Next Steps
Now that the Torturer-in-Chief has in his grasp the tools to imprison anyone, anywhere, for any (or no) reason, forever, while subjecting them to repeated and prolonged torture, what's next? I don't mean that in the same sense that Tristero at Digby asks the question, "Well. Now what?" He is pondering ways of combatting the Imperial Leader now that he has untrammelled power. Tristero offers no contructive ideas, other than staring clear-eyed into the reality of what America has become, but he does sound a rallying cry:
"Finally, we must realize that we will be fighting what this unspeakable bastard has done to the country and the world for a very long time. "
Likewise, Glenn Greenwald is issuing a call to the barricades:
"The most important and overriding mandate is to end the one-party rule to which our country has been subjected for the last four years. Achieving that is necessary -- it is an absolute pre-requisite -- to begin to impose some actual limits on the authoritarian behavior and unchecked powers of this administration -- because, right now, there are no such limits."
Such pronouncements are entertaining, but Greenwald has inadvertently admitted they are equally irrational. There are, he notes, no longer any limits on excutive power. Yet he suggests the Boy King and his Imperial Regent will somehow be reined in by the "power of the ballot":
"George Bush and Dick Cheney will never face even another midterm election ever again. They will be free to run wild for the next two years with a Congress that is so submissive and blindly loyal that it is genuinely creepy to behold."
Sorry, Glenn. It isn't going to happen. In the unlikely event there is an election on November 7th, its result will be completely irrelevant. The legislation slavishly adopted by the Royalist-controlled Congress explicits removes any legislative oversight on executive power. Once that law is on the books (by next week), there will be nothing Congress can do to stop Imperial excesses. Nothing. Congress has rendered itself -- and the people who elected it -- utterly impotent. Even if the Anti-Royalists were allowed the win a majority in this election, they would have absolutely no power to reverse the course upon which the Royalists have set us. An outright repeal of the Torture Enablement Act of 2006, were such a thing ever to win a majority vote in Congress, would be promptly vetoed. And the Royalists will maintain enough Congressional seats to ensure no override could succeed.
More likely, any Anti-Royalist who even proposed such a thing would disapear into the American gulag for life. After all, trying to limit George the Tyrant's power to break the bodies of his enemies is "objectively pro-terrorist". Now that there's a new secret police force in charge of identifying enemies of the crown, I have no doubt there are many Imperial minions poring over newspaper articles and Internet posts, compiling names of those who will be "disappeared".
So I'm not of a mind to conjure up ways to try and undo what has been done to our nation. frankly, I'm more interested in trying to divine what the Torquemada-in-Chief will do first, now that he can act with impugnity (and, needless to say, legal immunity). It has already started, of course. He is branding anyone who disagrees with him as allies of terrorists. How long will it take him to start ordering their apprehension, detention and interrogation by "alternate techniques"? A week? A month?
Perhaps he'll just designate every Anti-Royalist candidate for Congress an "enemy of the crown" and have them all rounded up before election day. That seems a rather labor-intensive way to achieve his goals. And this guy doesn't do anything the hard way. No, he wants the simplest, most straightforward method possible.
He's going to cancel the election. No doubt, someone will come up with "credible threat" that will trigger a national emergency (read: "martial law") to provide some sort of cover story for calling off the November 7th vote. It doesn't matter how specious the supposed "threat" turns out to be. It only need to be superficially serious enough to allow his Imperial Eminence to unplug the voting machines. No election, no chance of losing the Congressional majority that has enabled him so far.
But these guys think in the long term. So I'm wondering what the Boy King intends to do about the looming end of his term. He cannot, under the Constitution, serve beyond January 20, 2009. That's not nearly long enough to accomplish everything he has set out to do. Shoot, it's barely enough time to hand out "reconstruction contracts" for post-war Iran. I suspect there's already a plan in the works to get around that little impediment. It might work something like this:
Sometime in 2009, after the the cancellation of the presidential election and the enthronement of a permanent, hereditary Emperor of America in the person of little Junior Bush, Imperial Viceroy Dick Cheney will take quite ill. (Not so ill that he can't serve as the liberally-compensated chairman of a major defense contractor, mind you, but ill enough that he's not up to actually running the empire any more.) The Emperor will no doubt designate someone close to him to take over the day-to-day management of the imperium -- preferably, someone who has executive experience, but also has unquestioned loyalty to the royal family.
There's really only one candidate, of course: Jeb Bush. He is after all the next in the line of family succession. He'll be out of work (his current term ends in January and he can't run again). And he is slavishly devoted to his big brother. Moreover, his elevation will ensure the orderly, hereditary royal bloodline.
