Part 6 (1/2)

Nigerian elections of 20035

If Superpower signifies form-free power, sophisticated and ”advanced,” at the disposal of those who govern in the name of const.i.tutional democracy, it cannot mean, practically or theoretically, ”government by the people.” Not practically because the global ”responsibilities” of Superpower are incompatible with partic.i.p.atory governance; not theoretically, because the powers that make Superpower formidable do not derive either from const.i.tutional authority or from ”the people.” Stated more strongly, the condition for the ascendance of Superpower is the weakening or irrelevance of democracy and const.i.tutionalism-except as mystifications enabling Superpower to fake a lineage that gives it legitimacy.

The crucial event exposing how deeply political deterioration had penetrated the system was the Florida recount in the presidential election of 2000. That event also provided a glimpse into the inverted totalitarian character of Superpower. Unlike the crude plebiscites of the n.a.z.is with their yes-or-no choice and atmosphere of latent violence, the recount, while it was accompanied by some intimidation of voters, relied mainly on tactics that made it difficult for the poor and African Americans to deal with the ballot or even to find their proper polling place. Once the polls closed, the slanted process began: actual counting and decisions about which ballots qualified were supervised by a loyal Republican official whose politico-mathematical correctness was later rewarded by elevation to a safe seat in the U.S. Congress. Then the high-powered legal talents and public relations experts took over, fought the case through the Florida Supreme Court, and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. There a pliant judiciary hurriedly produced a contorted justification for a manipulated result. What was striking was not so much the highly coordinated attack on the system of democratic elections by the Bush loyalists as the feebleness of opposition.6 A healthy democracy would have ignited the opposition party in Congress to denounce the coup and contest its legitimacy for as long as necessary. Throughout the nation there should have been ma.s.sive protests, even a general strike and acts of civil disobedience, at the cynical subversion of elections, the one nonnegotiable supposition of a democracy. Instead, an illegitimate president took office amidst scarcely a ripple of discontent.7 The masters of the ceremony and the media ensured that the inauguration was made to seem like all previous ones: authority was transferred, continuity preserved, as the former president, whom for all practical political purposes the Republicans had earlier destroyed, looked on: const.i.tutional democracy is dead; long live the president.

The Florida events reveal concisely how inverted totalitarianism operates and, without ceasing to be totalitarian, differs from cla.s.sic totalitarianism. The uniquely inverted character of the totalitarian coup was that, while tacit racism and cla.s.s discrimination informed the proceedings, at no point was there a latent threat of violence; nor did the media respond with a chorus of support for the result. Instead they made a circus of the events-one act after another-and once the Supreme Court had spoken, they dropped the series, leaving the public with an impression that a hiccup had occurred, and with the unintentionally sardonic rea.s.surance that ”continuity” remained unbroken. In contrast to the postmortem on the Watergate scandal, a.s.surance that ”the system had worked,” such a verdict after Florida would be an expression of black (sic) humor.

