the population directly benefited by corporate domination) on the GOP’s side? They have selected their messages well. Religion and nationalism: the two things that have motivated people to organized murder for so many centuries, and that are unquestionably reliable to secure unthinking loyalty in the face of even outright betrayal by the leaders.

Religion is used shamelessly by the GOP and even freely injected into the political process to keep religious adherents happy. The GOP does not fear the government being taken over by religion, because their grip is too sure. If anything, the danger seems to be of government taking over religion. History teaches how easily government seduces religious authority with secular power and wealth. However, strong religious affiliations alone are not sufficient to garner a majority in this country; that why the GOP works vigorously to present itself as having a corner on nationalism.

The GOP has succeeded in equating nationalism and patriotism with belligerence toward others and loyalty to the GOP. The central myth of the nationalism in America is centered in our special role in civilization, the idea of America as the city on the hill. Anyone, or any nation, which thwarts, or seems prepared to challenge that special role is an enemy and must be put down.

Very astutely, the GOP under Bush has realized that in the absence of any significant check on US military power, the special role of the US has a much wider ambit of exercise, even to the point of naked aggression. Their vision of the world calls for our dictates, standards, laws, and priorities to be accepted completely by the entire world. Ultimately, the ability to carry forward this vision is a vain illusion, and no amount of military force would be sufficient to subdue the world beneath an American yoke. Yet this madness  is now a major theme which the GOP uses to secure electoral loyalty. Being part of the world’s strongest nation and rooting for its success is a very compelling cause for many. Reality will be a like a jackboot in the face for these voters eventually, just as it was in a rising Third Reich where citizens felt themselves on the brink of a new order lasting a millennium. But for now, the illusion of omnipotent sovereignty over the world is an undeniably powerful vote-getter.

The fact that reality is quite shabby in comparison to the Neo-Cons’ fevered dreams is something that cannot be pointed out without being labeled a traitor and un-American. For instance, we are now occupying two quite minor nations with relatively small populations, in addition to our normal basing deployments. Our forces and military budgets are stretched beyond the breaking point by even this relatively minor exertion of ‘imperial might’, and we are stalemated and are losing the war in both theaters of combat. Modern war does not lend itself to final victories, or permanent peace, short of ‘final solutions’; and I do not believe that even the Bush Administration is capable of going that far.

The Bush Administration has made us weak while seeking to exert our strength. If we wanted to, or were compelled to invade another small country, such as Libya, Syria, Iran, or North Korea, we could not do so without at least a year to ready new units or pulling out of one or both current theaters. If we faced a major battle, such as with China over Taiwan, or trying to separate India and Pakistan, we simply would be overrun. Even North Korea invading South Korea would likely cost tens of thousands of American lives and take well over a year to repulse according to the Pentagon’s own estimates.

To call America a Superpower by virtue of anything other than the dominance of its nuclear arsenal is a misnomer; at best, we are a Pluralpower. We can likely defeat any one or two minor enemies, whomever it is, but we cannot take on the world. Even in a conflict with another major military power we could not win outright without a prolonged and costly struggle. The GOP would like to convince people of the idea that we can defeat any nation, on any battlefield, at any time and in any combination; just "bring ’em on".

But their careful target selection tells the real story of the American strength of arms. We attack Iraq, and Afghanistan, but ally with Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia though a case can easily be made to treat them as hostile. Why? We cannot easily defeat those nations. We invade Iraq at the drop of a hat, only talk tough with North Korea, and forthrightly appease the whims of China. Why? We likely cannot defeat China without a nuclear exchange. Defeat of North Korea would be very costly and take significant time. In Iraq, however, the military planners thought that "major combat operations" would be over in days, weeks at most.

Iraq was a rotted tree held up only by its bark after a dozen years of sanctions; one push and the whole structure would topple. A dandy little made for television war; a mini-series of destruction and ratings bonanza for the networks and the Administration. They didn’t count on the army of termites inside, however.

We smear the Europeans, call them names, and defy them, but we never threaten military retaliation and we back off when they rattle their economic sabres seriously. Why? They have the economic might to devastate us and the military might to resist us. Far from being the towering Superhero of the world, we are just a very powerful nation, yet with limits as severe as all others. Even if we wanted to dominate the Middle East militarily, we could not without the cooperation of many nations in the region. Far from promoting our interests, our invasion of Iraq will harm us in the long run for just that reason. The nations of the region will turn away from their endemic conflicts to drive out the interloper in a myriad of quiet and effective ways.

