What
Is Happening in America?
By Eliot
Weinberger
First Published 08 June 2003
In the Western democracies
in the last fifty years, we have grown accustomed to governments whose
policies on specific issues may be good or bad, but which essentially
institute incremental changes to the status quo. The major exceptions
have been Thatcher and Reagan, but even their programs of dismantling
systems of social welfare seem, in retrospect, mild compared to what
is happening in the United States under George Bush-- or more exactly,
the ruling junta that tells Bush what to do and say.
It is unquestionably the
most radical government in modern American history, one whose ideology
and actions have become so pervasive, and are so unquestionably mirrored
by the mass media here, that the population seems to have forgotten
what "normal" is.
George Bush is the first
unelected President of the United States, installed by a right-wing
Supreme Court in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. He is the first to
actively subvert one of the pillars of American democracy: the separation
of church and state. There are now daily prayer meetings and Bible study
groups in every branch of the government, and religious organizations
are being given funds to take over educational and welfare programs
that have always been the domain of the state.
Bush is the first president
to invoke the specific "Jesus Christ" rather than an ecumenical
"God," and he has surrounded himself with evangelical Christians,
including his Attorney General, who attends a church where he talks
in tongues.
It is the first administration
to openly declare a policy of unilateral aggression, a "Pax Americana"
where the presence of allies (whether England or Bulgaria) is agreeable
but unimportant; where international treaties no longer apply to the
United States; and where-- for the first time in history-- this country
reserves the right to non-defensive, "pre-emptive" strikes
against any nation on earth, for whatever reason it declares.
It is the first-- since the
internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II-- to enact special
laws for a specific ethnic group. Non-citizen young Muslim men are now
required to register and subject themselves to interrogation. Many hundreds
have been arrested and held without trial or access to legal assistance--
a violation of another pillar of American democracy: habeas corpus.
Many have been taken from their families and deported on minor technical
immigration violations; the whereabouts of many others are still unknown.
And, in Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they are now preparing
execution chambers, hundreds of foreign nationals -- including a 13-year-old
and a man who claims to be 100-- have been kept for almost two years
in a limbo that clearly contravenes the Geneva Convention.
Similar to the Reagan era,
it is an administration openly devoted to helping the rich and ignoring
the poor, one that has turned the surplus of the Clinton years into
a massive deficit through its combination of enormous tax cuts for the
wealthy (particularly those who earn more than a million dollars a year)
and increases in defense spending. (And, although Republicans always
campaign on "less government," it has created the largest
new government bureaucracy in history: the Department of Homeland Security.)
The Financial Times of England, hardly a hotbed of leftists, has categorized
this economic policy as "the lunatics taking over the asylum."
But more than Reagan-- whose
policies tended to benefit the rich in general-- most of Bush's legislation
specifically enriches those in his lifelong inner circle from the oil,
mining, logging, construction, and pharmaceutical industries. At the
middle level of the bureaucracy, where laws may be issued without Congressional
approval, hundreds of regulations have been changed to lower standards
of pollution or safety in the workplace, to open up wilderness areas
for exploitation, or to eliminate the testing of drugs.
Billions in government contracts
have been awarded, without competition, to corporations formerly run
by administration officials. In a country where the most significant
social changes are enacted by court rulings, rather than by legislation,
the Bush administration has been filling every level of the complex
judicial system with ultra-right ideologues, especially those who have
protected corporations from lawsuits by individuals or environmental
groups, and those who are opposed to women's reproductive rights. It
remains to be seen how far they can push their antipathy to contraception
and abortion. They have already banned a rare form of late-term abortion
that is only given when the health of the mother is endangered or the
fetus is terribly deformed, and a large portion of Bush's heralded billions
to Africa to fight AIDS will be devoted to so-called "abstinence"
education.
Most of all, America doesn't
feel like America any more. The climate of militarism and fear, similar
to any totalitarian state, permeates everything. Bush is the first American
president in memory to swagger around in a military uniform, though
he himself-- like all of his most militant advisers-- evaded the Vietnam
War. (Even Eisenhower, a general and a war hero, never wore his uniform
while he was president).
In the airports of provincial
cities, there are frequent announcements in that assuring, disembodied
voice of science-fiction films: "The Department of Homeland Security
advises that the Terror Alert is now . . . Code Orange." Every
few weeks there is an announcement that another terrorist attack is
imminent, and citizens are urged to take ludicrous measures, like sealing
their windows, against biological and chemical attacks, and to report
the suspicious activities of their neighbors.
The Pentagon institutes the
"Total Information Awareness" program to collect data on the
ordinary activities of ordinary citizens (credit card charges, library
book withdrawals, university course enrollments) and when this is perceived
as going too far, they change the name to "Terrorist Information
Awareness" and continue to do the same things. Millions are listed
in airport security computers as potential terrorists, including antiwar
demonstrators and pacifists. Critics are warned to "watch what
they say" and lists of "traitors" are posted on the internet.
The war in Iraq has been
the most extreme manifestation of this new America, and almost a casebook
study in totalitarian techniques.
First, an Enemy is created
by blatant lies that are endlessly repeated until the population believes
it: in this case, that Iraq was linked to the attack on the World Trade
Center, and that it possesses vast "weapons of mass destruction"
that threaten the world.
Then, a War of Liberation,
entirely portrayed by the mass media in terms of our Heroic Troops,
with little or no imagery of casualties and devastation, and with morale-inspiring,
scripted "news" scenes-- such as the toppling of the Saddam
statue and the heroic "rescue" of Private Lynch-- worthy of
Soviet cinema.
Finally, as has happened
with Afghanistan, very little news of the chaos that has followed the
Great Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves on to a new Enemy--
this time, Iran.
It is very difficult to speak
of what is happening in America without resorting to the hyperbolic
cliches of anti-Americanism that have lost their meaning after so many
decades, but that have now finally come true.
Perhaps one can only recite
the facts, and I have mentioned only some of them here. This is, quite
simply, the most frightening American administration in modern times,
one that is appalling both to the left and to traditional conservatives.
This junta is unabashed in its imperialist ambitions; it is enacting
an Orwellian state of Perpetual War; it is dismantling, or attempting
to dismantle, some of the most fundamental tenets of American democracy;
it is acting without opposition within the government, and is operating
so quickly on so many fronts that it has overwhelmed and exhausted any
popular opposition.
Perhaps it cannot be stopped,
but the first step toward slowing it down is the recognition that this
is an American government unlike any other in this country's history,
and one for whom democracy is an obstacle
© Copyright 2003