In the saga of the Florida recount was a clear demonstration of managed democracy. Earlier I referred to Superpower as ”formless.” That requires amending: Florida demonstrated that Superpower indeed has a form, and, moreover, revealed its lineaments. Unlike all traditional conceptions of a const.i.tutional form, where the political character was primary and defining, Superpower represents a substantive transformation. A corporate or economic model of governance has been superimposed upon a political form whose const.i.tution consisted partly of republican, antipopulist elements and partly of democratic elements. The Florida recount was as much an example of a corporate takeover as of a coup d'etat. In the new model the presidency bears little resemblance to the original conception of a national leader and chief executive; it owes even less to the later ideal of the president as ”the tribune of the people.” Instead the office is modeled after the corporate CEO. The president is neither above politics nor is he a popular tribune, although if circ.u.mstance requires, he may momentarily a.s.sume those stances. Rather his role is, in part, to protect and advance the economic and ideological interests that form the dynamic of Superpower. (These will be discussed in chapter 7.) But the president is also what might be called a cinemythological figure, the embodiment of a popular myth constructed of Hollywood movies: the genial patriarch (Reagan) or the straight-shooting defender of order (George II).8 Underneath the myths the president, like the CEO, is the dominant power in the organization. In contrast, Congress, which was once thought to be the predominant branch of government because it supposedly stood ”closer to the people,” has been demoted to a position of power comparable to that of a corporate board. The latter tend to be creatures of the CEO rather than the independent supervisory power to which the CEO is theoretically responsible. Like a board, Congress may occasionally display independence, especially when it and the president represent opposing parties. But the main point is that Congress has lost its close connection with the citizenry. Poll after poll has shown that, of all national political inst.i.tutions, it ranks lowest in terms of public confidence. Finally, in the image of shareholders, who wield small power over their CEOs or boards and are stirred to protest only when dividends disappoint, so the citizenry has embraced a diminished role. Like shareholders they can vote out their own CEO, the president, or their board of directors, Congress, but mostly they want to be a.s.sured that the CEO-president is ”heading the country in the right direction.”

III.

The virtual unanimity of Congress and the initial broad public support for the second Gulf War are a measure of how recent is the decay of our representative inst.i.tutions and of the political consciousness of the citizenry. We have forgotten the great divisions over the first Gulf War (1991) when a conservative such as Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, long a supporter of the armed forces, opposed it. A poll of June 1991 found that 46 percent of Americans would approve of war if Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, while 47 percent thought that the United States should wait longer for sanctions and other forms of pressure to work.9 Even more striking was the contrast between, on the one hand, the pa.s.sivity of Congress and of the Democratic ”opposition” party in the weeks preceding the buildup and directly following the invasion of Iraq (April 2003) and, on the other, the determined opposition during the 1960s and 1970s to the Vietnam War and the invasion of Cambodia. In that earlier crisis Congress made strenuous efforts to regain some of the ground it had lost by supinely condoning an undeclared war. It proceeded to condemn the invasion of Cambodia by cutting off funds for the bombing. Although Nixon's subsequent veto of the bill was sustained, Congress continued to press the matter until the president agreed to end the bombing by a specific date and to consult with Congress should further action be necessary. Throughout 1973 members of Congress continued to pet.i.tion the courts in an effort to halt the bombing. Finally, late in 1973 Congress overrode a presidential veto and enacted the War Powers Resolution, which rea.s.serted the role of Congress in the decision to go to war.10 While Congress was pressing its case for regaining its lost const.i.tutional authority over war making, its efforts were supported by continuing demonstrations across the nation, especially on college campuses, and by a pa.s.sionate national debate over the war. Not only did democracy come to life in the decade of the sixties and early seventies, but the parallel resistance by Congress underscored the true meaning of ”const.i.tutional democracy.” Concurrent with popular debate all across the nation, much of it improvised, there was the formal inst.i.tutional opposition by Congress. The union of two powers, one populist and uninst.i.tutionalized, the other representative and inst.i.tutional: const.i.tutional democracy.

Small wonder that ever since those days conservatives and hawks have waged their own relentless ”culture war” against the sixties. The effort to overcome ”the Vietnam syndrome” involved more than a wish to exorcise the shame of a military defeat; it aimed to discredit the democratic and const.i.tutional impulses of that era as well, an aim consistent with totalitarianism, inverted or not.11 As the legatee of that campaign George II remarked, ”Sometimes I listen to the American people and sometimes I don't.” A democracy evoked at the whim of its highest elected official cannot count for much.

That the Congress and administration ignored the ma.s.sive protests throughout the nation did not invalidate the fact that a rump democracy persisted, even flourished, ”outside” the Was.h.i.+ngton system-in ”the streets” and the more than one hundred city councils throughout the nation that pa.s.sed resolutions opposing the invasion of Iraq.

