I’m not sanguine that we are not staring down a “constitutional crisis”. I didn’t see the link, so perhaps it is all in how one defines the crisis. Maybe the WSJ blog doesn’t view tearing it up and throwing it away as a crisis, but I do.

I just got back from the airport and as I was channel hopping on the radio, a caller had called into to the local right wing affiliate to vent some spleen about the stupidity of molesting 90 year old grandmas at the airport. The radio host was an idiot (basically agreeing about grandma, but pivoting to “profiling is all we need” b.s.). I know I keep harping on this, but to me they might just as well hang a banner on Logan that says:

Welcome to the Police State of Massachusetts
where our officers can’t wait to get to know you better!

And all I could I think of was all of the people coming and going who just don’t give a damn. And I wonder, how far is too far? I know where my limit is (and the TSA has gone way passed it), but what would it take for a majority of Americans to revolt? I don’t mean guns and revolution, I mean simple acts of defiance, refusing to cooperate/participate in whatever demeaning act the government demands next? I have no idea, but it is obvious to me, that there isn’t a soul in any branch of our government who has any intention of bringing the era of abusive power to a close.

I don’t know that it matters if Kagan bothers to ever give us her opinion on anything. She got confirmed without sharing her opinions. She has no evident legal or personal philosophy. She’s just another grasping opportunist aspiring to positions of power just for the sake of power, not out of any vision or desire to serve others. What does she care about the Constitution or justice or a functional democracy? She got her plum position and now she can rest on her laurels and collect her paycheck and when things go to hell in a handbasket blink pleasantly into the camera and say there was nothing she could have done, it was all the Republicans fault.

Yep, DW it is all going according to plan. Hail Caesar.

What it would take?

I guess we shall have ample opportunity, looking forward, to see what it will take …

One hopes that there ARE limits to what will be tolerated …

DW

Not to worry, DW…there always are. Look how the Germans drew the line on the final solution. How the muslims world-wide laughed off the Danish cartoons. How the Israelis reined up on Eretz Israel. The human system has the same built-in negative feed-backs as the changing climate.

(How are you feeling, by the way?)

A man after my own heart. Good for him!

Thanks John, I did indeed enjoy that : )

…what would it take for a majority of Americans to revolt? I don’t mean guns and revolution, I mean simple acts of defiance, refusing to cooperate/participate in whatever demeaning act the government demands next?

Well it depends on the cost, doesn’t it? If one’s livelihood depends on, e.g., flying, and one doesn’t have the means to live comfortably for very long without the job, then one submits to the required indignities. If one likes traveling, if that is the greater part of their joie de vive, then they, too, submit. And as long as the envelope of further indignities is pushed one small step at a time, so that a majority can get with the program before the goalposts are moved yet again, then so much the better.

Very likely it only ends in crisis, whether that is through “guns and revolution”, or ecological disaster, or some other external. No way does it end through collective civil disobedience; the collective just isn’t there. The “nation” isn’t there.

At one time, the “nation” (seen in opposition to the “state”) was the collective self-image of the citizens that was shaped through the media, through the arts, through the stories and narratives that arose from a shared history (and a shared present). There was an agreement, by and large, on the nature of reality and the arc of history. A single, collective agreement on what was real and what was hogwash. That was the sort of thing that led to the formation of nation-states, and that was most certainly the basis of the American nation until quite recently.

The forces that bind the nation are no longer unified in the U.S. The various media that inform people have been splintered into thousands of diverging channels. Those channels that persist from the days before the tubes have become relentless propaganda outlets intent on driving their nation toward harmonization with corporate interests, they care nothing for the public interest, or for the story of the nation that was. The new channels are more direct, without the control of editors, publishers, and billionaire owners. They tell the story as individuals who observe and incorporate what they see into the body of knowledge that is shared by their readership, and more importantly, with the understanding of reality that is shared by their readership. And it turns out that substantial, even vast, numbers of Americans are willing to openly proclaim their disagreement with what was formerly accepted as reality.

