I think Bush doesn't believe in Democracy.
He says he does, of course. But independent of the Newspeak that pours forth when he speaks, his actions make it clear that he doesn't care at all about what the American people think.
It isn't any one thing. It isn't the the secret tapping of our phones, or the advocacy of torture, or the suspension of habeus corpus at Guantanamo, or his meddling with EPA conclusions about Climate Change, or Cheney's Gerrymandering the branches of the federal government. Those are all just symptoms. It's that he doesn't see himself as reponsible to anyone, and that he's doing his best to hide his decisions so that the public can't review them. He doesn't trust us. He's busy undoing the way we've done things for more than 200 years because he doesn't trust that. What he's doing is antithetical to a government of, by, and for the people.
If I had to guess, I'd say it was the result of 9/11. I know the neocons were planning the action from longer ago than that. But I don't think Bush had his heart into it until 9/11. Bush didn't plan the attack, but he must have felt somewhat responsible after-the-fact, even if he can't admit it. In his heart, he must feel the nation should have been better protected, and that it was too late, so he's doing penance by making sure—at all costs—that it doesn't happen again. Or, at least, by trying.
Bit by bit, though, he's dismantling who we are to get his single-minded end. And it doesn't seem to matter to him what We The People think. He claims rights no one else had ever heard of until this administration, allowing him to set aside laws made by Congress, or to stretch the function of signing statements beyond all recognition. It's not news any more, it's just how he is.
Strangely, Congress hasn't impeached him for it. I don't understand that at all. I suspect it's that they're just tired after Clinton's impeachment and not up for another. Well, shame on them. Clinton should never have had impeachment proceedings brought, of course; but, regardless, what Bush has done is tons worse and has gone unchallenged, so if it was ok to do it to Clinton, it's definitely ok for Bush. The Senate is the only court competent to challenge Bush's authority, but has stood silent.
His individual actions can be challenged in the Supreme Court under some circumstances, and the Supreme court did finally take a stand on habeus corpus. But fighting Bush on a case-by-case basis is a losing battle because the cases are not isolated incidents; there's a larger pattern of behavior that will continue to crank out new cases.
So, he's done and still doing a lot of bad things. And he's turning us into—well, I'm not sure what. But it's not as democratic as it was. It's more like we have an elected king. But that's not what is bugging me tonight. What's really bugging me is that he's calling it business as usual. He still talks about everything like it's business as usual. He's even still trying to bring Democracy to points around the world, all the while abandoning it here, and not admitting that's what's going on.
And, going back to my remark about 9/11, I think it's because he doesn't trust that we'll be safe if left to our own devices. I think he thinks he can't trust us with the information that would allow us to engage in the discussion. He thinks it's too important to be left to We The People. He thinks we'll mess it up. That's why I say he doesn't believe in Democracy.
Democracy isn't a tool for making us safe, and Bush knows it. So he's dismantling it. The data needed to make wise decisions cannot be shared with us, so why pretend to involve us? Moreover, even the dismantling is happening without our consent. (See my post from last night for a discussion about how one might imagine it happening with our consent.)
Running a country by Democracy has been a big experiment, and experiments can fail—maybe this one has. It might really be that he can't trust us. It might be that he does know better than us. My point isn't that he's wrong. (I think he is wrong, but that isn't my point.) My point is that he won't say he thinks Democracy has failed. And that's what leads to all the Newspeak that comes out of the Executive Branch these days.
The irony is that as an intellectual, it doesn't scare me to ask questions. Questions are what keep me alive. My brain is my only protection against what might happen. Brains were evolved, if you'll pardon my indulgence in thinking evolution is a workable theory, precisely for the purpose of giving people an edge over the lions, tigers and bears of the world, who were faster and stronger than us. By using our brains, we figured out where future races were destined to occur and arranged not to be there. Brains are good and their fuel is questions. So we mustn't fail to ask hard questions, and I'm asking what I think is a hard one here.
What if it were the case that they were right? What if Democracy will, in fact, kill us? Maybe generally. Maybe in some particular situation. What must we do then? I can imagine the question, under some circumstances, leading us to conclude “well, then we shouldn't have it.” I don't think that's the case right now. But I want to say that I think it's not in and of itself an unfair question.
