Part 13 (1/2)

major player on the world stage with responsibilities around

the world, with interests around the world.

-Colin Powell (1991).

While the Founders invested their princ.i.p.al hopes for checking the formation of demotic power by erecting complex const.i.tutional barriers, they also discovered that the large geographical expanse of the nation naturally encompa.s.sed a variety of differences of interest and belief, and thereby automatically rendered the organization of a democratic majority difficult. ”Extend the sphere,” Madison wrote, ”and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.”31 We might call this a vision of the saving weakness of a ”disaggregated majority.” Later it recurs in different guises. A disaggregated majority is a majority prevented from developing its own coherence. Its majoritarian character is fabricated externally, by its opponents, whose aim is to produce a majority at once manipulable (i.e., electoral), self-justifying (”moral majority”), and for the most part ”silent.” Richard Nixon was being true to that original conception of the majority when he appealed to ”the forgotten American, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators.”32 The disaggregated majority is fabricated to endorse a candidate or a party for reasons that typically pay only lip service to the basic needs of most citizens (health, education, nontoxic environment, living wage), even less to the disparities in political power between ordinary citizens and well-financed interests. Its speciousness is the political counterpart to products that promise beauty, health, relief of pain, and an end to erectile dysfunction.

Following the 2004 elections the political and media establishment discovered or invented the notion that the salient issue had been ”values”-not an endless and increasingly b.l.o.o.d.y war, nor a faltering economy, burgeoning deficits, and widening cla.s.s differences.

What was the value of ”values”? To obscure more fundamental issues and to divide society along ideological lines rather than cla.s.s conflicts: the religiously obedient Catholic worker, the evangelical African American, the church- and family-oriented Hispanic, the struggling white family with a son in the military because he aspired to go to college: all vote for the party trumpeting values that impose virtually no cost on its affluent and corporate beneficiaries and their heirs.33 There have been other techniques of dispersing popular power without repressing it. During the early years of the republic, it is startling how common were imperialist aspirations, especially among the political notables. One might plausibly presume that in that period political leaders would have had enough daunting challenges to occupy them in firming up a union of fractious states. Yet Hamilton was eager to annex Canada to the new Union, while President Jefferson justified the Louisiana Purchase by claiming that the huge expanse of southern and western land would ”enlarg[e] the empire of liberty . . . and provide new sources of renovation.”34 Although later commentators would hail the notion of an ”empire of liberty,” the more revealing phrase was Jefferson's ”new sources of renovation.” Jefferson had also famously, if recklessly, remarked that it would be healthy for a society to be shaken up by revolution every twenty years. What could prompt the vision that a nation hardly two decades old needed ”renovation”-that is, renewal?

Were these expressions of democratic exuberance or of fears that a democratic self-consciousness, bound to a place, might consolidate a majority, and thus become settled into inst.i.tutions of its own devising? In an effort to forestall that possibility, the imperial idea was broadened to a.s.sociate the geographical extension of national power with new economic opportunity.35 Expansion would mean subst.i.tuting economic opportunity and independence for political involvements, and trading compet.i.tiveness for equality. For a brief moment expansion seemed to encourage democracy. So long as geographical expansion was not aided by centralizing technologies, or incorporated into the framework of a national market, or subjected to a national administration, it could provide s.p.a.ce for local forms of democratic self-government to emerge.

For later generations, for whom the notion of empire was becoming a.s.sociated with European subjugation of conquered peoples, ”frontier,” rather than empire, became the preferred name for expansionism. The change becomes comprehensible once it is realized that ”frontier” signified not a distinct boundary or limit but the expression of a dynamic seeking an outlet for potential power frustrated by the lack of available land or opportunity. It then remained to claim that democracy was peculiarly the product of the frontier experience. For the historian Frederick Jackson Turner (18611932), the frontier, the conquest of new s.p.a.ce, had been the crucible of democracy.36 The Western frontier experience, he declared, had been a main force in developing democratic virtues of independence, freedom, and individualism. It had supplied ”what has been distinctive and valuable in America's contributions to the history of the human spirit.” Although often mentioned in Turner's account, Indians never appear as autonomous actors. ”Our Indian policy,” he smoothly explained, ”has been a series of experimentations on successive frontiers.”37 His main concern was with the crisis created by the vanis.h.i.+ng of the frontier. For Turner the democracy in crisis was not partic.i.p.atory democracy in any collective sense. His crisis was the opposite, the disappearance of individualism. ”The free lands are gone, the continent is crossed, and all this push and energy is turning into channels of agitation.” Discontent would lead to demands for government intervention; the nation would be ”thrown back upon itself” and would face the dangers posed by the differences previously absorbed in ”the task of filling up the vacant s.p.a.ces of the continent.” A ”new Americanism” was emerging, and ”it might mean a drastic a.s.sertion of national government and imperial expansion under a popular hero.”38 Turner's pessimism was premature. The idea that democracy depended upon the nation's being forever on the go was revived after World War II. In the early 1960s, as part of his promise ”to get America moving again,” President John Kennedy announced a ”New Frontier,” the ”race for s.p.a.ce.” Over the next decades Americans ”probed” outer s.p.a.ce, circled the globe with satellites, contained communism, and expanded their nation's power to forestall ”domino effects.” Before long venture capitalists entered, offering ”s.p.a.ce tourists” reserved seats on future s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps. Outer s.p.a.ce was soon overshadowed by the discovery of ”cybers.p.a.ce,” the domain where Turner's frontier thesis took on new meaning as its champions proclaimed that democracy had been reinvented. A band of young pioneers, personified in Bill Gates, explored and exploited a hitherto unknown world where physical power was irrelevant. The new frontiersmen were enterprising in the extreme, hypercompet.i.tive, ruthless in their methods (”take no prisoners”), and able to acc.u.mulate staggering amounts of wealth in a relatively brief time. Above all they invented forms of technology that appeared to have the potential for endless innovation: Turner's utopia, a frontier land that, like the universe, appeared to have no borders. Predictably, the introduction of the Internet was hailed as the perfect expression of democracy: that everyone could enter the Web and voice whatever happened to be on his or her mind = democracy.