The Iraq war of 2003 is symptomatic rather than paradigmatic. The seriousness of the situation goes beyond the slowly growing opposition to the war. One cannot point to any national inst.i.tution(s) that can accurately be described as democratic: surely not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested Congress, the imperial presidency, the cla.s.s-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of all, the media.

IV.

To identify the antecedents of inverted totalitarianism, we must bear in mind that throughout much of the past century the American political system was repeatedly subjected to the strains and pressures of war. During the twentieth century war became normalized.

To reiterate, the century saw major conventional wars: the two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. And other conflicts abounded: the small war against Filipinos fighting for their independence (1911); the war against Mexican revolutionaries (191314); the armed occupation of Siberia (191821), which tacitly was a war against the Bolshevik Revolution; invasions of the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Panama; the Gulf War of 1991; the war against terrorism declared in 2001; and the war against Iraq (2003). And, of course, the invention of a ”cold war.”

Wars, especially undeclared ones, invariably boost the powers and status of the president as commander-in-chief. Just as surely war presses Congress and the courts to ”defer” to the wishes and judgments of the chief executive. A president, however f.e.c.kless or unimposing, is transformed, rendered larger than life. He becomes the supreme commander, the unchallengeable leader and the nation incarnate.

The Second World War marked a particularly notable moment in the evolution of expanding American power. The Roosevelt administration measured its wartime powers against the challenge posed by a totalitarian system that made no secret of its aim to control as much of the globe as possible.12 The defeat of totalitarianism demanded the creation of a ”home front” and ”total mobilization.” It was necessary, so the justification ran, ”to fight fire with fire.” ”Universal” (i.e., male) military conscription was inst.i.tuted; the economy was controlled by government ”planning” directed toward prescribed production goals, prohibited from producing most consumer goods, and subjected to central allocation of vital materials. The labor force, for all practical purposes, was conscripted: its mobility was restricted, wages and prices were fixed, while collective bargaining was put on hold. Food and fuel were rationed, censors.h.i.+p was introduced, and the government undertook to wage a propaganda war, enlisting radio, newspapers, and the movie industry in the single purpose of winning the war. There was an all-enveloping atmosphere of apprehension: uniformed soldiers everywhere, warnings about spies, news censors.h.i.+p, propaganda films, heroic war movies, patriotic music, casualty figures. As a leading const.i.tutional scholar warned shortly after the end of World War II, ”The effects of the impact of total war on the Const.i.tution will . . . become embedded in the peacetime Const.i.tution.”13 Strikingly, in the post-1945 wars, whether hot or cold, warfare became normal, incorporated into ordinary life without transforming it. No attempt was made to reintroduce the kinds of controls and mobilization that had temporarily brought the system closer to a total system. Costly long wars as in Korea (195154), Vietnam (196173), the shorter first Gulf War (1991), and now Iraq have been prosecuted without imposing economic hards.h.i.+ps, only some inconveniences, never U.S. civilian casualties.14 Korea and Vietnam were not even ”declared wars” as the Const.i.tution required. After 1945 wars acquired a certain abstract quality. They were, in a popular phrase, ”distant wars” that no longer needed to enlist a ”home front.” Hostilities lasting more than four decades and, though more than once edging toward nuclear catastrophe, were nonetheless characterized as a ”Cold War.”

