Excerpts from a post entitled "Incrementalism" originally posted
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
....
All through the Bush years, Incrementalism was touted on the so-called Progressive Internets as the Only Appropriate Response to Bushevik Radicalism. The very fact that the Busheviks were Radical and (counter)Revolutionary, especially in their foreign policies and their overthrow of the remnants of Constitutional law and so forth, was frequently denied or obscured by prominent Lefty bloggers ... so as not to stir up the masses too much about what was going on. Or one supposes the rationale behind the Incrementalist fervor during the Bush years was simple self-protection.
After all, the Stasi was watching, and at any time, so the thinking went, the round ups could begin, starting with anyone and everyone spouting off against the Regime and calling for Revolution Now! There was one incident over at [Greenwald's] that highlighted what THAT was about when [a frequent commenter] freaked over something I said: "Who should be first against the wall when the Revolution comes?"
O. M. G. You'd think the "Marxist Cell" that is the Greenwaldian patch of the Internets had been discovered. I'd used the quote before (it's from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, c. 1972, and it has a long history in geeky comic lit. The quote from Hitchhiker's Guide runs as follows:
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
And this has been making the rounds for decades. Yet both times I used the quote/idea in postings on the internets the proprietors and/or their agents ... have gone ape shit in fear that someone would break down their door at midnight and drag them and their family away to the Konzentrationslager forthwith.
I noticed that the current crop of Obomba Scandals!!!!! opened up almost immediately after the Correspondents' Dinner in April, almost on cue, and that the leading Obomba Scandals!!!! (Benghazi, IRS, Spying on the AP) had been in the hopper for quite some time. They were not "news," they were rehashed previous stories, pumped up to Frenzy Level 12. All of them had been reported on previously -- some, like Benghazi, becoming memes.
Suddenly, we saw the spectacle of Washington, particularly the White House, scrambling and babbling and doing its level best to both inflate and deflate these Scandals!!!! -- depending on which political team was being played for at any given moment. Polling the rabble was constant. Interestingly, none of these Scandals!!!! were resonating much with the public, so another one was introduced, Spying on a FOX reporter!!!! That got a momentary rise, but then even it seemed to settle into the background noise.
These Scandals!!!!! were not catching fire with the unwashed masses, and the White House seemed to be handling each one deftly. Rope-a-Doping Issa was easy. Calling for heads to roll was easy. Some sacrificial heads were offered up, "reforms" were launched, the Frenzy died down.
Then there came the Snowden Thing from the Guardian, and All Holy Hell broke loose -- at least for a time -- as the Nation's Sekrits!!!! were Exposed!!!! EVERYONE WAS BEING SPIED ON ALL THE TIME, AIYEEEE!!!! Run for your lives, Children, we're all going to DIEEEEEE!!!!
Yes, well. When the AP Surveillance story was being pumped up, I, among others, pointed out that everyone was subject to intrusive surveillance, had been for a long time, and now it seemed the AP was demanding an exemption. Why should they be exempt when the People are not? At what point do we turn this around and demand that the universal and blanket surveillance that everyone is under be curtailed?
I thought it was interesting at the time that quite literally no one was paying any attention to the fact that universal surveillance had been institutionalized thanks to the abrogation of responsibility by Congress, and it had been going on for years. Supposedly anti-terrorist, the surveillance was obviously in place to protect and defend the Overclass from interference by the Rabble. The obvious proof was in the OWS surveillance revelations that never got a lot of media but which are really quite shocking, especially for the granular level of surveillance of OWS and the coordination of surveillance and suppression by government and corporate interests throughout the land. This indicated that when it comes to perceived threats to the Ruling Class, the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments to the Constitution are essentially inoperative. And there is a vast ground level surveillance apparat in place, coordinated out of Washington, to ensure that it is so.
And nobody pumping the Scandals!!!! seemed to care. The only thing that mattered to them was that the media was being spied on: OUTRAGEOUS!!!! Except the Public didn't care about that. The Big Media had so little credibility with the public that whether or not reporters were being tailed by gumshoes was utterly irrelevant to most people. The public indifference toward the media's whining about being spied on seemed to come as a shock to the insular Big Media Club. How dare the rabble not care!!!?
Yes, well. That's how it goes when you betray the public's trust over and over and over again, which was how the Big Media had been operating for the entirety of the last decade and more -- at least since the Judicial Coup of 2000, and many would say since well before that, given all the phony Scandals!!!!! the Big Media < cough NYT cough > manufactured and marketed during the Clinton Apocalypse. The Post-Modern Media was as thoroughgoing an embarrassment to the concept of a Free Press as had ever seen the light of day, and that was saying something, considering how appallingly bad media had been in previous eras.
