Heh. I was thinking exactly along those lines … Bernhard has summed it up.
Between Uncle Scam’s vision which I often share and the acting out of sadistic impulses, possibly even of only one man (Arbusto rather than the other) the difference lies in degree of deliberation, planning, and aim. One thing is certain though: independently of the answer to that question, the poison spreads rapidly, as it is taken up by authoritarian types and/or the greedy (spying, control, security, prisons, are very lucrative. Even all the confiscated shower gels are making some ppl a pile of cash. I see I am repeating what B said…)
What I find striking is that it is perhaps the only concrete results of 9/11, at least within the US and as pertaining to its actions. The view that 9/11 provoked two dumb wars is incorrect. Afghanistan was agreed on before, and an invasion of Iraq and the deposing of Hussein was, so to speak, on the cards. 9/11 certainly swayed the US public and may have influenced their ‘Iraq’ agreement somewhat. Even that is questionable – remember the script was ‘old’ – evil dictator, oppressed people, and WMD. All that was done was provide a weak, tagged-on rationale – the war on terror, some lines for cocktail party or BBQ chat about Saddam and Atta or other trivial snippets. In view of the past history of the US no effective opposition to the Iraq invasion was not to be expected in any case. (However, it is quite likely that 9/11 influenced others to oppose the Iraq invasion – another topic.) The opposition was useless – the shock and awe was merely delayed and the USuk had to ‘go it alone.’
So the next question is, could internal control, or simply a culture of fear, have been an intended effect? Is the view that some elements in the US Gvmt. and/or its corporate or military elite engineered 9/11 (or allowed it to happen, or collaborated, that distinction is not important here), in function of that aim, credible? Or do we see opportunism, profiteering, exploitation, after the fact? Or both?
These may not be brilliant questions but they irresistibly suggest themselves.

Posted by: Tangerine | Feb 13 2008 16:27 utc | 4

Yep I think you got it Juannie.
There are two questions that have bothered my mostly private subconscious for a long time. One is the familiar convention of accepting bad behavior if it is legal. Often, not accepting it is illegal so one has to be careful in his righteous pursuit of justice, etc.
The current govt criminality is a perfect example, where the perps walk because a) other psychopaths have been installed in key enforcement positions including the courts, and b) the good old boy network has accepted their criminality as normal, not to be prosecuted, or even noticed/commented upon.
So we as a people have come to accept this evil, as defined in ponerology, as inevitable, part of life to be endured. In fact, I believe I read recently, just 6% or less of the populace is psychopathic, that is without conscience and capable of hurting others with no internal misgivings. BUT THIS PHENOMENON IS NOT RECOGNISED, except within small scientific circles which get little or no recognition. My opinion is that this low profile is by design rather than accident. We all have an equal right to be evil – there is no law against it. OK the concept of law is to discourage bad behavior, not thought or inborn condition like evil.
The second question, after the problem has been recognised, is what to do about it. Nothing? Civilisation can’t afford that any more, not that it ever could. Now that the worst case for tolerance of this type has evolved into a giant monster, nurtured by that sneaky six percent, it can’t be ignored any longer. But to this point it has been ignored, not the perps themselves but the phenomenon that nobody wants to talk about, which enables the perps in the first place.
This ignorance, helplessness to approach evil at its root comes in part from our “natural” need to line up and obey authority, which is itself embodied by that very six percent we are trying to root out. I mean, a psychopath knows he has a condition best kept under wraps, and how better to do that than become the boss, or the boss’s lieutenant, or a dedicated valuable party worker if he lacks the leadership skills? Plus, and I know this from personal experience and observation, a psychopath who has the desire and the smarts is more likely to rise to the top, if that is his goal, using a properly wrapped lack of ethics, than is one whose habits are oriented outward to the benefit of others.
The above points may seem fairly obvious; if so why are they not more widely discussed?

Posted by: rapt | Feb 13 2008 17:05 utc | 6

@CP – Yes, the cheerleaders are very much guilty in this.
Witness the OTT response of the UK media (BBC included) to the Archbishop’s “thoughtful” essay on applying some aspect of Sharia Law in the UK’s legal system.
Just to recap: What I read from the Archbishop’s speach was that he simply encourages to allow Muslims arbitration in certain low level family law and title cases, IF all parties agree to this and can, at any time, challenge the arbitration in legal, neutral courts. Such arbitrations are used by businesses everywhere, nationally and internationally, and they are allowed in the UK for Hasedic Jews and other special social groups. If they are allowed for these (something I personally do NOT favor but accept) why is it bad to allow them for Muslims or Christians?
The media did distort that very much and I am dismayed by this too.