The contrast with n.a.z.i Germany could not be sharper. Where the n.a.z.is kept the German population in an agitated state of continuous mobilization and made no secret of their preparation for war, U.S. leaders promoted a paradox in which the government was fighting a war while the citizenry remained demobilized: no conscription, no economic controls, no rationing. It might seem at first that the horrific events of 9/11 would revive the idea of a ”home front,” but instead of actively engaging the citizenry, the administration set about to manage it. Unlike the n.a.z.is, who may accurately be described as ”control freaks” obsessed by the need to rule everything, American rulers prefer to manage the population as would a corporate CEO, manipulatively, alternately soothing and dismissive, relying on the powerful resources of ma.s.s communication and the techniques of the advertising and public opinion industries. In the process the arts of ”coercion” are refined. Physical threat remains but the main technique of control is to encourage a collective sense of dependence. The citizenry is kept at a distance, disengaged spectators watching events in the formats determined by an increasingly ”embedded” media whose function is to render warfare ”virtual,” sanitized, yet fascinating.15 To satisfy viewers with an urge for vicarious retaliation, for blood and gore, a parallel universe of action movies, computer war games, and television, saturated with images of violence and triumphalism, are but a click away.

The growth of Superpower and the corresponding decline of democracy can be measured by the concentration of media owners.h.i.+p and its accompanying discipline over content. The relations.h.i.+p between democratic decline and the media owners.h.i.+p is ill.u.s.trated in the contrast between the attention paid by Was.h.i.+ngton and the national media to the sixties' protest movements against the Vietnam War and, four decades later, the virtual blackout of the protests against the invasion of Iraq.16 In the sixties, thanks to the antiwar movements and the publicity given to them by national and local television and radio, the nation truly agonized over that preemptive war and tried to work through it. The true significance of the continuing conservative resentment against the sixties, the real ”Vietnam syndrome,” appears in the growing intolerance toward opposition and especially toward the disorderliness that has always been the hallmark of a vibrant democracy.

In the fall of 2003 Congress pa.s.sed an $87 billion appropriation for Iraqi reconstruction that also contained $9 million for the Miami police force to enable it to suppress the expected popular opposition to a meeting in Miami on trade relations with Latin America. The media dutifully reported the $87 billion and almost universally ignored the funding of the Miami police, just as they ignored the force's brutal treatment of dissent. The current censors.h.i.+p of popular protest against Superpower and empire serves to isolate democratic resistance, to insulate society from hearing dissonant voices, and to hurry the process of depoliticization.

V.

Thus the Hobbesian fear factor is kept alive and well. Hobbesian fear, unlike n.a.z.i terror, afflicts a society in which the preeminence of safety and security (”law and order”) has been drummed into the popular consciousness over the course of many political campaigns and television and movie seasons. Nowhere is the manipulation of fear better ill.u.s.trated than by the numerous invasions of privacy authorized under the Patriot Act and encroachments upon const.i.tutional guarantees, particularly those pertaining to right to counsel, confidentiality of communications between lawyers and their clients, and the resort to secret tribunals.17 Since the vast majority of the cases involve males of Middle Eastern origins, the broader public is rea.s.sured and simultaneously given an object lesson. Equally important is the reinforcement of the fear factor by the economic recession that began in 2001 and left more than a million workers unemployed while rendering many more insecure, a condition exacerbated by the more than one million jobs lost to the movement of American manufacturing abroad.

Doubtless the second Bush administration did not intentionally cause the economic downturn, but what was most striking was its response. The deep economic depression of the late 1920s had been a princ.i.p.al cause in attracting German voters to the n.a.z.i Party then in opposition.18 By mobilizing the German economy for war the n.a.z.is succeeded in easing unemployment. Unlike the n.a.z.is the administration has done little to allay the recession's effects and much that exploits the accompanying insecurities. Far from calling for ”equal sacrifice” from the citizenry, as would be the case in a genuinely democratic society involved in a war, it has openly practiced a politics of inequality that feeds on the fears of the most insecure members of society. For example, by pus.h.i.+ng through an enormous tax rebate that blatantly favored the wealthy, it simultaneously a.s.sured that no funds would be available to subsidize programs-such as the democratization of health care, increased unemployment benefits, and protections for pension funds-that might have eased the impact of recession.19 Instead, at regular intervals, the administration raised the specter of an imminent bankruptcy of Social Security and vigorously campaigned for an alternative. It envisaged a nation of citizen-investors who would be encouraged to convert their accrued benefits into investment accounts. These would be available for speculation in the stock market and would, in effect, lock social security into the ups and downs of Wall Street-in effect an insecurity system and not likely to reduce the anxiety levels that had been the original target of the Social Security Act of 1935.

