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Here’s to One Right Stands

All professions are conspiracies against the laity. –George Bernard Shaw This fear of finding oneself in bad company is not an expression of political purity; it is an expression of a lack of self-confidence. —Arthur Koestler Bob Barr has announced his support for the Strangebedfellows/AccountabilityNowPAC coalition and their Aug. 8 money bomb being put together by and […]

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
–George Bernard Shaw

This fear of finding oneself in bad company is not an expression of political purity; it is an expression of a lack of self-confidence.
—Arthur Koestler

Bob Barr has announced his support for the Strangebedfellows/AccountabilityNowPAC coalition and their Aug. 8 money bomb being put together by and modeled on the successful efforts of Ron Paul organizer Trevor Lyman:

A lot of media attention has been focused on our privacy or, more appropriately, the invasion of our privacy by the government. The recent law that allows the government to intercept our phone calls and emails without any legitimate probable cause is the most glaring example. Ultimately we lose some freedom with virtually every new law or government regulation, but this particular law, FISA, is the granddaddy of all invasions of our privacy.For the last several years Bob Barr has been fighting the government’s intrusion into our privacy at every step. There have been other organizations standing shoulder to shoulder with Bob. But, the recent focus on the invasion of our privacy has motivated a whole new group of concerned activists to join together in an effort to stop the government’s encroachment into our lives.

Some of the names of the organizers of this new group, AccountabilityNowPac, may be familiar to you. They come from a large variety of backgrounds and political beliefs joined in the common interest of protecting our privacy.

Here’s Glenn Greenwald’s summary of the effort.


Put not your faith in politicians, political parties, factions or unwieldy and too broadly focused activist organizations. All of these inherently corrupt compositions should be pushed to the margins. This does not preclude partnering with them when they seek to do the right thing; this partnering also does not preclude opposing them when they are wrong. The problem of course, as always, is money: contributing to, for instance, the ACLU for its diligence against constitutional degradation also means financing their assaults on small towns that offer resistance to being overrun by the illegal alien product of a federal government derelict in its duty to enforce the borders. More focused and ad hoc coalitions of Left and Right opposing the expanding surveillance state may be a chance to restore some basic constitutional liberties, and perhaps eventually to forge a new (God help me) paradigm (sorry) to challenge a prevailing order that seems designed to resist popular representation.

It’s time to realize the real divisions (not to be confused with Barack Obama’s Orwellian fantasia about rendering human nature obsolete and no longer problematic by obliterating the very divisions that he is simultaneously exploiting) that are destroying the nation are between elite designs and national interest, between just and legal foreign policy and the goals of this bipartisan elite–goals determined by global bureaucratic and corporate, not national or popular, interests.

The political class defends a citadel of privilege and unaccountability not breached even by the unprecedented defeat handed the Republicans in 2006. The popular will expressed there was far more rational, measured and sane than what the elite resists it to maintain–ours is a topsy-turvy order the opposite of that rightly feared by the founders, wherein an irrational ruling elite forces disastrous policy on a rational but impotent populace. It should be clear to us all by now that change (as opposed to that hollow cliche, “Change”) will only come from determined coalitions seeking specific, limited, and above all constitutionally sound goals. There’s no reason we can’t go back to knocking each other around over everything else if and when these goals are achieved. Think of the polity as one big, raucous family. Who knows, exposure to one another may lead to some greater understanding and may reveal that elite factions exploit and maintain divisions within the populace that are largely illusory.

It’s become a cliche, but those with a stake in the prospects of either political party include most of the traditional media. Think of the remarkable similarity of form, despite the ostensible polarization of content, joining those squared off in the riot of vanity that is the cable news nursery, with the bellowing O’Reilly at one end and the smirking Olbermann at the other, each defending party and faction first, principle (a sometimes distant) second.

Some of us accept the unknown quantity (Obama) we prefer to the evil we know (McCain). This has left us in the distasteful position of supporting by default a potential mediocrity propelled by a disturbing popular phenomenon. This is our reality and there’s no point in comparing it against a perfection that’s never existed. But I’ll (we’ll) be damned if this means we should be happy, or quiet, about it. Part of the benefit of an Obama presidency will lie in exposing the logical absurdity of the various liberal conceits he will brandish daily. I look forward to it.

But it must be pointed out: Obama’s crass political maneuvering to the false center on foreign policy, as with every other candidate who’s utilized this strategy, is the means by which the permanent bureaucratic faction harnesses the petty personal ambition of the individual for grander designs. The public is complicit in this because it is largely ill-informed, apathetic and distracted. There is no way around it, but one way to enforce constitutional integrity on the process and the political class might be to arrange temporary coalitions around narrow, sometimes one-off, issues. This corruption of the political process depends heavily on the bundling of issues punctuated by the electoral cycle and delivered to the public via the marketing framework of Big Media; we need bipartisan popular political action to assault the bipartisan corruption of the political class. The only way it will work for the greater good of the nation (as opposed to a particular movement, faction or class) is if it’s focused, like a pin prick to the toxic, gaseous bubble of intermingling interests that is choking representative government.

