If some diabolical anti-American mastermind had been trying, behind the scenes, to destroy this nation by secretly installing in the White House and Pentagon agents who would deliberately sink the ship of state, he or she couldn't have come up with a subversive wrecking crew more adept at the job than the Bush administration. The nation is being bankrupted by tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy and by a pointless, and endless trillion-dollar war. At the same time blood enemies are being produced with every bomb dropped, every innocent victim kidnapped and locked away in America's gulag, every child shot at a roadblock.

Clearly, though, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et al, are not the secret agents of some malevolent foreign enemy of America. Nor is their vile reign of terror around the globe and their gutting of the Constitution here at home, simply a matter of stupid policy-making. They are, rather, home-grown enemies of American democracy, bent on subverting the country to their own ends of unbridled power.

Their goal in all this is not the stated one of "spreading democracy" at the point of a gun--a clearly ridiculous notion in any case. Rather, the goal is destroying democracy here at home, in order to establish a one-party dictatorship.

From this perspective, it is clear that far from trying to "protect the homeland," the Bush administration is happy to weaken American defenses, as it has been doing, and to manufacture enemies--whether states like Iran and Syria, or stateless organizations like Al Qaeda and Hezzbolah. The more the better. Far from trying to prevent another 9-11, one senses that this administration would like nothing better than for there to be another strike against Americans before the coming congressional elections--a second "new Pearl Harbor" as it were--to justify a full-scale crackdown on dissent, opposition, and independent thought.

George Orwell long ago imagined a world deliberately kept in a perpetual state of war, where the citizenry would accept totalitarian rule in the name of patriotism and security. We are now entering such a state. The yellow "support the troops" ribbons mindlessly pasted on the trunks and rear doors of half the cars, vans and SUVs in America are testimony to a sheep-like acceptance of the official administration line that war is good and in America's interest. I saw one such ribbon today that was particularly credulous. It read: "Remember 9-11. Support our Troops." This despite the fact that our troops are not fighting anyone who remotely had anything to do with 9-11.

We are not far from that Orwellian condition.

July 31, 2006 at 09:42:54

Making the U.S. Safe...for Dictatorship
   
by Dave Lindorff