I’ve been at something of a loss to say anything about politics for the last couple of weeks. The Trump administration continues to stumble from one cluster fuck to the next. And this circus of dysfunction continues to camouflage the dismantling of the institutions and policies that enable us to hold government and other powerful institutions—corporations, banks—accountable for the impact of their actions on others. Nothing new, really, to talk about. Nothing to say that hasn’t already been said by many people many times.
But then this column by George Will got me to thinking about how war facilitates these efforts by the powerful to escape accountability. Will’s column surveys the assault on freedom that was “unleashed” by our involvement in World War I. Those who were skeptical of the war, or even just insufficiently enthusiastic, were fired from their jobs and ostracized by their neighbors. Foreign born citizens were vilified and abused. President Wilson himself characterized the foreign born in terms reminiscent of our current President, and his Committee on Public Information produced propaganda designed to inflame the public.
Although Will’s column is explicitly about World War I, it is clearly a warning for today. And it is a timely warning. The United States was already 90% of the way to fascism when Trump and the GOP gained complete control of the government. And the Trump administration has already taken several more steps along that path.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled clearly that the DOJ will no longer prioritize holding the police accountable for their treatment of civilians. Indeed, as Sessions escalates the war on drugs, it is likely that the police will become further militarized, and more of a threat to the people they are supposed to protect.
It seems likely that Gorsuch, the new Supreme Court Justice, is one of those “originalists” who have a very narrow and crabbed view of the rights enshrined in the Constitution. He is unlikely to hold the rich and powerful accountable. Nor is Scott Pruitt, who seems determined to emasculate the EPA. Nor Betsy DeVos, who wants to turn public schools into a profit center. And so on, and so on.
And now Trump appears to be on a path to war. How convenient. War will make it possible to portray anyone who seeks to hold government and the wealthy accountable as disloyal. Just as those who were skeptical of WWI were condemned as disloyal. And those who questioned WWII. And those who thought the Vietnam war was more about presidential egos than national interests. And those who questioned the USA Patriot Act. And the war in Iraq. And so on.
Trump’s attack on Syria appears to have been quite ill-conceived and utterly pointless. And paying more attention to American interests and less to policing the world was just more campaign rhetoric, it seems. But the press loved the attack, and Trump loves praise. The Vietnam War, the war that substantially shaped the politics of my generation and that wasted the lives of nearly 60,000 Americans, was largely driven by presidential egos. Kennedy was going to make the world safe for democracy, and Nixon was not going to be the first president to lose a war. One shudders to think how an egomaniac like Trump will cope with the realization that he can unleash death and mayhem on anyone, any time, anywhere.
As I write this, the war talk coming out of the Trump administration is escalating quickly. Congress, under the leadership of screwheads like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, has made it clear that it will not do anything to hold Trump accountable. Nor is the press likely to—war news is profitable news. Maybe it’s time to dust off some of that old 60s antiwar regalia, grow my hair long again, and take to the streets. And remember that old hippie saying:
Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity.
For shits and giggles, I'm going to make a perverse argument:
ReplyDeleteIf you buy the Kantian cosmopolitan argument and modern extensions thereof, then the experience of democratic governance transforms citizens into conscientious, empathetic republicans. Such people assign moral equivalence to other republicans (fellow nationals and foreigners), and become willing to fight to liberate populations living under tyranny- a propensity Doyle calls 'liberal imprudence'. From this perspective, it's this well-meaning imprudence embedded in the population that empowered past presidents to go to war where reason ought to have prevented it.
My read of the recent mass beliefs and democratic consolidation literatures is that economic decline, violence, and the perception that government institutions are not responsive to local demands are the most important components which erode democratic values.
Thus, as long as economic inequality increases, violence (terrorism, not necessarily domestic) persists, and Congress remains intransigent, Trump's ability to levy war will be greatly constrained by a decreasingly democratic (and therefore more prudent) public.
See? Nothing to worry about!