The achievement represents the removal of the barriers that make Superpower's empire possible: the conquest of s.p.a.ce and the compression of time. Endless s.p.a.ce: the fulfillment of Madison's strategy for dispersing the demos. Compressed time, instantaneous communication, rapid response: the tyranny of efficiency and the subversion of democracy's requirement that time be defined by the requirements for deliberation, discussion, reconciliation of opposing viewpoints, all of which suddenly seem ”time-consuming.”

Superpower's mission of spreading democracy throughout the world would seem to fit into the tradition of American expansionism, the resumption of the Wilsonian crusade to ”make the world safe for democracy.” But the unstated a.s.sumption behind that genealogy is that democracy has first to be made safe for the world. Managed democracy is that achievement-and it has precedents and antecedents.

X.

The task of elitism in the so-called age of democracy was not to resist democracy but to accept it nominally and then to set about persuading majorities to act politically against their own material interests and potential power.

The solution had been sketched in the seemingly opposed but actually complementary strategies represented by the political ideas of Madison and Hamilton in The Federalist. Stated simply, Madison was so intent upon preventing rule by the demos that his system of inst.i.tutional and geographical complexity seemed destined to end in deadlock. Amidst the welter of contending interests, Madison noted, ”justice ought to hold the balance.” But, he continued, when politics and governance reduce to interests, ”impartiality” is not to be found. Further, ”Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” Despair not: the geographical expanse, ideological differences, and socioeconomic complexity of the new system would splinter the demos-”the society . . . broken into so many parts, interests and cla.s.ses of citizens”-and thereby prevent it permanently from gaining the unity of purpose necessary to concert its numerical power and dominate all branches of government.39 Madison had, in effect, produced the theory of how-at the national level-to render majoritarianism forever disaggregated and incoherent. The new system might produce majorities, but the elements composing them would be so disparate as to make concerted action unlikely. The downside was that in his determination to enfeeble majorities, Madison appeared to be championing a government tied into knots and hence destined to repeat the colonial experience of impotent and ineffectual rule, the curse of the Articles of Confederation.

The solution to a system that seemed to be designed for deadlock was to craft an inst.i.tution that had, like monarchy, a certain remoteness, an element of popular legitimacy and yet sufficient independent power that it could furnish genuine governance, possess the requisite ”energy” to give direction to the nation. The inst.i.tution was the executive, or president; its theoretician, Alexander Hamilton. Unlike the divided legislature, with its numerous and diverse representatives, the executive would possess ”unity” or ”power in a single hand.”40 (The doctrinal inspiration for George Bush's ”unified executive.”) The fact that the chief executive was elected indirectly, and by an Electoral College that was intended to be a deliberative body, meant that he would have a significant degree of independence, not only from the legislative branch but from the citizenry as well. It was not until the twenty-first century that the Hamiltonian version of the presidency was fully realized.41 That the current president has come to embody and reflect the expansive notions of power a.s.sociated with empire and Superpower does not mean that he was the first. Harry Truman stated that the world could be saved only if ”the whole world [were to] adopt the American system.” Truman added, ”For the American system” could survive only by ”becoming a world system.”42 Earlier presidents had justified extraordinary power because the nation was at war. Thus Lincoln, in defending his decision to suspend habeas corpus, cited the ongoing Civil War. Later presidents, such as Wilson and FDR, have also applied expansive notions of executive authority during wartime. In those earlier instances the clear a.s.sumption was that once the emergency was over, the powers would cease to be exercised. There was no strategy for normalizing emergency power by p.r.o.nouncing a new and sweeping doctrine of presidential authority and making it a part of the everyday exercise of executive power. Further, there was no attempt to use a wartime emergency as a pretext for permanently reducing the const.i.tutional authority of the other two branches of government.