But just as that Scandal!!!!! was dying down thanks to public indifference, the Snowden Thing popped up at the Guardian and it was like manna from heaven to the parched and starving Big Media. Finally! Something to catch and hold the interest of the masses! Hurrah!
And of course what it was about was exactly what the previous failed Scandals!!!!! were not: the universal surveillance of everyone all the time, something that most people can actually relate to, though they may not be particularly opposed to it -- depending on whether or not people they know are caught up in the Programs.
Yet the Snowden Thing is faltering, partly because of the somewhat bizarre nature of the skip tracing that's (apparently) taking place to apprehend the culprit. Much the same thing happened with Julian Assange, as I was reminded last night when Frontline re-ran their "WikiSecrets" program from 2010. The similarities between the Assange/Manning Thing and the Snowden Thing were remarkable. I was reminded of a lot things, including own my minor involvement in the story. Oh dear, what had I done?
At any rate, in looking back, not only on that but on the HBGary Thing that would come up not long afterwards, I felt the kind of disorientation I sometimes feel when things seem to be entering the Twilight Zone. Or is it Chinatown?
In this case, I'm asking, "Does the United States have a government anymore, or are Our Rulers just winging it?" And if they are, just who are they?
Obama and his Team? Uh, well, that's been debatable from the outset, as we saw when he set out to do certain things, like shut down the Guantanamo Gulag, and immediately he was beset by harpies, led by the contemptible daughter of One Dick Cheney, Ruler Imperial Forever or Something. Every time she -- or he, now that he has someone else's heart -- opens their piehole, all of Washington, and particularly the White House, trembles. It is obvious as sin that they are, literally, in charge. But on whose behalf?
They -- House Cheney -- are able to publicly order Obama around like a string puppet. It's shocking. Congress is supine in the face of their bluster. WTF? As for the courts, ha. It's not simple corruption with the courts, it's something orders of magnitude worse, for We, the People have neither standing nor influence over issues like law and justice and so forth. At least in a corrupt judicial system, the People have some say, some of them even have some control, and if you know who they are, which you probably do, you at least have a chance.... in the current system, though, the People are kept completely in the dark, it's all a Big Secret.
Is there a government in the sense the public understands the concept of "government" any more? Or has what once was the Government become entirely a matter of certain private interests contending with one another to operate the levers of power on their own -- private -- behalf, either ignoring or exploiting the People in the process?
Is there really any question about it any more?
When I see the devolution of these issues into hatred for one or another of the political actors in the drama -- whether it be Obama or any other -- I shake my head in disgust. Obama and Bush were strolling around Africa together the other day, as if they were old buddies, much as Clinton and Bush stroll around together these days, and what's necessary to see here is that it -- the Presidency at the least and the governing class the Presidency serves is a continuum, not a discreet series of individuals to be hailed or excoriated in turn. Banging on about how wonderful or awful whoever sits on the Throne of Office may be simply gets nowhere. It's a form of venting to be sure, but beyond that, what good is it?
If, as seems to be, government is out of the People's hands altogether, and our public-private-partnership surveillance state fully intends to keep it that way forever and ever, amen, what, then, must we do?
That is the question for which we have no universal answer as yet, though many, many answers are being sought and experimented with. Sometimes the answer is right there in front of us, sometimes it has to be the product of struggle great or small, sometimes there is no answer -- or as is often the case, the answer is "no."
Submission and compliance and required economic extractions are all Our Rulers really want from us in any case.
As long as they believe they have that, we are, of course, free.
For some time -- quite a few years, in fact -- I have been writing and commenting about the need for Americans to rise up in opposition to the screwage we've been undergoing first as playthings of the neo-cons, then for a change of emphasis, as neo-liberal objects of utility. Or disposal, as the case may be.
"Rising up" is typically characterized as Revolution, and I've written extensively on that topic, too, a good deal of which was written during the Bush Regime.
As far as I know, most of what I wrote about Revolution wound up in Salon's archive dumptster and I have no access to it now, but the point I argued most often at the time -- going back to 2001 -- was that the Busheviks were themselves a Revolutionary force or cadre; they achieved power through a judicial coup and they were using their power to implement a Rightist Revolutionary program, a program that included the institutionalization of an Imperial State, the extinction of the Constitutional Republic once and for all, and the implementation of a corporate-kleptocratic economy.
The Busheviks and their neo-con hangers-on were Revolutionary in part because they could be, in part because they wanted to be, and in part because they were embarked on a transformational crusade from which they could not be dissuaded.
Their opposition, such as it was, in that context was counter-Revolutionary, primarily interested in accommodating the Revolutionaries' demands and preserving what they could salvage of the status quo.
At the time, many people did not see and refused to believe how truly radical and Revolutionary the Busheviks were. Soon enough, especially after the attacks on 9/11 and the subsequent clearly domestic Anthrax attacks, the government of the United States was completely overhauled and transformed into that of an Imperial War-State, run out of the White House bunkers, served by an impotent and compliant Congress and an ambivalent court.
