Democracy Incorporated Part 4

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world, a prison system with brutalizing conditions, and one that has been significantly privatized.19 Equally striking, a disproportionately high percentage of the imprisoned are African Americans. a.s.suming that most of the imprisoned African Americans have committed some crime, their incarceration would appear to contrast with the n.a.z.i policies that herded millions of Jews, Gypsies, h.o.m.os.e.xuals, political opponents, and Slavs into slave labor camps for no other reason than to satisfy irrational ideological beliefs ("racial purity") and obtain "free" labor. Or do the high incarceration rates among blacks reflect not only old-fashioned racism but inverted totalitarianism's fear of political dissidence?

The significance of the African American prison population is political. What is notable about the African American population generally is that it is highly sophisticated politically and by far the one group that throughout the twentieth century kept alive a spirit of resistance and rebelliousness. In that context, criminal justice is as much a strategy of political neutralization as it is a channel of instinctive racism.

Our government need not pursue a policy of stamping out dissidence-the uniformity imposed on opinion by the "private" media conglomerates performs that job efficiently. This apparent "restraint" points to a crucial difference between cla.s.sical and inverted totalitarianism: in the former economics was subordinate to politics. Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true: economics dominates politics-and with that domination come different forms of ruthlessness. It is possible for the government to punish by withholding appropriated funds, failing to honor ent.i.tlements, or purposely allowing regulations (e.g., environmental safeguards, minimum wage standards) to remain unenforced or waived. What seem like reductions in state power are actually increases. Withholding appropriated money is an expression of power that is not lost on those adversely affected; waiving minimum wage standards is an act of power not lost on those who benefit and those who suffer.20 Such strategies play a major role in the incorporation of state and corporate power. Incorporation need not always require, for example, that corporate representatives sit on review committees that judge new drugs or gather in the office of the vice president to consult on energy policies. Power is typically exercised in a context where the partic.i.p.ants know their cues. Recently a major television network withdrew a program dealing with Ronald Reagan after the Republican National Committee protested a scene where the former president was portrayed as less than inclusive about h.o.m.os.e.xuals.21 This surrender occurred at the precise moment when the Republican-dominated Federal Communications Commission was promoting greater concentration of media ownership and, in the process, ignoring an unprecedented outcry from thousands of citizens.

VII.

The fact that politically organized interest groups with vast resources operate continuously, that they are coordinated with congressional procedures and calendars, that they occupy strategic points in the political processes, is indicative of how the meaning of "representative" government has radically changed. The citizenry is being displaced, severed from a direct connection with the legislative inst.i.tutions that are supposed to "stand in" for the people. If the main purpose of elections is to serve up pliant legislators for lobbyists to shape, such a system deserves to be called "misrepresentative or clientry government." It is, at one and the same time, a powerful contributing factor to the depoliticization of the citizenry, as well as reason for characterizing the system as one of antidemocracy.

How is the role of the citizen being redefined and to whose advantage? Almost from the beginning of the Cold War the citizenry, supposedly the source of governmental power and authority as well as a partic.i.p.ant, has been replaced by the "electorate," that is, by voters who acquire a political life at election time. During the intervals between elections the political existence of the citizenry is relegated to a shadowcitizenship of virtual partic.i.p.ation. Instead of partic.i.p.ating in power, the virtual citizen is invited to have "opinions": measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them.

There is an especially revealing contrast between the n.a.z.i use of public opinion surveys and the methods of contemporary pollsters. The n.a.z.is were interested primarily in constructing a "ma.s.s" opinion, a monolithic expression of the citizens without qualification or nuance. Hence the plebiscite and its stark choice of "yes" or "no." In contrast, the American method is to prepare for elections by first splintering the citizenry into distinct categories, such as "between 20 and 35 years old," or "white male over 40," or "female college graduate." The potential electorate is thus divided into small subgroups that candidates can then "target" with messages tailored to the "values," prejudices, or habits of the particular category. The effect is to accentuate what separates citizens, to plant suspicions and thereby further promote demobilization by making it more difficult to form coherent majorities around common beliefs. At the same time, the dicing of the public into ever more refined categories renders their const.i.tuent members more easily manipulable: cheaply reproduced in "focus groups," their conclusions are represented as political reality. The respondents, for their part, are not obligated to act on their opinions: giving an opinion entails no political responsibility.

