My fellow prisoners? A Sense of Foreboding Descends….
October 10, 2008
By Steve Klinger.
Was John McCain having a PTSD flashback or was it an ominous vision of the future? Senility or an informed Freudian slip? As Cindy and Sarah exchanged a fleeting, anxious look, McCain addressed a rally audience on Wednesday by calling them “my fellow prisoners.”
My fellow prisoners? Hmmmm.
Maybe John was drifting back to his years at the Hanoi Hilton. Then again, maybe he was thinking about an article than ran a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times, about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team.
“Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” wrote Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Cavallaro added that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well.
As author Naomi Wolf warns, this move to station an Army brigade combat team of 3,000 to 4,000 troops on American soil breaks alarmingly with precedent, giving the president his very own domestic militia, directly responsible to him as commander-in-chief. She describes it in chilling terms: an American coup d’etat.
How many of us may indeed become prisoners if the president decides to impose martial law? That’s exactly what several congressmen said they were told might happen if they failed to pass bailout legislation last week (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaG9d_4zij8).
Let’s see now, what would it take? There are several things that might by some stretch justify a declaration of martial law: an alien invasion, a sudden pandemic of bird flu, an overwhelming natural disaster – all extremely unlikely in the next four weeks. But more believably, consider the following: deterioration of the financial crisis to the point of mass civil unrest (multiple runs on banks?); an October surprise in the form of a terrorist attack – real or staged. And then there’s number three. The third event is just as chilling, and I think we all know what it is and what it would lead to. Suffice to say that the ensuing riots would be followed by a drastic response that would not include a generous interpretation of civil liberties.
Wolf in a video interview you can watch on this site (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI) , and in her new book, Give Me Liberty, argues that all the mechanisms for a police state are now in place. I have not read the book yet. But thanks to the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, National Security Directive 51 and the acquiescence of Congress and the courts to the executive branch’s incremental accumulation of power, the president can now legally seize power just by determining to his own satisfaction that a state of emergency exists.
Will the ruling party really step aside and hand the reins of government to Barack Obama? Have we become so obsessed with the 20-month campaign and its escalating rhetoric that we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture? Will there even be an election on Nov. 4?
Considering the theft of the 2000 election and the odiferous manipulation of voters and ballots in Ohio in 2004, the still unanswered questions about 9-11, the litany of lies that led us to invade Iraq, the cover-up of torture as sanctioned policy at Abu Ghraib, the excesses at Guantanamo, the abandonment of habeas corpus, the sanctioned policy of extraordinary rendition, the domestic spying escalation orchestrated by the Bush administration, it’s hard to deny that this was power acquired ruthlessly. Upon rational reflection, can we expect those who hold it to part with it voluntarily? Especially when their anointed successors are losing badly?
Meanwhile those very candidates seem to be encouraging supporters at rallies to ratchet up the anger, letting them get away with calling Obama and other Democrats socialists, even terrorists, and shouting out things like, “Kill him!”, as I wrote earlier. By not stopping to condemn these wing nuts and that kind of rhetoric, McCain and Palin clearly condone it.
Where is Country First now? Where is their sense of decency, not to mention concern that they may be inciting to violence? When a man at a Wisconsin rally Thursday said he is mad because “socialists are taking over our country,” calling Democratic leaders hooligans, and urging McCain to “go get ‘em,” our bipartisan reformer merely smiled and said, “Could I just say, the gentleman is right.” And McCain has the nerve to say Obama lacks the judgment to be president?
Is it my growing sense of foreboding that’s indefensible — or is it our collective complacency?
Twenty-five days and counting.
Comments
2 Responses to “My fellow prisoners? A Sense of Foreboding Descends….”
Got something to say?
Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.
I’ll cast my vote for “collective complacency”!
Let’s replace that torch of freedom our Statue of Liberty hoists boldly overhead with a sign instead that reads, “CAUTION: Not responsible for liberties left unattended.”
From his final blog entry over on Dada’s Daily Dally, “Fake Democracy, Fake Patriotism” (Naomi Wolf), Dada (ah, that’d be me) says in his farewell:
“Debating the campaign is now futile. The powers that be will give us the outcome they intend us to have, the outcome we deserve. Look for a very exciting few weeks until the election.”
*********************
(More and more I’m enjoying the hints of growing dark side pessimism in our Grass Roots Press editor’s commentary. Great post!)
So far the number of Americans concerned about preserving the remnants of their democracy seems to be climbing into the middle double digits. I’ll see the rest of you under that freeway overpass as soon as Dada tells us which one it is.
sicko