Post-Mortem America

We are told that in the weeks before 9/11, then CIA chief George Tenet and his colleagues across the intelligence community were so alarmed by the flood of reports about an impending major terrorist attack that they felt their "hair was on fire." God only knows what the truth of this self-serving, after-the-fact assertion might be, but it is indeed an apt term for a sense of imminent doom in the public sphere. And given the headlong rush to a new war against Iran, and the G-force acceleration into the tyranny of a lawless, all-encompassing surveillance state that is unfolding before our eyes -- not to mention the Democratic Party's complete abandonment of even the pretense of carrying out the people's mandate and opposing the Administration's maniacal, murderous, criminal policies -- anyone whose hair isn't on fire today is either brain-dead, bought-off, or an active, eager, conniving traitor to the American people, and the human race.

Chris Floyd wrote that today. It is a fitting introduction to this post I've been trying to try to write for weeks now.

I'd strongly recommend reading this Chris Floyd essay from 3 weeks ago, as well as these 3 responses to it: Arthur Silber, IOZ, and Jim Henley. Those links contained well expressed thoughts by excellent writers. All of them have their hair on fire. So do I. And if you don't, you're either brain-dead, bought-off, or an active, eager conniving traitor to the American people, and the human race.

Floyd begins:

Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone. And not just in some abstract sense, some metaphorical or mythological sense, but down in the nitty-gritty, in the concrete realities of institutional structures and legal frameworks, of policy and process, even down to the physical nature of the landscape and the way that people live.

The Republic you wanted -- and at one time might have had the power to take back -- is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it's not there ... Beaten, abused, diseased and abandoned, it finally died. We are living in its grave.

I don't think there's really any question that Chris Floyd is right. We're living in a different country than the idealistic America we grew up believing in, and we're little more than subjects of an elite ruling class that cares nothing for anything but preserving and expanding their own influence. Read his entire essay.

Then go read Arthur's, which puts the Bush carnage in a larger context.

The destruction of America has been accomplished in the manner of a particularly skillful and diabolical con game: it has been done completely in the open. No one was fooled or misled. The ruling class has always stated explicitly exactly what they intended to do -- and then they did it. You didn't think they meant it, not really, not all the way down.

But they did. They counted on the great majority of Americans not to believe what was directly before their eyes, or to identify its full, inevitable meaning. Most of you obliged. Most of you still oblige. They could not ask for more.

And most Americans still don't believe the destruction has already occurred, because there is no thunderous crashing of chords, no widespread calamity or destruction (at least, not yet, although we've had some previews) or, as Chris puts it, it won't come "with jackboots and book burnings," or with "tanks on the street." Poor, pitiful, pathetic Americans: it isn't like a movie.

And so it has come to pass. The lives of most Americans will go on as before, for that is the plan and the point. Be careful not to credit the ruling class with too much cleverness or intelligence for having achieved their heinous end, for most of them don't begin to understand what they're doing either. They are moved for the most part by the views of the "consensus," which views come from they not know where, nor do they care about or understand the original reasons. Their concern is much narrower: consolidating and expanding their own power, and that of the State. Their focus is on how power is actualized in the petty, sordid details of their pallid, drab, arid lives. The larger dynamics never concerned them, and they don't give a damn about any of that today.

So now that we see the big picture for what it is, the question now is what the hell are we supposed to do about it? It is impossible to imagine the massive uprising that would required for genuine change actually coming into being.

Winter Patriot had the idea of a general strike on 9/11/07. Did you hear about that? Me neither.

Capt. Fogg reacts understandably to the whole mess:

I'm past caring. America will do the stupid thing - we always do and when the piper presents his invoice we will spend generations rewriting history to protect the idiots - we always do. And then we'll do it again, using fake lessons from this debacle to justify another one. We always do.

It takes the slightest knowledge of history to get the "we always do" sentiment, unfortunately Americans have no understanding of history. And Americans won't do shit about any of this. So,

First noting that we're now past any Liberty-or-Death moments for the salvation of the Republic, and further noting that violent revolutions, even where possible, aren't generally advisable or supportable, the question naturally arises: what now? The answer is not much. In large part the more pertinent question is simply how do we as individuals comport ourselves to post-citizen lives? Where do we make accommodations and accessions, and where do we offer our small resistances. What does will it mean to be a subject in the era after consensual government? What power, if any, will we have to mitigate the evils of empire abroad? Since the institutions of democracy will remain superficially central to the United States (Rome retained a Senate), to what degree is it useful or valid to participate in the preserved processes of actual democracy? Is it now meaningful to take sides in the factional disputes that will continue in the immediate future as our governors sort out their tribal affiliations and solidify a neater process of succession? What are the ethical and moral obligations of the subject, as opposed to the citizen, for the actions of his nation? If we are to some degree absolved of responsibility and culpability for something like the coming bombing of Iran, does that also abrogate our calling to speak out against it? To what extent does it remain valid to cite the extant catechisms of Republican government--the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the ideals of the Framers--and to what extent is that citation merely willful complicity in a charade?

As a wise man once said, How the fuck should I know?

I think there are two reasons we ask those kinds of questions. First, we have some sense of moral decency (a.k.a. "moral casuistry and solipsism"). When we see something bad happening, we want to try to stop it. But what if we can't? That leads to the the second reason, which is for the sake of our own sanity.

Chris, Arthur, and IOZ seem to converge on two main strategies for dealing with our moral and mental health concerns. We can refuse to acknowledge the illegitimate power our government has amassed, with Thoreau-like nuggets of civil disobedience, taking that as far as we can safely take it. And we can insist on calling things by their rightful names.

"Torture is torture. War crimes are war crimes. Police-state procedures are police-state procedures." Jim Henley says that calling things by their true names is what "bitching on the internet" (a.k.a. blogging) is all about. It helps us feel less crazy in this up-is-down, black-is-white world, and it offers some feeling of moral contribution, because "[a]t minimum, the collective record of American dissent might be some minor use to the next crew that decides to give the liberty thing a go."

So is there anything more we can do than honest bitching and minor resistance? What about Winter Patriot's general strike? Floyd concludes his article today with the acknowledgment that any efforts are almost certain to fail to divert disaster. But,

We must keep sounding the alarm, even in the face of almost certain defeat. What else is our humanity worth if we don't do that? And if, in the end, all that we've accomplished is to keep the smallest spark of light alive, to help smuggle it through an age of darkness to some better, brighter time ahead, is that not worth the full measure of struggle?

Do something. Anything.