The People, to the extent they were considered at all, were at best considered accessories and props to the Pageant of Empire, to be manipulated and controlled by an enthusiastically complicit media into believing anything the Imperial Headquarters wanted them to. And they did, in their multitudes. They didn't rise up against what was being done to them, they embraced it.
Millions of people in the streets, "singing songs and carrying signs," in protest against the Iraq War -- a full-on, up front, balls out, Imperial war of aggression -- were ostentatiously ignored, protest of any kind was corralled, mocked and dismissed. Remember "Free Speech Zone" and directives from the Busheviks and their spokespeople about what sort of protest and protest message was "acceptable?"
The public treasury was promptly and efficiently looted -- these people do know how to plunder -- and taxation on the favored corporate and wealth sectors was virtually eliminated.
The People did not rise up even after they became uneasy about the course of events when some of the horrors being perpetrated in their names in Iraq and elsewhere became known, when their rights as citizens were dispensed with, even when the economy imploded.
The People were passive, nearly mute. There was no rising up, no People's Revolt, nothing.
When you think about American history and especially the history of resistance to tyranny and exploitative authority, this situation was distinctly odd. The whole country, and its entire tradition and systems of governance was being turned on its head, and the People did nothing. They continued to drudge along quietly, performing the rituals of voting as if they still mattered, becoming obsessed with candidates for office while their pockets were being picked by the corporate raiders who were the real powers behind the Throne.
It was so eerie that people abroad were amazed. "What is wrong with Americans that they resist not, neither do they rise up, nor even do they complain except in the most servile fashion?"
During the Bushevik reign, the Revolutionary changes in the Nation's state of being became normalized.
Most people either didn't notice or they didn't care.
But when the economy collapsed like the house of cards it was, the meme of Change took hold, the need for redemption was recognized, and Barack Obama was sent to sit on the Throne.
It was clear to me during his campaign that his principal role, once in office, was to manage the masses, to keep them in line during the forthcoming unpleasantness. He demonstrated many times that he was a master at it. The People who had grown weary of the Busheviks, their casual cruelties, their plundering ways, and their lies, saw salvation was nigh, and so Obama won the election.
It's impossible to imagine that Crabby Old Man and Herself, the candidates who stood against him in the election, performing the role he was assigned and doing it even a fraction as well.
That said, an ersatz "populist revolt" against him was engineered immediately after the 2008 election and was put in operation through numerous radio and some television ads. It was called "Grassfire, We Resist" (I've mentioned it before, no point in going into details here) and that revolt was transformed into the Tea Party shortly after the inauguration, and we know what that led to: an intensification of the neo-liberal economic follies, and even greater institutionalization of the Imperial Security State. That done, the rebels rested.
Except that another, unexpected, populist revolt got under way last September, Occupy Wall Street that almost immediately spread across the entire nation and overseas. This was the first real mass uprising the nation had seen since the Sixties, and it was clear the authorities had no idea what to do about it.
From very early on, Revolution was in the air; nonviolent Revolution to be sure, but Revolution just the same.
Not a counter-Revolution that would try to reverse the Bushevik-Obama Imperial Revolution, and return to some idealized status quo ante. No. This would be a real Revolution, forward thinking, not going back to anything in the past but forging a brand new path into the Future.
"We are unstoppable; another world is possible."
Six months into it, some people are recognizing the beginnings of success, especially in the more militant outposts of the Movement -- like the O-Place, Oakland.
And it is understandably terrifying.
Many people who signed up for Occupy This or That didn't sign on to Revolution; many who thought that Revolution was called for didn't think this would be it. But there's a Revolution going on anyway, no matter what they thought they were signing up for, and in Oakland, it's getting really scary.
"Victory" is nigh. Is Oakland what a successful Revolution will look like? They aren't there yet, so it's hard to say. They've achieved the first-level victory of de-legitimizing civic authority, but where does it go from there? Either nobody knows or nobody's saying.
A first-level victory standing alone, without a sufficiently coordinated and militant follow up is not ultimately a Revolutionary victory at all.
For example, the militant students at UC Davis achieved a spectacular first-level victory by delegitimizing the authority of the campus police and the administration during and immediately after the Pepper Spray Incident.
They thereupon called for the disbanding of the UC Police, the immediate resignation of the chancellor and a cessation of tuition increases. They held a huge campus rally which I attended, at which they heard contrition from the chancellor and her pledge to do better, they vowed to reestablish their encampment and press their demands relentlessly until they were met.
They might have done so except for the winter break that came swiftly, emptying the campus, but not before the students literally ceded power right back to the administration that had abused them. They did it at a town hall that combined both contrition and control by the administrators in one of the slickest events of the kind I've seen.