“The clock is driven by the force of gravity acting on the weights that slowly unwind”. That used to be an utterly uncontroversial statement. Any given gentleman of the 1950s would be incredulous to learn that such non-controversy defined the nation. Yet now it is not surprising to learn that a fringe group exists, and boasts of its existence, and furthermore attaches its existence to a political movement, which stands in opposition to this statement, and is willing to defend their opposition to the very core of their being.

It turns out that a “majority” of Americans needs these people. They are not fringe because their political alliance has given them the power to insist on the equality of their vision of reality. So a majority of Americans will not adopt simple acts of defiance and refuse to cooperate with the acts of obeisance demanded by the state. There is no longer a shared identity that allows a majority to arise spontaneously for such acts. The political costs to the alliance that denies reality is too great, and the individual costs, now that these people have stood up and declared their “differences”, are also too great. The nation is fractured though the state remains unified.

As long as the political process is restricted to a two-party system, the alliance of crazies will hold power over those who respect reality. It’s basically the parable of the tribes translated to an electoral system of representatives. Break the two-party hegemony and the crazies will fracture like taffee in liquid nitrogen, but to do that one has to abandon what was the American Nation. The national story, the long, hard, costly struggle of the republic is embedded in that two party system. But it has been gamed, and gamed well. Checkmate, one may fairly say. The only thing left is to realize that Chess wasn’t the game, it was just a proxy.

Yes, I suppose there is some sadness there. I was enjoying myself while writing it, though. A tall scotch after dinner, and then just thinking out loud while I continue to try to figure out what I wanted to say in the 9th circuit thread. Slouching towards coherence?

A framework: that is exactly what I am groping for. How to make sense of the irrational. It’s such an exasperating experience. Why should anyone want to insist on obvious falsehoods? While trying to figure out why I thought the whole corpus of acceptance surrounding classified information and national security secrets had to be re-thought, I typed the word “nation-state” and began to reflect on the differences between nation and state, and it sort of led me to those reflections in 17. They’re just labels, of course, but as Thomas Pynchon once remarked, “words and the things they stand for are separated by mere whispers” (it’s somewhere in “Gravity’s Rainbow…hell if I’m ever going back into that sorry mess to find it). The national identity has changed, and not just in response to the overtly evil leadership of Cheney and his gang. There are an enormous number of citizens who are fully on board with the change, and pushing to change it further; way further. So I have a genuine difficulty in even accepting that there is a national identity anymore. There are remnants, for sure, anyone looking at a Trash Talk thread can see that cultural inertia is far more resilient than political fractionation. But without some shared agreement on what constitutes reality, on what the Universe really is, that inertia cannot ultimately lead to reunification.

I suppose what bugs me the most is how 9/11 could have catalyzed such a sea change. In the context of the history of warfare, it’s just not that big of an event. Almost a decade later and half the country have still not recovered from losing their nut. The single most unifying experience for Americans in half a century and the official investigation was the shoddiest, most piss-poor, country-bumpkin piece of ass-covering in the history of the nation. Investigating a presidential blow-job got ten times the budget and thoroughness. People just didn’t want to know. Why? I can’t imagine.

Is there any solace in looking for rational explanations? What else can one do? It’s like finding solace in breathing. I remember quite a few years back when a neighbor challenged me to engage the arguments of the Creationists (whom he insisted were making very convincing arguments). I spent most of a winter reading this crap by Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, Hank Hennegraf, and others. In the end it made no difference. I dismantled their “arguments” with great patience and forebearance, but it made not a whit of difference. My neighbor’s game was not to use evidence, or argument, to flesh out reality, but to try to bring a poor sinner to the light. By setting the trap with rational argument, and with the expectation of good faith, he caught me like a trout rising to the fly. It was just that easy for him, but really, what choice did I have? It’s like breathing…not so much for solace but just because that’s what I do because I can’t not do it.

There is just as surely a trap in the current American political process and those who use evidence to perceive reality are going the wrong way.

phred, you and KenMuldrew have been raising the most interesting, if somewhat depressing and appalling, as well as precisely on target, assessments of our common plight.