One reason often given for the invasion of Iraq is as a warning to others in the region. It is only in the perfect theoretical conjectures of the Neo-Cons that nations tremble because you invade another country. Iran is likely figuring out about now how to grab territory along the Shatt al-Arab and other lands with Shi’ite majorities when we pull out, leaving a weak and disunified Iraq. Turkey is likely plotting how to keep the Kurds from forming a separate oil-weathy state from which to launch a revanchist Kurdish nation. Syria likely has similar territorial and economic plans as Iran. Pakistani radicals are no doubt already sending personnel into Iraq and waiting only until the Americans are gone to begin building their Madrassas and training up a new generation of America-hating terrorists amid the rubble of Iraq. The nations surrounding Iraq see this as an opportunity, not as a warning. They see a power vacuum. Where once there was resistance to their designs, there is now only an isolated puppet government, ripe for the plucking.

The GOP has likely set back Arab-American relations by a few generations with their stunt, but it was able to gain a temporary electoral advantage from it. They have begun to act without reference for the future. Perhaps Dick Cheney’s reaction to Paul O’Neill’s plea for fiscal discipline indicates the parlous nature of the GOP’s philosophy of governance best. When pressed on the matter, Cheney told O’Neill that the additional tax cuts were ‘their due’ from victory in the 20020mid-terms, and that Reagan had ‘proved that deficits don’t matter.’ As long as you have a decade or so for your opponents to act responsibly and clean them up, he forgot to mention.

The GOP has become an irresponsible and soulless organization. It has become a corporation whose products are platitudes and whose sole goal is getting votes, rather than making money. Just as a corporation is constitutionally unable to act in an ethical manner if it conflicts with the bottom line, the GOP has become incapable of responding to the call of prudence, long-term well-being of the nation, or idealism if it conflicts with the getting of votes, and the money to propagandize those votes.

The GOP is undergoing a final stage crisis. The investors in a corporation require their creation to return to them maximum profit, irrespective of the harm it may do in the world. The adherents of a party, who invest their loyalty to gain power in the government, are not so dedicated to short-term gains. They have families, jobs, a need to eat, drink, breathe, a desire for a life without war and fear, a conscience which desires the world intact and the government solvent and limited so as to pass these good things on their children. They will not long tolerate this reckless behavior once the cows are clearly seen to be coming home to pasture.

Already it is happening. I have never seen so many members of the President’s own party so disgusted by his actions, so concerned about the complete recklessness of his policies. Many of them are well-educated, well-informed people who can count the cost of Bush’s follies for themselves. They are the intellectual and cultural heart of any successful party and they are bleeding out of the GOP in droves.

As is often the case, greatest victory, greatest power, and greatest confidence precedes an inevitable, and often terminal, decline. The GOP may be in it’s last bitter moments as the vision they have sought after for a quarter of a century has finally come to fruition; the government is being run like a corporation, and the result is evil itself. For so long now, the icon of virtuous behavior is the profit maximizing, amoral, strict hierarchy, and unaccountable power of the corporation and the free market. They have achieved their goal. The Bush Administration is the apotheosis of the Conservative world-view and the very model of corporate governance in the public sector. A Harvard MBA, a capitalist who would use any means to achieve wealth and power, has the reins of government, and he used them to drive the government and our nation straight into a wall.

They say that in a free society power is ultimately checked by faction. It is the very foundational principle our nation was built upon. In this case, I believe that faction will combine with self-destruction to end the Bush Administration and the dominance of the GOP far sooner than most expect. I believe in the bedrock common sense and distrust of power of the American people. I also believe that just as the values of corporate America have hit a wall for now, driving companies like Enron, Worldcom, and Global Crossing to the very heights of power and wealth, only to be dashed to earth by the hollowness of their own venality and shell games. The Bush Administration and the Right Wing dominated GOP have hit the limits of the morally permissible.

In hindsight, we will marvel at how rank their motives and how hollow their rhetoric was. We will shake our heads in wonder that we didn’t see clearly from the outset, what small, grasping and greedy little men we entrusted our nation’s well-being to. And we will pickup the pieces, re-evaluate our standards, strengthen the breaches in the public’s oversight that they exploited, and move on. The damage they have done is grave, but we had forgotten many vital lessons of history and needed reminding.

This time, perhaps we won’t forget so soon.