The advanced stage of the art of opinion construction and its manipulation is indicative of the forces molding the political system. It combines advanced technology, academic social science, government contracts, and corporate subsidies. We shall encounter this same combination of powers in later pages; it plays a vital role in coordinating the powers on which Superpower depends.

In a genuinely democratic system, as opposed to a pseudodemocratic one in which a "representative sample" of the population is asked whether it "approves" or "disapproves," citizens would be viewed as agents actively involved in the exercise of power and in contributing to the direction of policy. Instead citizens are more like "patients" who, in the dictionary definition, are "bearing or enduring (evil of any kind) with composure; long suffering or forbearing."22 A demotion in the status and stature of the "sovereign people" to patient subjects is symptomatic of systemic change, from democracy as a method of "popularizing" power to democracy as a brand name for a product manageable at home and marketable abroad.23

VIII.

"Superpower" signifies the emergence of a new system. Its guiding purposes are not democratic ones of promoting the well-being of its citizens or involving them in political processes. The new ident.i.ty and how it is to be measured were stated by the administration: "the United States possesses unprecedented-and unequalled-strength and influence in the world."24 Implicit in that declaration is a reformulation of the nation's ident.i.ty: it stands for sheer power, economic and military, that is measured by a global standard rather than the nation's const.i.tution; freed not only from const.i.tutional democracy but from any truly political character.

Inverted totalitarianism, the true face of Superpower, represents a blend of powers that includes modern as well as archaic ones. It comprises the business corporation-once hailed as "the city of G.o.d on earth" and even formally theologized25-the organization of science for continuous advance, and the systematic conversion of new scientific knowledge into new technological applications, especially military ones. A common characteristic of each of these powers is a presumption of virtually limitless development. That dynamic governs economic behavior, the pursuit of knowledge, the production of culture, and military weaponry. The paradox is that the inevitable changes accompanying the development of these powers, indeed, changes that are often consciously sought, are promoted by an administration and a political party advertising themselves as "conservative."

Democracy proposes a radically different conception of power. Democracy is first and foremost about equality: equality of power and equality of sharing in the benefits and values made possible by social cooperation. Democracy is no more compatible with world domination than is "the political," which is first and foremost about preserving commonality while legitimating and reconciling differences. Both democracy and the political become distorted when the scales are continually expanded. In the United States, from the beginning, there has been a persistent tension between the drive for expansion (the Louisiana Purchase, "Westward, Ho!") and the struggle to devise new inst.i.tutions for adapting the practices of democracy and its ethos of political commonality. An enlarged spatial scale both requires and promotes a technology of power that can make occupation and rule effective. America's westward migration was facilitated by new technology, from the covered wagon, the Pony Express, the railroad, and the telegraph to the Winchester rifle. To the technology of expansion there should be added the ideology of "Manifest Destiny," which served to legitimate and fuel the "drive" westward. Ideology can be as vital a part of the technology of power as any mechanical invention, provided it is dynamic-that is, if it possesses a "thrust" forward in time (e.g., the "Last Days") to accompany the occupation of new s.p.a.ce. Such an ideology rea.s.sures those who are applying mundane forms of technology that the act of "taking over" what was not previously theirs is "just" by some higher principle. Manifest Destiny, religious conversion, the counterparts to Lebensraum, the Redskin to the Jew.