What's troubling me most, though, isn't that this question is being asked. It's that it's not being asked. The change is just happening, and as a society we're behaving as if the change was ok, even though we'd be outraged if someone said out loud “Why don't we get rid of Democracy?” and really meant it. But it's not being discussed, it's just happening. And no one is outraged.
If Bush believes the experiment is over, and that Democracy is not good for us, could he please just have the decency to say so? Who knows? Maybe people would even agree with him. But if he can't call it what it is, a complete change to something new, he shouldn't be doing it.
Palin suggested in the recent VP debate that her administration, with McCain at her side for as long as he lasts, was set to continue what Cheney and his sidekick Bush have started. (See Michael Fox's recent blog post for details.) Let's have a whole evening of debate on just this issue, shall we? Is it that it's not worth that much time to discuss? What could matter more than whether the candidates really believe in the current system of government?
I'd like to have ended on that last sentence. It should be very provocative. We all know it's not, though, and that the debates will proceed with a softball question or two on it, and that's the last we'll hear before election time. Let's just hope the public will do the right thing and vote for Obama for other reasons, because this particular issue will probably be forgotten by then.
A vote for Obama is a vote to return to traditional Democracy.
A vote for McCain is a vote to continue dismantling it.
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Comments
Their side of the Republican Party voice freedom, liberty, and justice while being complete hypocrites about supporting those rights. That is why it is so important in November to elect a new democratic President that thinks about citizen rights, human rights and the rule of law for all.
With respect to impeachment, that is something that has to be either very heavily organized and pushed by a congressional faction (as in the case of Clinton) or wanted by a majority of the populace (as in the case of Nixon). Neither of those were present early enough in Bush's second term to get it off the ground. And since it would have polarized and distracted the country even more -- imagine it being an issue in the presidential race -- I don't think that's a bad thing. Impeachment would have been emotionally satisfying to a lot of people, but at too high a cost.
There are new problems in this century and I think our country has to open up discourse on how to meet these problems. I'm in the "two heads are better than one" philosophy on this. Unfortunately, everyone has an opinion and few of those opinions are educated toward reality and pragmaticism. (Hey, I'm guilty of that too. I think the new problem of the average citizen is: What is reality?)
I admit, I have nothing more than a gut-instinct about this, but I think democracy can only be possible if there is accountability in government...because if the people are not able to say: "I do not approve this message," and a tyrant is free to ignore it...then what is the point of voting anyway?
But then this campaign happened and there is actually some hope of getting a decent guy in office, and I thought "perhaps all is not lost". It's often hard to think of anything that could affect things, since a great deal of stuff runs on auto-pilot, but in this election the choices are pretty stark.
Anyway, thanks for your kind comments.
It's very discouraging. I don't know if democracy is dead, but I think our nation's concern for civil rights is. And our concern for human rights, that died with Jimmy Carter -- both parties use the term now for economic leverage with foreign countries, if that (e.g. the Olympics).
Boy, I'd be even more depressed after reading your post -- but the SOX WON, and all's right with the world. Just kidding.
WOOF
For our part, I don't think we should conflate the failure or prospective failure of American democracy with the failure of democracy tout court.
It is once again, as history has seen many times, the psychology of little people who are not intelligent enough to rule a country, who somehow manage to get to that level, and are essentially reacting against having been the stupid kid when they were younger, or the black sheep, or the one nobody liked, or others are just simply over ambitious and seeking glory. These people are generally stupid and they seek either to overcome their psychological shortcomings or they want to revel in glory (or both).
George Bush doesn't have a genuine point of view on this or that system of anything. Maybe he says he does but ultimately he's a black sheep of a family who was trying to live up to the giant shadow of his father. In doing so he has become the first president of the United States to act like a brat who has stolen his sister's lunch and doesn't want to tell anyone where it is and won't admit that he did it. He's just a brat. There is no major calculation here. He's just a brat who happened to become president. The danger of that is that the brat is open game to everyone around him. VP, people with money, everyone - but anyone who tries to question what he does, and he will become that brat again and won't want to tell where the sister's lunch is.
