What America Has Become
by John Chuckman
October 16, 2013
Of course, the cozy popular myth of America’s Founding Fathers as an earnest, civic-minded group gathered in an ornate
hall, writing with quill pens, reading from leather-bound tomes, and offering heroic speeches in classical poses – all
resembling Greek philosophers in wigs and spectacles and frock coats - was always that, a myth. They were in more than a
few cases narrow, acquisitive men, ambitious for their personal interests which were considerable, and even the more
philosophic types among them were well-read but largely unoriginal men who cribbed ideas and concepts and even whole
phrases from European Enlightenment writers and British parliamentary traditions.
And much of what they wrote and agreed upon involved what would prove mistaken ideas, with a lack of foresight into what
the almost unchangeable concrete their words would shape. Americans today often are not aware that the word “democracy”
for many of the Founders was an unpleasant one, carrying just about the same connotations that “communist” would a
century and a half later. Men of the world of privilege and comparative wealth – Washington, Morris, and many others –
were having nothing to do with ideas which rendered unimportant men important. That is why the country was styled as a
“republic” – that most undefined term in the political lexicon, which then meant only the absence of a king with
decisions made by a tight group of propertied elites.
False as they are, the very fact that there are such pleasant myths does tell us something about past popular ideals
informing their creation. Now, how would any future Americans manage to weave attractive myths about a president who
sits in the Oval Office signing authorizations for teams of young buzz-cut psychopaths in secret locked rooms to guide
killing machines against mere suspects and innocent bystanders, often adopting the tactics of America’s lunatic
anti-abortion assassins, sending a second hellish missile into the crowd of neighbors who come to the assistance of the
victims of the first?
How would they weave attractive myths around the CIA’s International Torture Gulag, including that hellhole, Guantanamo,
where kidnapped, legally-innocent people are imprisoned and tortured and given absolutely no rights or ethical treatment
under international laws and conventions?
During the Revolutionary War, the battles were between armies, and captured soldiers were frequently granted their
freedom upon their paroles, pledges of not returning to the fight. Spies were thought poorly of and often hung. Torture
was uncommon and certainly not embraced as policy.
What myths can be written of two wars involving the deaths of a million or so people, the creation of millions of
refugees, and the needless destruction of huge amounts of other peoples’ property, and all to achieve nothing but a
change of government? Or about massive armed forces and secret security agencies which squander hundreds of billions in
resources year after year, spreading their dark influence to all corners of the globe, and offering an insurmountable
obstacle to America’s own citizens who might imagine they ever can rise against a government grown tyrannous? After all,
polls in America show that its Congress is held in contempt by the overwhelming majority of its people, with percentages
of disapproval rivaling those held for communism or Satanic rituals.
There are no myths about today’s Congressional figures. Everyone understands they are often to be found bellowing in
ornate halls about points most Americans couldn’t care less about. Everyone understands that they are ready to go
anywhere and say almost anything for large enough campaign contributions. That they take off on junkets paid for by
groups hoping to influence votes and put faces to the exercise of future influence, trips commonly involving a foreign
power trying to shape American policy. That their work is often steeped in secrecy from the voters, secrecy not governed
by genuine national security concerns but by the often shameful nature of their work. That a good deal of the
legislation and rules they create repress their own people’s interests and favor only special interests.
That their government regularly suppresses inconvenient truths and labels those who raise questions as foolishly
addicted to conspiracy or even as treacherous. What are just a few of the events which have been treated in this
fashion? The assassination of a President. The accidental or deliberate downing of at least three civilian aircraft by
America’s military in recent years – an Iranian airliner, TWA Flight 800 on the East Coast, and the fourth plane of the
9/11 plot over Pennsylvania. The CIA’s past cooperation and engagement with the American Mafia during its anti-Castro
terror campaign. The CIA’s use of drug trafficking to raise off-the-books income. The military’s assassination of
American prisoners of war cooperating with their Vietnamese captors. Obfuscating Israel’s deliberate attack on an
American intelligence-gathering ship during its engineered 1967 War. The huge death toll of locals, civilian and
military, in America’s grisly imperial wars, from Vietnam to Iraq. 9/11.