By appearing to listen and repeatedly expressing contrition for past misdeeds, and by vowing "full investigation of what happened," and promising that nothing like the Pepper Spray Incident would happen again, the students' emotional demands were satisfied, and the power of their anger was defused.
Not to say this was a totally fraudulent show -- I'll let Nathan Brown say that -- but apart from mitigating the overt brutality of the UC Police, and allowing (even enabling) the re-establishment of the encampment, very little change has actually taken place, and few or none of the students' other demands have been met; there are no reports, for example, and conclusions from the 'investigations' are long past due. Tuition increases have not been mitigated or cancelled. The campus is quiet; the rebellion has been tamed. Linda Katehi is hailed far and wide for successful management of the situation. Voila! No Revolution in Davis.
See how this works?
That's how a Revolution is defused, but in city after city, with Oakland as a sort of Revolutionary pivot, authorities have responded to the militancy of the Occupiers, with ever increasing levels of violence, destruction of property, brutality and mass arrest of demonstrators. That is how authority adds fuel to the fire of Revolution.
What happens to the people who didn't sign up for Revolution who are caught in the middle?
We're seeing the tragic results of what can happen play out in places like Libya and Syria, where the People rose up, believed they could achieve real change through non-violent means, were ruthlessly cut down time and again by what I metaphorically refer to as "The Tsar's Cossaks", which led soon enough to an armed insurrection which in Libya turned into a civil war, the conduct of which was very bloody, the outcome of which was determined by the intervention of outside interests through NATO.
In Syria the nonviolent resistance campaign was met with extravagant levels of state violence and bloodshed, which in turn triggered an armed insurrection which is being countered with even more state bloodlust, inspiring more armed resistance as well as outside intervention on behalf of the rebels -- or so the intervention (sanctions for now) is being propagandized.
In both of these tragic examples of what can happen when nonviolent resistance is met with gross state violence and bloodshed, rather than any attempt at listening to and "taking steps" demanded by the rebels, thousands of noncombatants caught in the middle are paying for someone else's Revolution with their homes and their lives.
There is no sign at all that Occupy will in any way turn into an armed insurrection, but nonviolent demonstrations are being met with increasing levels of police violence, in which many hundreds have been wounded and some nearly killed. Many people who did not sign up for this sort of resistance and the violent response of the police have been caught up in it, and many are conflicted about it and are speaking out.
For the most part, they want "the violence" to end; and most don't want a Revolution at all. The question becomes one of how to stop it, or whether those engaged even want to stop it.
Defusing a Revolution is simple enough if it is done early on; the longer the struggle continues, the harder it is to defuse. What if the authorities don't want to defuse the situation, they want to crush the rebels? And what if they are prepared to do it through any means necessary, including jeopardizing the safety of the non-Revolutionary minded?
And what is the responsibility of the Revolutionaries for the safety of those who are caught in the middle of the conflict, a conflict that potentially can't be defused (because it's too late or because the authorities don't want to defuse it)?
While the issues surrounding Violent/Nonviolent action and reaction are being worked on by various elements in the Occupy Movement, there are somewhat bigger issues looming. The question of responsibility for the safety of non-Revolutionaries in a conflict situation is one of them.
Incrementalism preserves the status quo while Incrementalists are working (lazily or diligently, it doesn't matter) to "improve" some aspect of the situation. Incrementalists don't want any sudden or significant change in the methods of operations or the institutions through which they work, nor do they want their "improvements" to be too sudden or significant. This is the whole theory of "baby-steps." You build a little bit here and a little bit there, a teensy bit at a time, and very gradually, things get better.
Meanwhile, all that is rotten and wrong is preserved from precipitous harm or decline (and is still able to make advances, incrementally, as well) and general stability of systems is maintained.
Preserving the status quo is essential for Incrementalism to function. Radical change is anathema to Incrementalists...
Except...
The Busheviks were truly radical, and what they wanted to do from the outset was change the status quo; in other words to permanently redirect the interest and energy of the systems they were in charge of. They were setting a new direction for those systems, not building on previous minor changes or adjustments. In some respects they were Revolutionary (or Counter-Revolutionary) in that they were intent on changing the systems themselves, overthrowing the remnants of what went before and putting in place something else again (widely characterized as the Unitary Executive, but known in previous eras as a Tyrant/Dictator/Autocrat).
They were largely successful.
They accomplished their task very quickly (of course, given the boost of the 9/11 attacks, the speed of their transformation was accelerated); there was little or no effective resistance inside the government, and there was none at all -- that they felt any need to pay attention to -- outside it, in the streets, in the media, or railing on the Internets.
They simply bulled their way through.