A similar strategy has been at work regarding health care. After first threatening to reduce Medicare benefits and increase the premiums for recipients, the administration succeeded in pa.s.sing a reform of Medicare that, while providing some modest benefits, did little to control the obscene prices of drugs. Meanwhile in a concerted strategy businesses and corporations began to insist that workers contribute a higher percentage to monthly premiums for private health plans, and, in some cases, to threaten the withdrawal of business contributions altogether. All of this while wages remained mostly stagnant. In making a political spectacle of rising health care costs with no resolution in sight, the administration would seem to have found it politically more advantageous to leave the issue in doubt and the public uncertain and demoralized.

VI.

What can one make of this strange situation? The president a.s.sumes an ”above politics” pose of a ”patriot king” grimly warning the nation that it is locked in a deathly struggle with terrorists. Meanwhile his administration is engrossed in an intensely partisan politics promoting corporate interests and polarizing cultural and religious issues that divert attention. When society is in a state of war, patriotism dictates that divisive economic and cultural issues should be laid aside. In wartime one might reasonably expect that the economy, especially large corporate operations, would be subject to regulation in the interests of sharing the burdens of war. In times of national danger, when the whole society is threatened, the common good appears as obvious and unambiguous. Everyone is expected to make sacrifices, and a kind of rough egalitarianism prevails. But if war is so distant as to seem disconnected from everyday life, if no conscription is introduced, no shortages perceived, if war and the economy appear to be on separate tracks, there is not only no need to rally the citizenry, but it is politically advantageous not to. The common good seems an abstraction, private interests the reality. Equally paradoxical, it is a truism that during wartime the natural expectation is that governmental powers will be expanded. Yet, save for the Patriot Act and the establishment of the hopelessly c.u.mbersome Homeland Security Department, the political rhetoric of the Republicans and of many Democrats continues to repeat the prewar refrain about the need to reduce the size of government, of taxes, and of public spending-in short, all of the themes intended to cater to the citizens' suspicions of their government, all of those themes subversive of a close bond between government and citizenry that one might expect to be encouraged during a ”real” war.

Thus a schizoid condition: a war without mobilization, a war where the citizenry is a potential target but not a partic.i.p.ant. It is strangely reproduced in domestic political matters. While the war on terrorism induces feelings of helplessness and a natural tendency to look toward the government, to trust it, the domestic message of distrust of government produces alienation from government. The people are not transformed into a manipulable ma.s.s shouting ”Sieg Heil.” Instead they are discouraged, inclined to abdicate a political role, yet patriotically trusting of their ”wartime” leaders. The domestic message says that the citizenry should distrust its own elected government, thereby denying themselves the very instrument that democracy is supposed to make available to them. A democracy that is persuaded to distrust itself, that applauds the rhetoric of ”get government off your backs,” ”it's your money being wasted,” and ”you should decide how to spend it,” renounces the means of its own efficacy in favor of a laissez-faire politics, an antiegalitarian politics, where, as in the market, the stronger powers prevail. What is revealed or, rather, confirmed is that the consummated union of corporate power and governmental power heralds the American version of a total system.

What kind of political contests would be characteristic of such a situation and contribute to the regime of Superpower? At the present time most a.n.a.lysts are agreed that some of the major features of contemporary politics and the overall situation are indicative of ”deadlock.” The nation is said to be almost equally divided in its party loyalties. Accordingly electoral campaigns are primarily attentive to a relatively small number of ”undecided voters.” At the same time there is a large number of ”safe seats” for each party, with the result that parties concentrate more upon primaries than upon the final election and successful candidates tend to become long-term inc.u.mbents.

