Arthur Silber: The State is become death. Our target can be anyone we choose. Yes, this means you. No, there is nowhere to run.

it's been a long time since i've posted anything by arthur silber and, truth be told, i'd forgotten just how articulate and powerful a writer he is... my thanks to chris floyd and information clearing house for re-introducing me to arthur...

In a culture that was healthy to any significant degree, the recent NYT article about the Obama administration's institutionalized, systematic program of murder by secret decree would have resulted in a deafening, sustained, nationwide howl of outrage and denunciation. In a healthy country -- and here, I use "healthy" in the sense described in an essay from four years ago: "to designate those goals and motives that can generally be described as supportive of individual life and happiness" -- the government's announcement that it regularly murders innocent human beings, wherever they may be in the world, for any reason the government wishes, and that the murderers are proud of their murders and plan to continue them indefinitely, would have propelled millions of people into the streets.

[...]

It is one thing for the ruling class to target the general domestic population on economic matters, as it has by systematically squeezing every last bit of wealth and opportunity out of "ordinary" Americans and shoveling all of it into the drooling maw of the rulers (and for many Americans, these methods of brutalization are already catastrophic in the extreme). It is very different when the ruling class announces to the world that it considers every human being on Earth not favored by power and privilege to be fair game in a neverending campaign of slaughter.

Yet there are no crowds in the street. Forget howls of fury; you can listen with the greatest concentration of which you are capable, and you will detect barely a whimper. Life goes on precisely as before, as if nothing of great moment has happened.

[...]

These people are monsters. This is profoundly evil. All these people, all those who collaborate and assist in such a program, have placed themselves far beyond any limit of what can be designated as civilization.

it's stunning how far down the hole we've fallen...

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"The Democrats are implicated in every single crime with which they would charge the members of the administration."

as long as i'm still hyperventilating about the passage of the fisa legislation and barely able to even think coherently, i'll let arthur speak for me...

Recently, there was much commotion on the progressive blogs, as the liberals breathlessly anticipated the possible impeachment of Gonzales. A voluminous record supports the immediate start of impeachment hearings for Bush and Cheney, which is where one would and must start if one were serious about stopping even one of these continuing crimes, and if the Democrats genuinely wanted to forestall an attack on Iran. But, contend many progressives, if we start with Gonzales, we can then begin to establish a record that will make the impeachment of Bush and Cheney more likely.

Passage of this FISA legislation, which approves and expands the unconstitutional and criminal acts already engaged in by the administration, turns any future effort to impeach Gonzales into intellectual hash. To approve this legislation and to simultaneously push for the impeachment of Gonzales represents the triumph of utter incoherence. The Democrats may have feared Republican attacks on any impeachment effort, and that the Republicans would accuse them of acting only out of partisan motives, devoid of any concern for political principle whatsoever. The Democrats themselves have now handed the Republicans conclusive proof that the Republican attacks would be entirely correct. If the Democrats were actually concerned about Gonzales' eminently impeachable actions, this legislation would have been laughed off the Hill.

But for the reasons set forth above (and a full case would fill many volumes), the Democrats are not going to impeach any of these criminals, barring events entirely unforeseeable at present. And they will not for one overwhelmingly significant and determinative reason: always with regard to the underlying principles, and frequently with regard to the specifics, the Democrats are implicated in every single crime with which they would charge the members of the administration. The Republicans' crimes are their crimes.

arthur simply does not comprehend how progressive bloggers can possibly be surprised at the complicity of our congressional democrats...

[I]n terms of the most critical fundamental principles, there is no difference whatsoever between the Republicans and the Democrats as institutions of power in the U.S. political system as it has developed over the last hundred years.

[...]

[T]hey both agree that the government must be empowered to do whatever it wants, with no constraints at all, even if those constraints are imposed by the Constitution itself.

[...]

[T]he progressives' central articles of religious faith: The Democrats aren't really like this, not in their heart of hearts. The Democrats don't actually favor a repressive, authoritarian state. The Democrats are good, and they want liberty and peace for everyone, everywhere, for eternity, hallelujah and amen.

People who continue to believe this have evicted themselves from serious political debate, and they have willingly made themselves slaves to their enthusiastically embraced self-delusions. They confess a comprehensive ignorance of history, a stunning inability to understand the political developments of the last century, and a desire to place the story they have chosen, primarily because it flatters their own false sense of vanity and self-worth, above every relevant fact.

[...]

What is true in foreign policy is also true in domestic policy. The Republicans and the Democrats both advance the growth of the corporatist state, as they have for the last century -- a state where key and hugely influential financial interests ally themselves with government power (including perhaps most significantly the military-industrial-congressional complex). As it expands and becomes increasingly corrupt, the corporatist state is also an authoritarian state: individual rights give way more and more to state power, in the form of proliferating laws, regulations, edicts, wiretapping and surveillance.

i have seriously wanted to believe that democrats could make a difference, but i was sadly mistaken... from the beginning of the congressional session in january, it's become horrifically clear that, when it comes to truly upholding our united states constitution, there is no daylight whatsover between the two parties... for both of them, it's all about money and power...