Even when voters seemed to reject their radicalism (ie: in the 2006 congressional elections) the radicals still bulled their way. The opposition was no opposition at all when enough of them could always be found to collaborate with the radicals to form a working majority in the increasingly corrupt and discredited congress. It was literally breathtaking.
And now from the sidelines, Radical-In-Chief Cheney and his daughter continually snipe at any backsliding from the radicalism of the Busheviks, essentially asserting the permanence of the radical changes they made to the status quo in their brief time at the helm. And they get away with it.
Their sniping -- while sometimes countered with White House snark -- usually seems to work. Backsliding is reversed, and the radical Bushevik status quo is preserved or extended.
Progressives are disillusioned again. But they can't seem to do anything about it.
Partly, I argue, it's because they don't want to. Not really. With Incrementalism at their core, they do not seek or want radical change, and they would never attempt radical change on their own. If someone else does it, that's another thing altogether, and if radical change comes through no effort of their own, and it significantly alters the status quo, then these Incrementalist-Progressives will support the New Status Quo while continuing on their chosen path of Incremental, bit-by-bit, baby-step "improvements" to whatever the New Status Quo might be.
That's where we are right now.
And it's discombobulating a lot of folks who are still on a pre-Radical path of Incremental change. They're still trying to work through institutions that have atrophied or been destroyed, using systems that have been fundamentally corrupted.
It's disturbing to see the dysfunction of the Congress, for example, in such detail as we've seen throughout the Health Care Reform psycho-drama. The House is barely able to come up with something that at best gives only a hat tip to the Public Interest; the Senate is incapable of even that. And there is a very strong suspicion that the White House has been orchestrating all of it in a cynical move to further consolidate the Neo-Liberal side of the Corporatist endeavor that is Our Government.
Of course the Courts were long ago corrupted and folded into the Autocracy; after all, it was a seriously flawed Supreme Court decision that installed the Busheviks in power in the first place and which then sustained most of their most radical initiatives, as it has most recently done, tellingly, by refusing to review a lower court ruling that sustains the power of the President (as Autocrat) to declare anyone at all at any time an "enemy combatant", to strip them of any and all human rights, to order or allow their torture (which the subject should "expect") and to deny them any redress of grievance whatsoever. This is Law? Well, yes, yes it is.
That's now the Status Quo.
Incrementalists by their nature will support it -- while attempting gradual mitigations. That's what the Obama administration is doing, forthrightly, without apology. It is "change" of a sort, in that the Obama administration isn't the Radical Institution Overthrowing Counter Revolutionary endeavor the Bushevik Regime was, but it certainly isn't the kind of "change" that some people (even many Incrementalists) were anticipating.
No, they'd become used to the radicalism of Bushevism, and they instinctively accepted that Radical Change had become the New Status Quo, and they were expecting it to continue, on a different path, with the ascension of the Good Emperor, Barack Hussein Obama.
But no. That's not what happened at all. So there is plenty of keening and rending of garments over Barack's betrayal. But he's not "betraying" anything but the illusions of those who assumed he would continue radical operations.
No, Barack the Good is an Incrementalist, and the "change" he was marketing so well was the change from Radicalism to Incrementalism.
The systems the radicals put in place are now the Status Quo -- which was the Busheviks' intention, after all. Those systems are now being subject to gradual, incremental mitigations and adjustments.
THAT'S the "Change You Can Believe In."
Is that really so hard to understand?
[Note: I've been using the portrait of Ahkenaten as an avatar of Obama. I think there's a physical resemblance. But more importantly, it is the notion of Radical Change that seemed to accompany Obama throughout the campaign that Ahkenaten symbolizes that I wanted to convey. Given the upshot of this post, however, Ahkenaten may no longer be the historical figure I should use. I may have to go back to Hoover.]
The interregnum is over. George W Bush was dismissed the other day to a chorus of lusty boos -- boos that were covered over by the sounds of clomping in the hallways of the Capitol on most of the tee vee coverage of the Inauguration, but not, apparently, on MSNBC. The video at the end of this post is from the crowd's perspective and it is even more of a rebuke to Bush.
The People despise him. They despise what he has done, what he has said, what he has believed.
Yet throughout his Regime of error, disaster, death, destruction, and multiple dashed hopes and dreams, he was preserved from experiencing the depth of the People's disgust with him and his policies.
Until Tuesday.
When finally the pent up loathing of the People for this man and all he has wrought was let loose for a few minutes of spirited popular contempt. "Bad form. Bad form," say the gasbags.
Yes. To them, to the Courtiers who have infested the Palace the last eight years, it's all about form. There is nothing but form in their minds, and all they ever really wanted was to keep things on an even footing, following the rules of etiquette, keeping things civil. Even when, as was so often the case, the level of outrageousness -- and complete contempt for the basic rules of civilization itself -- by the White House and its denizens was almost beyond comprehension.