The obvious question is this: what interests would thrive upon a politics of small margins? Clearly, powerful interests that can fund candidates and parties so that when the deadlocked legislatures convene, these interests are positioned to deploy a large contingent of lobbyists to persuade a few legislators from one party to vote with their opponents. This becomes all the more feasible and cost-effective when one party, the Republicans, is openly ”pro-business,” and a substantial number of Democrats elected to Congress are virtually indistinguishable from Republicans, especially on economic issues. Deadlocked legislatures, prevented from pa.s.sing legislation opposed by powerful corporate interests, are especially p.r.o.ne to attaching amendments or ”earmarks” favoring a particular and usually powerful interest. Conversely, it is especially difficult to muster majorities in favor of broad social programs, such as health care, improved working conditions, and education, when organized corporate interests can easily block those efforts.

A closely divided electorate and a Congress with narrow majorities are also conducive to fanning cultural wars. The point about disputes on such topics as the value of s.e.xual abstinence, the role of religious charities in state-funded activities, the question of gay marriage, and the like, is that they are not framed to be resolved. Their political function is to divide the citizenry while obscuring cla.s.s differences and diverting the voters' attention from the social and economic concerns of the general populace. Cultural wars might seem an indication of strong political involvements. Actually they are a subst.i.tute. The notoriety they receive from the media and from politicians eager to take firm stands on nonsubstantive issues serves to distract attention and contribute to a cant politics of the inconsequential.

When George II declared ”war on terrorism,” he formalized the politics of the inconsequential. It is common knowledge that, before 9/11, his administration entered office with no serious program for the benefit of the general citizenry. Its ”popular” agenda was simple and largely negative: to promote government deregulation, dismantle environmental safeguards, pa.s.s tax legislation in favor of the wealthier cla.s.ses, and reduce social programs. Its positive agenda took advantage of the politics of gridlock and the role of corporate power to promote the economic well-being of corporate sponsors in oil, energy, and pharmaceutical drugs.

Again the inversion is striking: the n.a.z.i Party had a strong antipathy toward big business and, early on, professed a ”socialist” tendency that was later reflected in several programs aimed at eliminating unemployment and introducing social services. Indeed, a socialist or, better, a collectivist element figured as well in the Soviet Union and even in Mussolini's Italy. Collectivism might be defined as a conception of society as a compact, solidaristic whole in which the Volk or ”workers” are exalted-while being reshaped into a manageable ma.s.s that loves its solidarity and anonymity. Inverted totalitarianism, in contrast, appears as anticollectivist: it idealizes individualism and adulates celebrities. And yet both constructs of the ”outstanding,” of those who ”stand out,” serve to paper over the fact that instead of a sovereign citizen-body there is only a ”lonely crowd.” The challenge is to give the lonely crowd a sense of belonging, of selfless anonymity, of solidarity with a n.o.ble cause. The solution: a mix of patriotism and nationalism, and unthinking loyalty to the troops. That solution is the populist counterpart to the role played by elites in bridging the two const.i.tutions. While corporate power and its ethos are incorporated into the structure of the state,20 the patriotism, nationalism, and unblinking loyalty of the citizenry connect the const.i.tution for preservation to the const.i.tution for increase. That role becomes all the more important as it becomes clearer that globalizing, multinational capitalism has no political loyalties as such. It loves offsh.o.r.e bank accounts as much as it loves producing cars in China, where it can pay workers a monthly wage of sixty dollars.21 Through the convergence of these developments Americans are being successfully ”kneaded” into a citizenry less suited to democratic demands and increasingly more accepting and supportive of the dominant forms of power, not out of n.a.z.i enthusiasm, but from fear and misguided patriotism.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The Dynamics of the Archaic.

I.

Religiosity distinguishes America from most other

Western societies. Americans are also overwhelmingly

Christian, which distinguishes them from many non-Western

peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see the world

in terms of good and evil to a much greater extent than most other peoples.