Same goes for our hockey mom, who is so ambitious politically that she manages to not know anything about anything in an extremely blatant way and still keep people liking her - and if she became president she probably would run the country deeper into a hole because she would be taken advantage of, like Bush, by smarter people. But she doesn't have a genuine point of view on the matter, it isn't like she would try and make democracy go away. It would just happen because she wouldn't know any better.
Same goes for John McCain who is not awfully intelligent, though not as bad as the above mentioned couple, and once again, like many others, somehow found himself close to being a president without having particularly merited it intellectually, and once again, whatever evils happen to the democratic structure will not be through any philosophy, it will be through idiotic and criminal political behavior.
Many of these people don't think, "I think democracy is wrong..." they simply have no respect for it - because the democracy is an authority. It is a father figure lurking from above saying "don't screw up, son." They have no respect for their elders. It's really amazing, you can really find many parallels between a bad leader and an obnoxious kid.
It could be, of course, that Bush isn't in charge. Ok, ok, turns out that idea isn't new with me. But even so, it could explain how there could be a philosophy when it didn't come from Bush. It might be from Cheney, or the whole crew of neocons. In that case, my piece might refer to Bush as a kind of avatar for them.
I'm not wedded to the thesis that he did this all on purpose, I just thought I'd throw together the idea for purposes of provoking thought. I, too, believe the conclusion with more conviction than the premise. The intentions part of it is indeed a bit of a hard sell. But the thing I like about the model is that it explains my frustration with all the Newspeak. He's always talking like he's saving Democracy, and I don't agree. I don't generally like to think people are just lying, so I look for ways to explain odd behavior without that. Calling him dumb or evil is a bit too pat for my taste. It needs to read a bit more like a Shakespearean play for me to believe it. The trick is in figuring out which tragic flaw to blame it on, given the vast repertoire of options that are flashing their neon hopefully in our direction.
So while you're on the line here, what would you suggest makes the Democrats (past and future) any better? Better philosophy? Competence in some particular area? Luck? Just curious how your analysis would extend to cover them.
In the book "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", which I love, there is a character of the president of the galaxy, and he's a rambling idiot (with two heads, by the way). And there is a great concept that Douglas Adams keeps bringing up there, which is something like "the president is never actually a person who has power, and his job is not to be in power, it is to distract everyone from the true power."
Perhaps you're right and maybe in the people behind the idiot (I use the term "idiot" generically here and am not referring specifically to the current idiot in office) have some kind of philosophy about democracy and about the world. But that to me feels wrong somehow, it feels too complicated, it feels like it's finding an excuse to talk about philosophies and thereby ignore an extremely basic vice in the human condition, called "greed."
And that is the tragic flaw you're looking for.
I think it's all too simple. Power corrupts. That's all. It isn't a cliché. It's simple truth. People are greedy fucks and they love to feel in power, they love to feel like they have people's lives at their fingertips, it makes them cum and they feel like gods. And they love money. It makes them cum and they feel like gods. With money. So when they put an idiot in power, if indeed "they" are behind him pulling the strings, they are acting out of the same greedy ambitions that he is acting out of.
Now...
There are exceptions.
Not all leaders are greedy power hungry fucks.
But most are.
But some aren't. It is easy to distinguish one form from the other: one form talks about the glory of their nation. Always. That's the greedy fuck form. The other kind talks about ideas for making the future better drawing on lessons of the past, and they do not talk much about the glory of the nation as something that exists, but as something that could exist.
The Democrats are no better, they are in general politicians just like everyone else. Many of them in congress are most likely total idiots who you would not trust to wash your car.
This is true for every country I think and for every time in history, this is not a unique American phenomenon.
However, in America, we have a special brand of it these days. The brand is that leadership allows itself now to be blatantly disrespectful to the democracy and at the same time it talks about wanting to protect the democracy (that same democracy that allows them to abuse their power and generally disrespect it - basically shitting in the plate that feeds you).
I think what makes "Democrats" a bit better these days is that, at least on the presidential candidate level, there is a significantly higher amount of respect for the democratic way of life, in which the people are actually important, and the "Republicans" tend to display a disgusting disrespect to human kind in general and total respect to their bank accounts - and we return to greed and the cycle is complete.
That was fun.