When the History of this era is written, I'm pretty confident that the Bushevik Regime and all its operatives will be deemed an Outlaw regime. The question will be whether history will romanticise this set of American Outlaws or will they be condemned?
America loves its Outlaws. No matter how bad the Busheviks have been in real time, they have some supporters, not all of whom are drooling, braindead zombies.
After all, a whole cohort of financiers and others became incredibly rich under the Bush Regime, and most of them still have oodles of money with which to buy any kind of future history they want, regardless of the wreakage all around them.
But Outlaws they will be. They were put in office by an Outlaw Supreme Court majority, a majority whipped by the Court's most notorious Outlaw Justice, Antonin Scalia, a man who should have been impeached and then arrested long ago. But that didn't happen, and given all the hooey over letting bygones be bygones, water under the bridge, tut-tut, and not bringing any of the Busheviks and their running dogs and fellow travellers to account, it wouldn't be at all surprising if these Outlaws were held up as romantic idealists by writers of the future.
The stunning lawlessness of the Bush Regime will have quite a legacy, too. The formerly balky and deeply flawed Constitutional Republic is now a balky and deeply flawed Autocracy run out of the White House and its ancillaries and bunkers. That's unlikely to change any time in the near future, barring the upheaval of revolt and revolution -- something which still seems impossible in America thanks to the fact that most Americans simply don't care what kind of government they have.
And that's how these Outlaws are getting away with it.
By now, everybody in the whole wide world knows that Dear Leader was assaulted by a pair of rogue shoes thrown by an Iraqi journalist at the Sacred Head of the Free World while His Leaderness declaimed from the podium about the Astonishing Success of the Surge.
The journalist tossed off some cute phrases, too, before he was wrestled to the ground and hauled away by Security:
(as reported at FDL:)
First Shoe:
This is the gift from the Irakis this is the farewell kiss you dog.
Second Shoe:
This is from the widows, the orphans and those killed in Irak
Obviously not mentally stable. Certain adjustments will no doubt be made be made.
Meanwhile, when asked about being assaulted by native shoes in Baghdad, His Extreme Eminence had this to say:
So what...?
We say we'll only have to put up with this crap for a month or so longer, a month that can't pass quickly enough for most people, but the question is why so many people in America and around the world put up with this crap at all. Of course there is a simple answer: It's a matter of Power. When someone like Bush has the Power to annihilate most of Creation and appears to be just itching to use that Power on anyone and everyone who gets in his way, it's understandable that most people will let him get away with it. Stand aside. Smile while they're smoldering with rage and outrage.
The exceptions to this rule will always be few. It's human nature.
The Iraqi Shoe Thrower may have catalyzed something, though.
The realization that for all his Power, Bush has been a real weakling throughout his tenure on the Throne. He's been played for a fool over and over again, used as a puppet by Cheney and all kinds of nefarious "interests" -- not just the Neo-Conmen, but very prominently by them -- and will leave office with little but economic, political, and material wreckage to show for his term in the White House. Quite an accomplishment.
Throwing shoes may lift the spirit for the moment, but the Legacy of Bush and his cronies will be a tough one to overcome.
Therefore, an episode of Nick Danger, Third Eye is definitely called for:
No I didn't forget. I was even watching the call -- right after the polls closed on the West Coast -- on teevee. It was really something. The excitement in the air was palpable, and the numerous crowd shots on all the channels, the joyous tears of the multitude, the shouts of glee, all were very moving.
It was a long time coming. A hard fought battle. And a battle won.
The future prognosis is guarded.
No one can say with any certainty what the situation will be like in the few months it will take for the transition. I was looking for signs before the election that the Busheviks were actually going to vacate the government they had for so long used and abused for their own selfish purposes and interests, and there were no such signs. Now they seem to be everywhere (though whether Darth Cheney will actually leave his undisclosed location is anyone's guess. Maybe he'll hole up there permanently with Holy Joe Lieberman and we'll just have to cement over the entrance.)
Bush is actually leaving. Or so it would seem. Good riddance. It won't be soon enough for millions around the world.
I saw Obama's press conference on the economy, thought he did OK, though he seemed to be somewhat halting in his responses to reporters' questions. Halting, and compared to the loquatiousness of so many presidential types, he was very brief. Mercifully so.
The Revolution has been going on since Reagan's advent; it's been consolidated and perfected under the Bushevik regime, to the point where, now, with the triumphant passage of the FISA "reform" measure, the Reagan --->Bushevik Revolution is all but complete.
There is no Republic any more, and there will be no return to what Our Founders had in mind. That experiment is over.
There cannot be a "Revolution" from this point on, at least not for a generation or more; now there can only be accommodation, assimilation, or civil war. But if there is a civil war, it will come from the darker regions of the right, not from the left, for the left has been wholly neutered. The very idea of physical struggle disturbs Modern Progressives; if it can't be argued rationally, without physical action or struggle, it is not a valid premise, it is not worthy of Serious Consideration, it is not real.
