American Caesar

“Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he hath grown so great?”

Having recently co-authored an essay arguing that the United States is properly considered a representative oligarchy rather than a democracy, I feel impelled at this point to register somewhat of a dissent from myself–ourselves. Yes, the normal state of affairs in the US toward the end of the 20th Century was a version of oligarchy, though actual governance might alternate between slightly different political parties. For the past 6 years, though, since the electoral coup d’etat of 2000, a world-historical change (as Hegel might call it) has been under way; to quote an earlier coup-ist, I now want “to caveat that.” The US is not now an oligarchy, whether what our essay called “representative” or in the more traditional sense. The appropriate term for the political system under which we live and within which we are subordinate is rather Tyranny.

Exactly what kind of tyranny is the only open question. It’s tempting to use that somewhat abused word, “fascism,” but tempting as that move is–it enables us to say, for example, that the primary world struggle today is between Islamic Fascism and American Fascism–it really should be resisted. (Actually, both halves of that attribution should be resisted.) Fascism was a total political economy, an organized way of life, a system of authority based on violence aimed primarily at organizations of the working class; to start talking about “friendly fascism” or “elective fascism” or some other similar modifier really misses the point.

Nor is the United States exactly a “police state,” though it’s equally tempting to borrow that nomenclature. The term is meant to convey the feeling that power is always lurking behind the barrel of the nearest rifle, so that citizens are constantly under threat even when just walking up the Avenue–say, Argentina after the take-over by the Generals. But even though I belong to an affinity group that talks much radical talk, and occasionally participates in demonstrations against something or other, I never feel–I’m sure none of us ever feels–that we essentially live in a military occupied zone. The NYPD is bad, but not that bad–once in a while they even lose arguments with civil liberties attorney Norman Siegel, who isn’t walking around worrying that there’ll be a knock on his door by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Nor is Katrina vanden Heuvel, nor even Noam Chomsky or Alex Cockburn.

The loose concept of authoritarianism, or authoritarian populism–more an ideological than an institutional denotation–isn’t fully helpful either; the Right is certainly authoritarian or even totalitarian, but again there’s too much resistance and dissent, and usually little or no penalty for it, to convey what that word is meant to convey, and anyhow the term is too general.
Okay, what kind of “tyranny?” What is the problem we face, exactly?

It’s this: constitutional government has been overthrown, elections have been tossed on the historical trash-heap, electoral and legislative politics have been neutered, the separation of powers has been abolished, and so too has the hitherto at least partially operative concept of the rule of law. There has indeed been a coup d’etat, and it is ongoing rather than being merely what happened in December six years ago. What the Founders called the Republic–the American Republic–has been assassinated by the Republican Party.

Tyranny is now institutionalized in the form of the unitary executive and, especially, the anti-constitutional extension, as though by an absolute monarch, of the constitutionally allocated role of “commander-in-chief.” This is probably the most breathtaking assault on democratic government ever to take place in a supposedly stable democracy (or oligarchy for that matter). The President’s ultimate command (rarely exercised by past presidents) over the armed forces has been turned into a claim to exercise dictatorial command over all persons, not only in the US but even in other nations as well. Putting all this together, it’s clear that the recent alteration of majority power in the legislature makes no difference in that the legislature–the subject of Article I of the Constitution (the Presidency being relegated to Article II) is no longer relevant to political policy-making, except when the Party of the President controls it in a One-Party State, and gives it its marching orders.

Otherwise, the President ignores it and suffers no penalty for doing so. He does whatever he wants–e.g., setting out to destroy New York State’s public hospitals, or gutting the powers of legislatively authorized regulatory agencies. And the things he can’t do --e.g., invent and implement an overall “health-care” policy all by himself--are things he doesn’t want to do anyhow, since he and his accomplices are against all government other than that which enriches or further empowers themselves. So all the agitated discussion on the Left about what the Democrats ought to be doing and which congressional anti-War resolution is the best–Carl Levin? Teddy Kennedy?–is about nothing. Can anyone seriously believe that George Bush will give up his war-making powers if Congress denies him funding? Of course the Democratic Party ought to take its constituency seriously. But we ought not to think that it can make anything important happen, because that would be under a different form of government.

Thus to argue as my friend Sanford Levinson did in last week’s Nation that the Administration is only “grossly incompetent” and not thereby criminal, is to completely miss the point. It’s a highly competent administration, one of the most competent ever, the way a destructively effective sociopath–say, Ted Bundy--is competent.

They’ve embezzled countless billions from the national economy (and Iraq’s as well, of course), transferred to themselves and their friends; they’ve installed a still-functioning regime of spies and torturers at the heart of the State, they’ve suborned the military to surrender its professional responsibilities to an ex-deserter turned tyrant. Abroad they engage in willful slaughter, including that of the nation’s young, to enhance their own drive for total control. They’ve carefully presided over the continued destruction of a center of African-American population exactly as they want to; taken over the NLRB for their own union-busting agenda (hmm, maybe “Fascism” is beginning to look better); cemented their Party’s coalition with democracy-hating, Christian totalitarians at the expense of science, health care, and democracy itself; packed the court system and ignored its remnants of independence when those would interfere with their power. Most of this they’ve done without any input from the national legislature except occasional acquiescence. This is incompetence? What could they possibly have done with more success?

They have been able to accomplish this because their Party stole one and quite possibly two elections, not by phonying up its own vote totals as in the old-fashioned way, but rather and much more frighteningly by suppressing thousands upon thousands of votes that would have gone overwhelmingly to the other party. As opposed to the historical Caesar and Bonaparte, who at least really were “acclaimed” in some recognizable sense, this tyrant managed to achieve only the “acclaim” of the most slender of “majorities;” yet he proceeded to rule (and continues to do so wherever executive power operates) exactly as if by genuine acclamation; as though he had received 95% of a free vote rather than (in successive elections) somewhere between 48 and 51% of a partially rigged vote.

So what is all this about how stupid George Bush is (yes he’s a total ignoramus, but so what?), how incompetent his Administration is, how low his popularity has sunk, and so on? Perhaps in 2008 we will go back to alternating two-party oligarchy, though with changes to both public and private institutions so immense that we may still look back with envy on oligarchy, when it wasn’t yet pure mean-spirited plutocracy. Meanwhile, though,

“Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus.”

We live under Caesar–a Caesar who’s not even a great General but merely a deserter in his youth and an inept military planner in his adulthood (there’s the one vindication of Levinson’s “incompetence”), who would be unchecked Emperor of the entire imperium known as “the free world.” The system we live under, without any recourse for the next two years (at best) is properly described as Caesarism. It is not a falling-off from democracy, or even the lame version of democracy we’ve known throughout much of our history–it’s the antithesis of both democracy and the Republican, constitutional form of government. Caesarism it is.
“This man is now become a god”–one of the most malign and malignant of gods, but a god nonetheless. His outward personality, which might be described as the genial butcher with clean hands, enables him to pose as a would-be democrat, in-between speeches arrogating total power to himself to prosecute his murderous War as he sees fit. We have to advert to the occasional appearances of his thuggish Vice, to hear the absolute contempt for popular democracy that is the heart of their tyranny.

How did we come to this pass? There’s much to be said, about 9/11 and other crucial junctures. But the real point is that citizenship, we ought to have learned, is not just a line on a birth certificate but a state of mind, a habit of attention. We’ve been losing that state of mind and letting that habit weaken for a long time, and now we can only hope that they can be recovered before it’s finally too late.

Asked what kind of government the new Constitution had created, Ben Franklin replied, “A republic–if you can keep it.”

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”