I do not believe in 9/11 insider plots, but I know there has been strenuous official effort to disguise that event’s
full nature. The motives? One suspects a great deal of embarrassment at demonstrated incompetence has been at work.
Blowback from CIA operations in the Middle East seems more than likely. The documented involvement of Mossad in
following and recording the plotters inside the United States leaves disturbing unanswered questions. One also knows
that America’s establishment discovered in the wake of 9/11 the perfect opportunity for doing a great many nasty things
it had always wanted to do anyway. You might say the terrorists did the military-industrial-intelligence complex a big
favor. Anti-democratic measures involving surveillance, privacy in communications, secret prisons, torture, and
effective suspension of some of the Constitution are all parts of the new American reality.
The FBI can record what you borrow from the public library. The NSA captures your every phone call, text message, and
e-mail. The TSA can strip search you for taking an inter-city bus. Drones are being used for surveillance, and the TSA
actually has a program of agents traveling along some highways ready to stop those regarded as suspicious. Portable
units for seeing through clothes and baggage, similar to those used at airports, are to tour urban streets in vans
randomly. Agencies of the government, much in the style of the former Stasi, encourage reports from citizens about
suspicious behavior. Now, you can just imagine what might be called “suspicious” in a society which has always had a
tendency towards witch-hunts and fears of such harmless things as Harry Potter books or the charming old Procter and
Gambel symbol on soapboxes.
America has become in many ways a police state, albeit one where a kind of decency veil is left draped over the crude
government machinery. How can a place which has elections and many of the trappings of a free society be a police state?
Well, it can because power, however conferred, can be, and will be, abused. And the majority in any democratic
government can impose terrible burdens on the minority. That’s how the American Confederacy worked, how apartheid South
Africa worked, and that’s how Israel works today. Prevention of those inevitable abuses is the entire reason for a Bill
of Rights, but if you suspend or weaken its protections, anything becomes possible.
American police forces have long enjoyed a reputation for brutal and criminal behavior – using illegal-gains seizure
laws for profit, beating up suspects, conducting unnecessary military-style raids on homes, killing people sometimes on
the flimsiest of excuses - having earned international recognition from organizations such as Amnesty International. The
reasons for this are complex but include the military model of organization adopted by American policing, the common
practice of hiring ex-soldiers as police, the phenomenon of uncontrolled urban sprawl creating new towns whose tiny
police forces have poor practices and training, and, in many jurisdictions, a long and rich history of police
corruption. Now, those often poor-quality American police have unprecedented discretion and powers of abuse.
Further, according to the words of one high-ranking general a few years back, the American military is prepared to
impose martial law in the event of another great act of terror. Certainly that is an encouraging and uplifting thought
considering all the blunders and waste and murder and rape the American military has inflicted upon countries from
Vietnam to Iraq.
Where it is possible, power prefers to know about and even to control what is going on at the most humble level of its
society, and the greater the power, the more irresistible the drive to know and control. It is essential to appreciate
that whether you are talking about the military or huge corporations or the security apparatus, you are not talking
about institutions which are democratic in nature. Quite the opposite, these institutions are run along much the same
lines as all traditional forms of undemocratic government, from monarchs to dictators. Leadership and goals and methods
are not subject to a vote and orders given are only to be obeyed, and there is no reason to believe that any of these
institutions cherishes or promotes democratic values or principles of human rights. Of course, corporations, in order to
attract talent, must publicly present a friendly face towards those principles, but that necessary charade reflects
their future behavior about as much as campaign promises reflect future acts of an American politician.