With no rising from the Left (such as remains of a Left in this country) and the only likely physical struggle against assimilation into the Imperium coming from the right, we are in for some interesting times indeed.
[Note: For those who don't click through the YouTube video above, it's a performance by Marty Balin and Slick Aguilar in April of 2008 at the Turning Point Cafe in Piermont, NY. For those who aren't old enough to remember, Marty Balin was a member of Jefferson Airplane, a seminal counterculture band of the '60's. When there was a... Revolution. "Volunteers of America" was one of the anthems of that... Revolution. And Marty's still out there performing it. Heh.]
Politico's Mike Allen went over to Borders in DC and bought a copy of Little Scotty McClellan's book -- which is to be released next week, hmmm -- and then blared all over creation that Little Scotty is dissing Bush and -- get this -- the Media, and all of a sudden there is massive spin under way to protect and defend the Media and the Busheviks from the dangers of an insider run amok.
Just observe Timmeh's "concern" in the clip above. This is, like, serious as a heart attack.
Propaganda
Permanent campaign
Serious strategic blunder
Insulated from reality
Deceiving
Lie
State of denial
Out of touch
As Meridith says, he's just plain bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter Little Man.
Pissy Pants has sent his envoys over to the Sudan to treat with the genocidal dictator thereof, one Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Despoiler of Darfur, according to the Washington Post story linked at MSNBC.com, Scourge of All Things Bush and Hillary.
Lucky us.
So, it would seem there are some genocidal dictators it's perfectly acceptable to negotiate with, in Bush World, so long as he or his people are doing the chit-chat; the minute someone else does it or says they will, it's Chamberlainian Appeasement to be denounced at home and in foreign lands.
Got it.
Bashir's government has been accused by Bush of participating in a "genocide" in Darfur, the only U.S. government use of such a strong accusation. Yet Richard S. Williamson's visit to Khartoum follows a series of direct contacts by senior Bush administration officials with the Sudanese president, including Secretaries of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Rice's deputies, and several special presidential envoys.
Bush has spoken to or exchanged letters with Bashir on numerous occasions, underscoring how White House policy has departed from his pointed public call to shun talks with radical tyrants and dictators. His appointees have also pursued aggressive diplomacy with North Korea and Libya and have even conducted limited business with Cuba, Syria and Iran.
In the case of Sudan, experts are deeply divided about how much the administration's engagement has improved conditions in a country beset for decades by mass violence and famine. It has at least provoked charges of hypocrisy, because Bush recently accused those advocating talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other radical figures of "appeasement."
"The Bush administration has spent years not only talking at very senior levels with one of the world's worst tyrants, who is responsible for genocide, but also reportedly offered the regime major concessions in exchange for minor steps and rolled out the red carpet for some of its most reprehensible officials," said Susan E. Rice, who handled Africa policy in the Clinton administration and is a top adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
Of course the issue isn't "appeasement" at all, it's maintaining power, authority and control over not just the processes of government and diplomacy, but the very act of thinking about them.
Thus, anyone else who does or says something about diplomatic overtures toward foes, real or imagined, is instantly tarred with the "appeasement" brush because that's the means to defend political power over opposition. What the Bush regime does, including appeasing foes (such as by withdrawing bases from Saudi Arabia, overthrowing Saddam, etc, both of which were desired and/or ordered by the Arch Devil Usama) may have nothing at all to do with the rhetoric it uses in pursuit and exerecise of power.
Of course Americans have been witnessing this for years, and they're heartily sick of it. They see Princess McCain trying to pull the same sort of crap.
What's interesting in some ways is that the Washington Post has chosen to call "bullshit" here.
Digby, dday, and tristero over at Hullabaloo have been doing yeoman work flogging (er...) the torture issue with some of the most compelling and definitive posts anywhere.
Scott Horton all but burned himself out on it over at Harpers.
And still most of our leading media outlets cannot bring themselves to call what our government does to its captives "torture," except by indirection or reference to what "some people say."
Most Americans, apparently, don't much care what happens to the captives in any case, any more than most good upstanding Americans cared what happened to captive Native Peoples or slaves when time was.
Captives, almost by definition, aren't really human, are they? So what happens to them, whether it works to stop the ticking time bomb or not, is of no particular consequence. As long as we don't see it or hear it, let our government or its contractors torture away.
Because our Congress won't hold the Bushevik regime to account through Constitutional means, those who are working against torture have to employ other mechanisms such as defunding the mercenaries and contractors, some of whom have been implementing the torture regime so as to provide some means of plausible deniability to the government. But even that is a long shot.
Until and unless the torture regime is stopped, however, and those responsible held to the strictest account, our nation's moral standing will be no higher than the dirt on which we walk.