In time, George the Tyrant will tire of his duties. After all, he's never held a job for more than a handful of years (his half decade at the helm of the Texas Rangers and six years as Governor of Texas are his longest tenures in any position before his current one). Sometime in the next few years, he'll be ready to move on -- there's plenty of brush to clear back in Crawford. Jeb will take his place on the throne and, of course, immediately designate his own Crown Prince to carry on the family tradition.
Long live the King.
"Finally, we must realize that we will be fighting what this unspeakable bastard has done to the country and the world for a very long time. "
Likewise, Glenn Greenwald is issuing a call to the barricades:
"The most important and overriding mandate is to end the one-party rule to which our country has been subjected for the last four years. Achieving that is necessary -- it is an absolute pre-requisite -- to begin to impose some actual limits on the authoritarian behavior and unchecked powers of this administration -- because, right now, there are no such limits."
Such pronouncements are entertaining, but Greenwald has inadvertently admitted they are equally irrational. There are, he notes, no longer any limits on excutive power. Yet he suggests the Boy King and his Imperial Regent will somehow be reined in by the "power of the ballot":
"George Bush and Dick Cheney will never face even another midterm election ever again. They will be free to run wild for the next two years with a Congress that is so submissive and blindly loyal that it is genuinely creepy to behold."
Sorry, Glenn. It isn't going to happen. In the unlikely event there is an election on November 7th, its result will be completely irrelevant. The legislation slavishly adopted by the Royalist-controlled Congress explicits removes any legislative oversight on executive power. Once that law is on the books (by next week), there will be nothing Congress can do to stop Imperial excesses. Nothing. Congress has rendered itself -- and the people who elected it -- utterly impotent. Even if the Anti-Royalists were allowed the win a majority in this election, they would have absolutely no power to reverse the course upon which the Royalists have set us. An outright repeal of the Torture Enablement Act of 2006, were such a thing ever to win a majority vote in Congress, would be promptly vetoed. And the Royalists will maintain enough Congressional seats to ensure no override could succeed.
More likely, any Anti-Royalist who even proposed such a thing would disapear into the American gulag for life. After all, trying to limit George the Tyrant's power to break the bodies of his enemies is "objectively pro-terrorist". Now that there's a new secret police force in charge of identifying enemies of the crown, I have no doubt there are many Imperial minions poring over newspaper articles and Internet posts, compiling names of those who will be "disappeared".
So I'm not of a mind to conjure up ways to try and undo what has been done to our nation. frankly, I'm more interested in trying to divine what the Torquemada-in-Chief will do first, now that he can act with impugnity (and, needless to say, legal immunity). It has already started, of course. He is branding anyone who disagrees with him as allies of terrorists. How long will it take him to start ordering their apprehension, detention and interrogation by "alternate techniques"? A week? A month?
Perhaps he'll just designate every Anti-Royalist candidate for Congress an "enemy of the crown" and have them all rounded up before election day. That seems a rather labor-intensive way to achieve his goals. And this guy doesn't do anything the hard way. No, he wants the simplest, most straightforward method possible.
He's going to cancel the election. No doubt, someone will come up with "credible threat" that will trigger a national emergency (read: "martial law") to provide some sort of cover story for calling off the November 7th vote. It doesn't matter how specious the supposed "threat" turns out to be. It only need to be superficially serious enough to allow his Imperial Eminence to unplug the voting machines. No election, no chance of losing the Congressional majority that has enabled him so far.
But these guys think in the long term. So I'm wondering what the Boy King intends to do about the looming end of his term. He cannot, under the Constitution, serve beyond January 20, 2009. That's not nearly long enough to accomplish everything he has set out to do. Shoot, it's barely enough time to hand out "reconstruction contracts" for post-war Iran. I suspect there's already a plan in the works to get around that little impediment. It might work something like this:
Sometime in 2009, after the the cancellation of the presidential election and the enthronement of a permanent, hereditary Emperor of America in the person of little Junior Bush, Imperial Viceroy Dick Cheney will take quite ill. (Not so ill that he can't serve as the liberally-compensated chairman of a major defense contractor, mind you, but ill enough that he's not up to actually running the empire any more.) The Emperor will no doubt designate someone close to him to take over the day-to-day management of the imperium -- preferably, someone who has executive experience, but also has unquestioned loyalty to the royal family.
There's really only one candidate, of course: Jeb Bush. He is after all the next in the line of family succession. He'll be out of work (his current term ends in January and he can't run again). And he is slavishly devoted to his big brother. Moreover, his elevation will ensure the orderly, hereditary royal bloodline.
In time, George the Tyrant will tire of his duties. After all, he's never held a job for more than a handful of years (his half decade at the helm of the Texas Rangers and six years as Governor of Texas are his longest tenures in any position before his current one). Sometime in the next few years, he'll be ready to move on -- there's plenty of brush to clear back in Crawford. Jeb will take his place on the throne and, of course, immediately designate his own Crown Prince to carry on the family tradition.
Long live the King.
posted by wally at 3:29 PM
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