Under the present administration the president has claimed the authority to conduct secret wiretaps without the judicial approval required by law; to order the ”secret rendition” and detention of enemy combatants; to violate treaties despite the fact that the Const.i.tution declares that treaties pa.s.sed by Congress are ”the supreme law of the land.” These and other sweeping claims have been defended as exercises of authority belonging to the president as ”commander in chief” and as ”chief executive.” Clearly, these broad a.s.sertions are related to the nebulous character of the ”war on terrorism” and to the thoughtless action of Congress when it agreed, unconditionally, that combating terrorism const.i.tuted a ”war.”

Perhaps the most remarkable of all the efforts to expand executive authority at the expense of the const.i.tutional balance of powers is the practice of ”signing statements.” When presidents sign a congressional bill into law, it has sometimes been the practice of a president to attach a statement in which he may indicate his understanding of the intention of the bill. President Bush, however, has taken that practice and converted it into a sweeping claim that he can ignore provisions of a bill with which he disagrees. On this basis he has claimed the authority to ignore congressional attempts to regulate the military, affirmative action provisions, requirements that he report to Congress about immigration service problems, whistle-blower protections, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. He has a.s.serted that he does not have to obey congressional laws forbidding U.S. troops to engage in combat in Colombia; or laws requiring him to inform Congress when he diverts money to start secret operations; or laws prohibiting the military from using intelligence unlawfully collected. Frequently he has deceived Congress by first promoting compromises on legislation and then reneging in his signing statement.43 In the light of these expansive claims to presidential authority to override congressional power and thereby radically alter the system of checks and balances, the successful strategy of packing the Supreme Court with ”reliable” justices completes the picture of a dramatically changed political system. Prior to their nominations to the Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito helped to formulate the rationale for these expansive doctrines while serving the president.44 Although the sum of these actions might seem prima facie grounds for impeachment of the president, they are entirely consistent with the imperial presidency of a superpower.

XI.

If we have to use force, it is because we are America.

We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall.

We see further into the future.

-Madeleine Albright, secretary of state (1998).

The global pursuits of Superpower have a paradoxical effect. They cause the ”homeland” to appear shrunken in comparison with its global status, Lilliputian compared to the Gulliver of Superpower. The usage ”homeland” itself is revealing of a certain sense of diminution, of reduction to a beleaguered refuge. ”Superpower,” ”empire,” and ”globalization” all presuppose and depend upon inequalities of power while maintaining the illusion that somehow those inequalities are not retrojected into the homeland, that the refinement of methods of controlling ”crowds” or the denial of due process to American citizens is, at worst, an aberration rather than a prerequisite of Superpower and a contribution to inverted totalitarianism.46 In fact empire and Superpower undermine and implicitly oppose two presumably fundamental principles of American political ideology: that the Const.i.tution provides the standard for a government of limited powers, and that American governance and politics are democratic.

Despite the incongruity and inherent tensions between unlimited global hegemony and const.i.tutionally limited domestic power, between arbitrary power projected abroad (unilateralism, preemptive war) and democratic power responsible to the citizenry at home, the implications of Superpower, imperial power, and globalizing capital for democracy and const.i.tutionalism have not been publicly confronted, least of all during the 2004 presidential campaign. On the contrary, the defenders and pract.i.tioners of these extraordinary forms of power profess to be employing Superpower to force the values of American democracy and the inst.i.tutions of the free market upon the world. For their part American citizens are expected to support the project of imposing democracy while remaining in denial of their own complicity in ravaging foreign populations and economies. Americans have conveniently forgotten their own disastrous experiment in imposing democracy at the point of a bayonet when, after the Civil War, the victorious North tried to ”reconstruct” the South.

Innocents at home, Terminators abroad . . .

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Demotic Moments.

I.

We of the United States, you know, are const.i.tutionally

and conscientiously democrats.

-Thomas Jefferson.

America, the world's first land of opportunity to become a democrat . . .

-SSW.

Morning/Mourning in America.

-SSW.

. . . a mourning over the failure of a project that nonetheless cannot be relinquished.

-Jurgen Habermas.

Any prospect of revitalizing democracy in America should not a.s.sume that we can start afresh. It is not morning in America. The first step should be to reflect on the changes of the past half century that have distorted the cultural supports of democracy and eroded its political practices while preparing the way for a politics and political culture favorable to inverted totalitarianism.