The End of The Illusion
Belief:
Is Belief in God Hurting America?
David Villano
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
4 Myths About Taxes, Debunked
Paul Buchheit
DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower
Environment:
White House Garden Won't Make Up for Obama's Nomination of Pesticide Lobbyist for US Chief Agriculture Negotiator
Jill Richardson
Food:
Don't Be Scared of Food: Are We Being Needlessly Hysterical About Food Safety?
David E. Gumpert
Health and Wellness:
47,000 Women Could Die As a Result of the New Mammogram Guidelines
George Lakoff
Immigration:
Hate Group, FAIR, Is Looking for "Ethnically Ambiguous" Actors to Amplify Its Racism
Adam Luna
Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
Just When You Thought It Was Safe: 3 Potential Obstacles to Health-Care Reform
Adele M. Stan
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Can't We Look Away From Sarah Palin?
Vanessa Richmond
Rights and Liberties:
Murder at Guantanamo? The Mysterious, Unsolved Death of Mohammad Saleh al Hanashi
Jeffrey S. Kaye
Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
World:
Palestinian Children Face Daily Attacks While Going to School
Mel Frykberg
Awash in bathos. Thats what the media promise to be before, during and after the anniversary of 9/11: Tom Brokaw reliving the day with air traffic controllers. John Walsh of Americas Most Wanted(now host of his own talk show) at Ground Zero with relatives of the victims. Flight 93 widow Lisa Beamer ... well, everywhere, from the Today Show to Good Morning America to Larry King Live.
As always, in the construction of collective memory, certain images and interpretive frameworks will be reiterated and magnified. Others will be tinier than a bat squeak. (For example, as of this writing, I do not know of plans for a retrospective documentary of the past year produced and hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union.) But if progressives could get an hour or two on TV, what interpretive frameworks might we put forward as we think about what has happened here since last September?
I think one of the most important, and chilling, developments of the past year has been the Bush administrations unashamed embrace of neoliberalism, the term lefty academics in particular use to describe the American political system of at least the past 50 years. Neoliberalism refers to a government that has all the requisite trappings of a democracy legislatures, public campaigns, national conventions, electionsbut is really a highly unrepresentative government by elites for elites.
Since most Americans dont want to admit out loud that they live in a plutocracy, successful politicians have, until now, worked hard to keep up an illusion. Bill Clinton was a master at this: His moving rhetoric about the needs of children, or affirmative action, or the crisis in health care, all masked his administrations all-too-frequent cultivation of conservatives and capitulation to business interests.
But Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft dont care about maintaining the illusion, and have decided they dont need the trappings of democracy. After all, thats how they won the presidency. If you review the last year, you will see a carefully calibrated process to achieve a real paradigm shift in gaining American acceptance of the less candy-coated aspects of neoliberal politics.
Because 9/11 allowed Bush to become a wartime president, and wars are always a time of impinged democracy, this has been an especially propitious 12-month period in which to convince the country to acquiesce to autocracy. The campaign has had several important phases: undermine civil liberties (and see if anyone cares), insist on a highly arrogant foreign policy (and see if anyone cares), stonewall about administration officials highly profitable adventures in the corporate Eden of the pre-Enron days (and see if anyone cares), and then substitute a series of leaks for public debate about whether the president should, on his own, declare war against Iraq (and see if anyone cares).
Step by step, theyve used the all war, all the time version of the presidency to push people to the next level of consent, relying on coercion when necessary. It helps, of course, that the opposition party is a bunch of spineless weenies.
The USA Patriot Act was the first crucial move. But we know this years depressing history: the detaining of thousands of Muslims and Arabs, often for months, without charges; the proposal of a national ID system; the Justice Department plan to fingerprint and track immigrants; the expansion of the FBIs ability (which we now learn doesnt even have e-mail!) to spy on religious and political groups; the undermining and evading of the Freedom of Information Act; and, everyones favorite, the National Neighborhood Watch program (in which your TIPS on the weird guy down the street will go directly to Americas Most Wanted.)
While the TIPS program has been widely ridiculed, it has helped deflect attention away from the other serial assaults on democracy. And once people have said uncle to increased power and secrecy among law enforcement and the federal government, why should they blanch when the president says that people should certainly be allowed (his word) to debate the merits of a war with Iraqbut that, in the end, hell decide on his own what to do.
Given how effectively this administration has naturalized top-down power, is it a surprise that Al GoreI mean, Al Gorehas been accused of running too populist a campaign in 2000?
Looking back at the last year from this perspective would indeed be bracing. It would also be denounced as unpatriotic. So you wont hear any of this coming from Lisa Beamer or any of the other icons of 9/11. In fact, the anniversary, through an avalanche of patriotic symbols that celebrate the image but not the substance of democracy, will only advance the surrender to neoliberalism, Bush-style.
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
| More News and Analysis: | ||
|
Palestinian Children Face Daily Attacks While Going to School World: A safe walk to school is something many American children take for granted. Not so for many Palestinian youths who are facing attacks from Israeli settlers. By Mel Frykberg, IPS News. November 25, 2009. |
4 Myths About Taxes, Debunked Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Contrary to what the richest of the rich tell you, a little bit of wealth redistribution will greatly help America. By Paul Buchheit, AlterNet. November 25, 2009. |
Murder at Guantanamo? The Mysterious, Unsolved Death of Mohammad Saleh al Hanashi Rights and Liberties: Mohammad Saleh al Hanashi was found dead inside a psych ward at Guantanamo. It was ruled a suicide. But disturbing evidence suggest the truth may be far uglier. By Jeffrey S. Kaye, TruthOut.org. November 25, 2009. |
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.