Perhaps it is owning to cultural ennui, yet the bemusement and capture of curiosity, that ability to step back, away from the “viewfinder” and perceive more broadly what is going on, aided by the successful assault upon education these last forty-odd years, has left us a society addicted to group thinks, of the narrowest sort, aided by the “sound-bite” mentality of the deliberate manipulators of “public” perception.

Historically, the willingness to “stop”, as it were, the headlong rush to “achievement” (that none may be “average”), that proclivity of looking at what others cannot be moved, on their own, to see, or to ponder, has been left, in our culture, to fools, simpletons, and poets.

The “astute” of today’s American elites have chosen, in large number, to join the manipulation, as there is gold in them thar ills, with a pure cynicism that delights in “go aheads” like, “Greed is good”, and, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac…”, for, as education has been made a deliberate “fail” for many, for the precious “few”, it is the key to the money and to the power.

It is not merely “law schools” and “economics departments” which have been remiss in the quality their finished “product”, across the board, the educational “establishment” has taken over by self-interested bureaucrats and administrators, who have selected faculties which, especially at the level of “higher” education are quiescent and focused on the “politics” of advancement rather than upon inquiry or overarching philosophies of connection and consequence.

The people, by and large, happily bought notions of “competition” when their own histories, collectively had taught, often painfully, the value of cooperation, but then, America is, as all Americans believe, exceptional, and the ill-fates, desperate circumstances, and “excesses” of other nations can (and will) never be ours.

The ether myths of time.

DW

Thanks : )

I read the post linked at 16, but not the comments. Clearly, I should have.

The love of freedom and individual liberty is not nearly so dear to the American spirit as one would have hoped.

Indeed. For all the endless repetitions of the national anthem at sporting events, there are many who don’t have even a passing notion of what “the land of the free” is about. Perhaps if we pledged allegiance to our constitution instead of our flag, it might help. Perhaps not ; )

If there is something the American spirit appears to crave it is a desire for convenience, instant gratification, and cheap goods. The spirit craves these things so strongly, that the mind will often refuse to ponder the consequences of following those destructive impulses.

I’m all for convenience, instant gratification, and cheap goods myself. But when convenience means I have to choose between my freedom to travel and my civil rights, I stop to think about it. When instant gratification means putting myself into permanent indebtedness to usurers, I stop to think about it. When cheap goods means underwriting unemployment at home and slave labor abroad, I stop to think about it.

But for some, their desires outweigh their good sense or at least their willingness to consider that their actions have consequences. And that those consequences might not just be harmful to others, but seriously detrimental to themselves as well. Humans have a depressing capacity for self-destruction (whether personal or societal).

It is funny, now that I think about it, one of my traits that the hubby finds most amusing is my intense desire to not inconvenience others. I hate holding up a line and will try to do whatever I can to avoid creating a problem thereby inconveniencing others. I mentioned this in a prior thread about not wanting to complain in a restaurant when my order gets messed up, but it goes way beyond that. When I call someone, I usually ask if I am catching them at a bad time, because I don’t want to inconvenience them. I hate asking someone for (fill in the blank) because it might put them out.

I haven’t really given this a lot of thought before now, but it is really true for me, that inconveniencing others is a real sin. Americans have things to do, places to go, and people to see, so one best not do anything to interupt the smooth flow of getting these things done.

No wonder those commenters were so pissed off at the uncooperative soul who refused to be interrogated. Someone dared to throw the whole streamlined (and mostly pointless) exercise off its well-greased rails, thereby impeding their rapid progress, causing them an inconvenience of being a few minutes behind schedule. I think we have mutated from being a Type A society into something newer, more obsessively demanding of speed and efficiency.

Huh. I hadn’t really thought about this before. Thanks for giving me something new to chew on for awhile…

As long as the political process is restricted to a two-party system, the alliance of crazies will hold power over those who respect reality.

While true this fact is not widely understood. Nader wrote a book about it: Crashing The Party