Those at the top of all powerful and hierarchical institutions inevitably come to believe that they know better than
most people, and those with any hope of gaining top positions must adopt the same view. For centuries we saw the great
landed gentry and church patriarchs of pre-democratic societies regard themselves as inherently different from the
population. It is no different with the psychology of people who enjoy their wealth and influence through positions in
these great modern, un-democratic institutions. The larger and more pervasive these institutions become in society - and
they have become truly bloated in America - the more will their narcissistic, privileged views prevail. Also, it is
axiomatic that where great power exists, it never goes unused. Large standing armies are the proximate cause of many of
history’s wars. And just so, the power of corporations to expand through illegality of every description, this being the
source of the many controversies about failing to pay taxes in countries where they operate or the widespread practice
of bribery in landing large contracts with national governments.
So far as security services go (the United States, at last count, having sixteen different ones), they may well be the
worst of all these modern, massive anti-democratic institutions. Their lines of responsibility to government are often
weak, and citizens in general are often regarded as things with which to experiment or play. Their leaders and agents
are freely permitted to perjure themselves in courts. The organizations possess vast budgets with little need to account
for the spending. They can even create their own funds through everything from drug and weapons trading to
counterfeiting currency, all of it not accounted for and subject to no proper authority. And their entire work is
secret, whether that work involves legitimate national security or not. The nature of their work breeds a
secret-fraternity mindset of superiority and cynicism. They start wars and coups, including against democratic
governments sometimes, they pay off rising politicians even in allied countries, they use money and disinformation to
manipulate elections even in friendly governments, and of course they kill people and leaders they seriously disapprove
of. Now, does any thinking person believe that they simply forget these mindsets and practices when it comes to what
they regard as serious problems in their own country?
The record of arrogance and abuse by security organizations, such as CIA or the FBI, is long and costly, filled with
errors in judgment, abuse of power, incompetence, and immense dishonesty. Owing to the black magic of classified
secrecy, much of the record involves projects about which we will never know, but even what we do know about is
distressing enough. And I’m not sure that it can be any other way so long as you have Big Intelligence. Apart from Big
Intelligence’s own propensity towards criminal or psychopathic behavior, one of the great ironies of Big Intelligence is
that it will always agree to bend, to provide whatever suppressions and fabrications are requested by political leaders
working towards the aims of the other great anti-democratic institutions, the military and the corporations. This became
blindingly clear in the invasion of Iraq and, even before that, in the first Gulf War.
America’s political system, honed and shaped over many decades, fits comfortably with these institutions. National
elections are dominated by a two-party duopoly (being kept that way through countless institutional barriers
deliberately created to maintain the status quo) , both these parties are dominated by huge flows of campaign
contributions (contributions which form what economists call an effective barrier to entry against any third party
seriously being able to compete), both parties embrace much the same policies except for some social issues of little
interest to the establishment, and election campaigns are reduced to nothing more than gigantic advertising and
marketing operations no different in nature to campaigns for two national brands of fast food or pop. It takes an
extremely long time for a candidate to rise and be tested before being trusted with the huge amounts of money invested
in an important campaign, and by that time he or she is a well-read book with no surprising chapters.
If for any reason this political filtering system fails, and someone slips through to an important office without having
spent enough time to make them perfectly predictable, there still remains little chance of serious change on any
important matter. The military-industrial-intelligence complex provides a molded space into which any newcomer
absolutely must fit. Just imagine the immense pressures exerted by the mere presence of senior Pentagon brass gathered
around a long polished oak table or a table surrounded by top corporate figures representing hundreds of billions in
sales or representatives or a major lobbying group (and multi-million dollar financing source for the party). We see the
recent example of popular hopes being crushed after the election of Obama, a man everyone on the planet hoped to see
mend some of the ravages of George Bush and Dick Cheney. But the man who once sometimes wore sandals and bravely avoided
a superfluous and rather silly flag pin on his lapel quickly was made to feel the crushing weight of institutional
power, and he bent to every demand made on him, becoming indistinguishable from Bush. Of course, the last president who
genuinely did challenge at least some of the great institutional powers, even to a modest extent, died in an ambush in
Dallas.
ENDS