The authoritarian

The threat to democracy is from within. Benjamin Franklyn famously said we had a republic, if we could keep it (we can discuss the differences between our republic and more direct democracy at another time), well suggesting both the fragility, and our responsibilities as citizens, therein. The examples of these threats are many and include Putin’s neo-tsarism, the so-called “managed democracy” favored by a majority of Russians if we are to believe the polls; the Hindu nationalist threat to India’s multicultural pluralism; and Berlusconi-style media control. Closer to home we have the revived Gilded Age, where money in politics usually wins, and those with wealth largely control the discourse, write the laws, and getter richer still. Meanwhile, there’s the unending assault on voting rights; the purposeful effort to disgust people out of voting at all; the apathy and the complacency of a citizenry only too happy to forsake their citizenship.

And then there’s Cheney. An unabashed authoritarian, Cheney has total contempt for the necessary transparency of democracy. The lesson he took from his master Nixon is that Presidential power must trump all. The so-called “unitary executive” is his gift to the American body politic. In this theory of dictatorship, the President isn’t the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, as per the Constitution, but of all the land. It’s the rule of one man, and of course the evil little dwarf behind the throne. Secret prisons, abductions, torture, domestic spying, declarations of Congressional laws as null and void… Nixon must have a boner in his tomb.

And now this. After all these years of claiming “executive privilege,” Cheney’s just come up yet another attack on our tripartite checks and balances. Now, because he's also President of the Senate, he claims he’s not a part of the Executive. (Nothing, of course, is inconsistent in the struggle for power.) Unfortunately, we have such a fragile, largely Potemkin-village style democracy that he’s gotten it away with it so far and probably will get away with until his richly deserved final heart attack. His party stands behind him, for their principle remains power; the loyal opposition is precisely that, loyal, like a beaten puppy; the media bows before him, with softballs from Brit Hume, caresses from Jim Lehrer, and a refusal to follow-up by Juan Williams; and the majority of the population either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. At heart, we get what we deserve. If we can keep it indeed!

Partisanship

These are desperate times when I’m reduced to quoting the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal* dripping with hateful filth and immorality as it usually is. But the other day, they arched their furry Tory brows at Bloomberg’s pontifications on the yearning for an end to partisan political strife and noted that there’s strife precisely because there’s so much at stake. Duh! The Journal should know! It’s the flagship of the war on a just America. These warriors speak for the concentration of money, and hence political power, in an undemocratic elite. The new robber barons have no problem using fundamentalists hungry for the irrational frenzy and sectarian hell of theocracy, after all, they’re the ones who eagerly adopted the Bourbons and the murderous myrmidion rednecks from the Democratic Party once American Apartheid was finally outlawed. Anything for power, my friends.

*I’ve long argued that the excellent reportorial crew of the Journal legitimizes its reactionary editorial pages. Never mind the “wall” separating news and editorial; the reporting makes the paper and gives the Op-Ed scumsuckers all the props they need. It’s only fitting that a man who represents the complete and utter immorality of capital, Rupert Murdoch, is set to eat the paper alive.

On a minor note, I liked how State Senate Kingpin Joe Bruno didn't beat around the bush: campaign finance reform will kill GOP power in the state. Here's to more truthtelling like this!

Welcome

...to my Secret Commonwealth. I've taken the name from Robert Kirk's 17th Century essay about the lingering beliefs in faery in Scotland, but that's otherwise quite irrelevant. What I’m after here is the notion of a secret commonwealth dissenting against the conformity of the neo-liberal consensus and the tyranny of the Market. I believe another world is possible. I believe that another country is, too. For all their bitter struggles over social issues, the two wings of the American Business Party are neo-liberal to the core, which is one reason the Democratic-wing can’t get any traction against Republican-wing domination: to do so would go against what used to be (and still should be) called the Money Power.

About my politics, I am a non-doctrinaire reformist leftist, sometimes socialist, sometimes anarchist, sometimes anarcho-syndicalist, always environmentalist, and always a democrat with a small “d.” Red, black and green, mixed together.

Of course, being in a minority amidst the ruins of capitalist triumphalism, sometimes I just need to vent. I hope to do it articulately. Considering the appalling condition of the U.S., there will be a lot of discuss.