Obama may very well be the next president; I’m far more comfortable with that than with the prospect of the intellectually and temperamentally unsound–and apparently sentiently faltering–John McCain, but that’s saying very little. And I’ll be damned if I keep quiet about it, or embrace this character who becomes more bizarre and repulsive the more he postures. He’s beginning to believe the myth that he’s godly–what mortal wouldn’t, under the circumstances? Anyway, flogging the vain and delusional Barack over the next four years seems more appealing than flogging the vain and delusional McCain–who it seems will only enjoy it.

The process by which Obama tacks toward the “center”, ditching his opposition to the new FISA bill for instance, is how the permanent bureaucracy plays him, as it does any in his circumstance, for a patsy. In his turn the Obama supporter who accepts this corrupting necessity silently, or compelling silence of his fellows lest they queer the prospects of their candidate, plays patsy to the patsy that is Barack. Because we all more or less accept this with but an occasional whimper of complaint (and these grow fainter and more pathetic over the years), election in and election out, the coup is ongoing, and we are obliviously complicit in our disenfranchisement.

But we aren’t even given respite anymore, and the campaigning will not stop in a first term–first terms are now more long campaigns for a second term than anything else, while the entrenched durable factions soldier on. Likewise diligence now, even for those resigned to Obama, will not end with his election, but only becomes more necessary. Even second terms are now thoroughly corrupted by party necessity–witness the Bush administration’s desperate attempts to craft a “victory” narrative for McCain. I repeat, put not your faith in political parties. Through it all, the executive office gathers more and more power–even as the system narrows the range of potential executives down to a less and less qualified, but electable, few. The incredible shrinking president occupies the ever-expanding executive office. Permanent government factions are only too glad to be left alone to work the trenches, insulated from accountability and representative government, while increasingly oblivious presidents are only too glad to let them, while reaping the glory.

It’s time to break the chain and hold these people at a decent remove, to stop treating them like demigod celebrities but like the unsavory characters they are. A politician necessarily abandons principle. Just because we’ve yet to figure out how to do without them is no reason for us to abandon principle along with them. Just because a man feels the need to recourse to prostitutes doesn’t mean he must then prostitute himself (perhaps in some militant feminist conceived public shaming ritual, but I digress). Hypocrisy, given a bad rap anyway, is forced upon us by the system.

The elite shows its disdain for the public by offering us mediocrities. No sane person can believe that these men are our best; such is the system and we mostly have ourselves to blame. But maybe we can, using that same mediocrity, turn the tables on them. If Obama is not the answer, at least he’s a more manageable representative of the political class by virtue of having expressed a determination to return to the constitution and his subsequent debt to a constituency that (God willing, once the disturbing delirium fades) will make some effort to hold him to that. These people need to be supported, not by taking partisan advantage (“flip-flopper!”) of this, but by establishing common cause in defense of principle–and principle needs to be elevated to its proper place well above personality.
Furthermore Obama’s probable inadequacy to the task of governing–and if he isn’t inadequate it will only be by some astounding, fortuitious coincidence–also makes him inadequate to the unspoken task of sloughing off the popular will. One almost feels pity for this pompous and oblivious child reaping the surreal fortune bestowed by a desperate and confused people, as if he’s earned it through merit. But we can’t afford pity; he’ll have to be supervised closely and occasionally beaten like the proverbial (and actual) stepchild (he is).

Of course, it isn’t a question of what the precocious prince will do once he ascends to the throne we’re readying for him, but what those he brings along with him will do. In the teeming emotional miasma of election coverage in general and Obama coverage specifically, our media, ever-obsessed with personality and political handicapping, expresses only occasional interest in this, perhaps the most exigent of questions: who will influence and essentially govern in an Obama or McCain administration? Cloistered media elites, despite being better situated than anyone to observe the realities of governance, have come to believe the simplified narrative of personality they endlessly obsess over. This is of course a generous appraisal, assuming more delusion than corruption on their part.

From a Simpson’s episode: It’s the Dole v. Clinton campaign, at an event both candidates suddenly split open, revealing themselves to be aliens, each intent on enslaving the planet. You have no choice, they inform the people. “We can vote for a third party candidate!” Someone shouts. “Go ahead, throw your vote away!” They respond. The crowd groans, conceding the point. Cut to Ross Perot putting his fist through his straw-hat.

But to conclude this rambling mess and return to the original issue: I think we all forget just how much the original FISA was a compromise of civil liberties–-”secret courts” are not really courts at all. This is how the progression from republic to tyranny plays out; one right is conceded, becomes established practice from which the next concessions are launched. With the observable phenomenon of entities always seeking to gather more power and never to concede it, the path of least resistance is toward greater state power. It takes a tremendous effort and the rarest substance of all–republican (small r) integrity–to move things in the other direction. Politicians can’t or won’t do it without some force acting upon them from outside the partisan sphere. Let’s get cracking then. 

Or we could all agonize a moment before “choosing” between “Victory” and “Change”, congratulate ourselves on our wonderful democratic system and shamble off to the television-glow of our electronic cocoons. Hell, it’s only the nation we’ll leave to our children that’s at stake.

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