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Speaking up: something we all can do

Click here to sign the petition

(thanks to arthur via nicole at crooks and liars...)

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A passionate, articulate plea to Americans to WAKE TF UP!

i have only excerpted a small portion of what may be the most passionate, informed appeal for action i have read in a long time... read this and then go read the rest...

1. The criminal and immoral nature of an attack on Iran in the present circumstances and in the foreseeable future must be identified and stated with all the force imaginable, without qualification, in virtually every interview, every television appearance, and every news story that any politician (or any other public figure) takes part in, beginning tomorrow. THE INSANITY AND CRIMINALITY OF SUCH AN ATTACK MUST BE MADE NATIONAL TOPIC NUMBER ONE, UNTIL THIS ADMINISTRATION FULLY AND COMPLETELY DISAVOWS ANY AND ALL SUCH INTENTIONS AND PLANS -- AND UNTIL THE MAGNITUDE OF PUBLIC OPPOSITION CONVINCES US THAT THEY MEAN IT.

2. In every statement about an attack on Iran, no opponent of this administration can accept any of the terms of debate chosen by the administration. Such opponents must argue on completely different terms. If you argue within the framework they prefer to any extent at all, you will lose -- and the next global war may begin.

[...]

If I were an influential blogger active in Democratic politics, I would inform every presidential candidate and would-be candidate that, until and unless they stop using this kind of gutter language about leaving "all options on the table," THEY WILL RECEIVE NO SUPPORT FROM ME AT ALL. I would urge everyone else to similarly refuse to support them. If that eliminates all the candidates you have at the moment, THEN FIND BETTER ONES. Alternatively, do everything you can to convince the candidates you have to become BETTER ones themselves.

[...]

Most Americans have never heard an alternative point of view -- because almost no one in national life has an alternative point of view. [...] And consider a related point: most of you reading this are seriously engaged with political issues to one degree or another. But in many ways, that kind of involvement is a luxury unknown to most Americans. The great majority of Americans spend all their days, and often sleepless nights, worrying about very basic concerns: how to pay next month's rent, how to afford the medical care that one of the children needs very badly, whether they can afford to go to the movies -- or if they have to save that money for food next week. I think a lot of you who may read this forget how many Americans live. I don't forget it, in large part because I've lived with those kinds of concerns myself for the last few years, and continue to live that way now.

Most Americans rarely think about politics at all; they can't afford to, in any sense of that phrase. When they very briefly pay attention, they simply absorb the ideas that predominate on television or radio, or in newspapers they may occasionally glance at. Today, virtually everything they hear or read tells them that Iran is the "greatest threat" we face, and that an Iran with nuclear weapons is "intolerable" and "unacceptable." None of that is true...

needless to say, the very same rationale can be applied to the run-up to the current iraq disaster and those who supported it...

(thanks to crooks and liars...)

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Arthur Silber: "Large-scale public ignorance is necessary to the perpetuation of a fundamentally false national mythology"

it's a fact that to overcome our ignorance takes considerable time, serious thought, an open mind, and no small skill at discernment, but it can be done...

We see our success, and our power on the world stage, as inherently tied to superior moral virtue. We are so successful because we are uniquely virtuous, and our national power confirms our morality, in relation to which all other peoples and all other countries can only suffer in comparison.

[...]

Large-scale public ignorance is necessary to the perpetuation of a fundamentally false national mythology. [...] An honest observer knows that we learn only of some of the worst atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, those that cannot be denied or covered up. There are countless acts of barbarism about which we will never learn anything. And even when we cannot deny the occurrence of monstrous acts, we minimize and "explain" them using identical, contemptibly dishonest mechanisms.

Our mythology is crucially tied to our conception of our self-worth. For most of us, it is life itself. Dispense with the lies and death ensues, at least that is how many Americans experience it psychologically. I think only a monumental shock to these illusions -- in the form of a major economic collapse, a conflict of horrifying devastation, or by some other means -- will ever pry most Americans from these dangerous and destructive fables to which they cling with increasing desperation. In the meantime, the death and destruction will go on, exactly as they have before -- and most of us will do precious little to try to stop them.

what arthur describes is playing out today... the vast majority of the american citizenry sits passively by, preferring to believe that the u.s. could harbor nothing but the best of intentions, and the fact that the bush administration has screwed things up so royally could only be due to incompetence, rather than being a deliberate attempt to permanently alter the very nature of the country... will it take, as arthur argues, a "monumental shock" to wake people up...? i hope not, but, i do know this... our time is running out...


(thanks to crooks and liars...)

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