Was there ever an empire so determined to self-immolate?
Just for the sake of argument, let's say that Cheney holes up in his bunker at the Naval Observatory and ShitBoy and Pickles hole up at the White House cum Winter Palace and -- following recent examples in Kenya or Zimbabwe -- refuse to acknowledge the election results this November (assuming Scarlett McCain is squashed like a bug as the Warrior Princess should be) and declare their Necessity to the Nation. Or, even more interesting, let's say that "events" -- of whatever kind, there are so many possibilities -- interfere with the conduct of an election, and there isn't one this November, but the masses become restless out of economic or other distress. Whatever the case, the usurping Cheney regime makes clear its intent to hold on to the government it seized in 2000/2001.
What do you do? Do you storm the Winter Palace?
I think not.
First, note that gaining access to the White House and/or Naval Observatory is no easier for Americans than it was for the Russian Proletariat to gain access to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo where the Romanovs actually were. Notice that in the picture above, which is of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in 1917, the People were able to assemble right at the front door. There was and is a vast parade ground directly in front of the Winter Palace where both rebels and Romanov cheerleaders had been gathering for generations.
Both the White House and the Naval Observatory are deep in parks surrounded by heavy fencing and heavily armed security. Physically getting to these seats of the Imperium is no easy task, and trying it would result in much bloodletting. Which is one reason why no one except real cranks ever tries it. Any more than the assembled multitudes were able to get directly to the Alexander Palace or the Palace of Versailles.
No, when the Revolution came, in Paris, in St Petersburg, the monarch was either brought to the People from his redoubt (as in the case of Louis XVI) or was shut up in his suburban palace by his own guards (as in the case of Nicholas II). Something similar would have to happen if Americans ever took action against a usurping autocracy.
The miscreants would have to be brought to, say, the Capitol in DC. Or maybe somewhere else. Independence Hall in Philadelphia? Liberty Island? Hm?
And that would have to be done by their own Praetorians. Or on their own volition.
Not very likely, is it? Yet stranger things have happened.
Or let's say Scarlett McCain is given the Presidency through patently fraudulent "election" manipulation -- of which, of course, there is no perfect proof. There never is.
And let's say Scarlett swans to his inauguration on the steps of the Capitol, while hundreds of thousands of proles hurl invective from miles away (the revival of First Amendment Zones). Do they break free of their confinement and storm the Capitol, thus spoiling McCain's Perfect Moment?
Probably not.
What would Americans do under those circumstances?
Grumble? Write furious emails? Watch it on teevee, calling for someone to pass the popcorn?
Between 1825 and 1917, there were numerous attempted revolts and uprisings in the shadow of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The rebels were routinely shot down by the Tsar's guards, or cut to pieces by the Cossacks. The Romanov Autocracy endured through them all, except the February Revolution of 1917, when the Provisional Government, first under Lvov then under Kerensky, abruptly terminated the Autocracy and shut the Romanovs up in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo ("Tsar's Village") outside of what was then known as Petrograd.
Came October 25 (or on our calendar, November 8), 1917, there was another revolt, this time by Lenin's and Trotsky's Bolsheviks, and the Winter Palace was once more under seige. Shortly, the Provisionals withdrew; the Soviet Union soon emerged under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The rest, as they say, is History.
"Storming the Winter Palace" became an iconic image in the Soviet Union in part due to Sergei Eisenstein's brilliant movie, "Октябрь" or "Ten Days that Shook the World" (1927).
The Winter Palace itself was the center of Russian rebellion for generations before the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty. It was not just the Tsar's in-town residence, it was the seat of the Russian Imperial Court, the government as it were, and the Winter Palace compound, begun by Peter the Great, came to symbolize everything good and everything malign in Tsarist Russia.
There was plenty of both.
By 1917, most of what the Winter Palace symbolized was malign. The Autocracy was rotten, corrupt, decadent and brittle, it was under immense strain due to Russian losses in World War I and privations on the home front, and its overthrow proved surprisingly easy when the time came.
For reasons that few can really understand, the Cheney/Busheviks have set themselves up a little autocracy of their own in our own Petrograd, Washington DC, and they have their own version of the Imperial Court within which their courtiers flit and sing praises.
In fact, our entire government has become the creature of this Autocracy, to the point where it has become a self-perpetuating institution divorced from The People, despite the illusion of periodic elections.
The image of Storming the Winter Palace starts taking on at least symbolic meaning under the circumstances.
Just recall the Romanov Autocracy endured about 300 years -- opposed from within and without for all that time -- and despite being one of the most repressive regimes on earth at the time of its fall, the Autocracy collapsed with barely a push when the revolution finally came.
Will our own Autocracy last as long? Or is it already as brittle and rotten as the Romanovs became?