Posted by: b | Feb 13 2008 19:22 utc | 8

“Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.”

Oil grabs have really been the central strategic ambition of Bush/Cheney & Co.
Under cover of the so called GWOT, they have sent in the “mighest military force ever assembled” to effect some of the biggest armed robberies in human history!
What’s “the 2nd largest oil reserve” on the planet worth?
see too:
The So-Called “War on Terror:” A Masterpiece of Propaganda, by Richard W. Behan

From its first days in office in January of 2001 the Administration of George W. Bush meant to launch military attacks against both Afghanistan and Iraq. The reasons[**] had nothing to do with terrorism.

**de-nationalize Iraq’s vast oil reserves for Exxon & BP; secure Afghan pipeline
check out his excellent “End Notes” — also, The US and the Coup in Venezuela — google: “Bridas, Unocal, Afghanistan”
other aims:
“regulatory capture”
“starve the beast” / Starving the Beast, by Ed Kilgore
Crimes Against Nature, by RFK, Jr.
nod to Karl — search: “permanent Republican majority”
Pax Americana
Michael Moore working on new film with working title: “While America Slept” — examining something along the lines of, while all this warring and torturing has tended to suck all the oxygen out of the room, behind all this “fog of war,” what’s really been going on?
[YouTube video, here — advance slider to 2:44 for “next project” question]
___________________________________________
If only we could get our hands on Lord Richard Bruce Cheney’s day planner.

Posted by: manonfyre | Feb 13 2008 22:38 utc | 10

That’s certainly a shotgun blast of wallpaper collage prose there, Swift Creek, I could easily see it being read at a beat poets coffee house, or opium den, with the following in the background as soundtrack white noise.
And all the Scorn that should accompany it. For as the late Bob Wilson would say, “poets are the antenna of the race.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 14 2008 6:24 utc | 12

Froomkin today RE the FISA rulings today, asks “isn’t this the very definition of a police state”. Glenn Greenwald follows up (in his blog):

I used to think that amnesty supporters held their position because they didn’t understand this extremely simple point, but now I think that most of them have their position precisely because they do understand it. A lawless “police state” — and that’s the only term that can be used to describe what this bill creates — is exactly what our political establishment desires.

Other implications aside, he’s quite right to emphasize the bi-partisan agreement in moving toward a police state. That the DC establishment is in collusion to function on behalf of itself as a singular entity – as opposed to representing the plurality. For which they must continue to consolidate centralized police power over, and for what reason? As I suggested in the paranoid rant above, there seems to be two paths facing the elite, either maintain the current growing dependency on liberal globalism, or to withdrawal from it.
Both trajectories present significant possibilities for domestic social disruption. As to the former, currently, with two plus occupation wars going to seed, along with the international fallout from that fact, not to mention the socialist revolutions all over the South, U.S. hegemony has become overextended, and by all accounts is in retreat with the economic effects just beginning to grab the population by the throat.
It would be the McCain faction that would seek to re-energize this account, and would entail throwing even more money to the MIC and most likely entail forced conscription (I don’t know why nobody asks him about this), taking out even more dept against diminishing rewards when the economy is already going belly up. During the last depression, there was initially much greater resistance to U.S. involvement in WW2, and that was a much more well defined and powerful enemy eating up massive amounts of actual real estate. Its hard to see how a family that just lost their house and living in a beat up Winnabago under a bridge and under siege from criminal gangs is going to want to sacrifice Johnny to wars already gone eight years bad.
The alternative (for the sake of argument) would be Obama (I know, but it would be a real change) and some retraction from globalization or a retraction from imperial enterprise. And as good as that might sound, there’s little doubt that the economic meltdown would be accelerated in proportion to the retreat. In spite of the fact that even without such a program, the nationalists movements against globalization may already be forcing that retreat anyway, making the pretense moot.
Either way, the choice adds up to a climate of inevitable civil unrest and the necessity of a police state status to protect elite interests. So a culture of fear of the other, becomes a fear of the government itself. And they have collectively decided to circle the wagons for protection from the natives. Which are us.

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 14 2008 10:06 utc | 14

The climate of fear starts at the top: these people are not so much terrified that another attack will take place, they just want to be in a position to say that they did everything possible to prevent it.
It is not unlike the paranoid atmosphere that surrounded schools after the Columbine massacre: where they once ignored outsiders like the Trenchcoat Mafia, they started coming down on anything that might vaguely be considered suspicious out of fear that they might be branded as negligent.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Feb 14 2008 15:37 utc | 16