The preconditions for Superpower are the availability of a totalizing technology of power and an accompanying ideology that encourages the regime's aspirations to global domination. These preconditions were satisfied during the Bush administration. It succeeded in systematizing and exploiting a dynamic complex of powers already existing. Its princ.i.p.al elements include the state, corporate economic power, the powers represented in the integration of modern science and postmodern technologies, a military addicted to technological innovation, and a religious fundamentalism that is no stranger to politics and markets. By "dynamic" I mean to emphasize that they are powers which constantly supersede their own previous limits and are totalizing in the sense that infinity, or the persistent challenging of the constraints of existing practices, beliefs, and taboos, rather than simple superiority, is the driving force. This is accompanied by a systematic effort to establish the conditions that facilitate power and eliminate those which interfere-from government regulations that frustrate entrepreneurial energies to the "wall separating church and state" that constrains religious zealots from purifying schools, placing the Ten Commandments in courthouses, preaching redemption to a captive audience of welfare recipients, sometimes using terrorist violence against medical clinics, and setting the limits of scientific research in the name of protecting "life" before birth but less zealous about promoting health care for the postnatal poor. Such religiosity fits comfortably with a regime promising a "compa.s.sionate conservatism" that "will leave no child behind" although, in practice, it frequently fails to provide adequate funds for social and educational programs designed to a.s.sist poor families. It does not emulate the rhetoric of n.a.z.is and Stalinists by extolling the values of "hardness" and "steel." Instead, it coexists easily with a culture of softness, indulgence, and fantasy, of comfortable viewers watching superb athletes perform physical prodigies of grace and violence.

IX.

Hitler was a parvenu in relation to the existing political system. He and his intimate circle began as "outsiders" who were not a part of the conventional system of political parties and elites in pre-Hitler Germany. In keeping with that character they adopted unconventional, often illegal, means to gain power. The court circle of George II, in contrast, was composed of highly seasoned political operatives, such as d.i.c.k Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Karl Rove, insiders rather than outsiders. Not only were they experienced in government, but most of them were intimately familiar with the inner workings of the corporate world. Their talents lay in managing the dual system of state and corporation. In Hitler's regime the subjectivity of arrivistes reigned; in Bush's governing circle the "objectivity" of professional politicians, the aggrandizing of corporate managers on loan, and the stratagems of consultants prevailed. The revolving door of the dual system suggests a certain parity between corporate and state power; the actuality is asymmetrical. While the corporate ethos has overwhelmed the ideal of government as the servant of the people, the old governmental ideals-such as the view that power is to be used for the public good, not for private profit-supply no model for corporate behavior.

One truly fundamental difference between cla.s.sical and inverted totalitarian regimes is that in the years before a.s.suming power, the n.a.z.is had attracted only limited support from the representatives of "big business." And during their years of rule it was abundantly clear that capitalism was subordinate to the power of the state and the party. In contrast the Bush administration openly flaunts its connections with corporate powers by appointing their representatives to high positions in government and in the hierarchy of the Republican Party. Another revealing difference: alongside their highly selective celebration of Kultur (e.g., Wagner) the n.a.z.is celebrated a certain barbarism that was contemptuous of "civilization," seeing in high culture an effete decadence that sapped the will to power. The Bush administration's spokespersons, as well as supporters of the attack on Iraq and the war against terrorism, portray the United States as the defender of "civilization" against "barbarians" and "apocalyptic nihilists."26 In one instance the distinction between "real" and "inverted" totalitarianism nearly-or, perhaps, ironically-appears to break down. The n.a.z.is came to power by an election in which they won more votes than any rival party, although not a majority. The election, while formally free, was marred by episodes of violence enacted by party thugs. George II was also elected or, better, anointed without a popular majority. Thanks to the manipulation of a dubious electoral process in the state of Florida, an aggressive, experienced, and highly paid "hit team" of lawyers and political consultants, a timid opposition party, and a highly partisan Supreme Court, the high-handed violations of elementary principles of legitimacy were treated as just another bit of dirty politics, easily forgotten in the rush to "get on with the nation's business."27 Behind the benevolent rhetoric of the Bush administration lies perhaps the most crucial inversion. One of the striking features of the three princ.i.p.al twentieth-century totalitarian regimes was a focus on maintaining their societies in a state of continuous political mobilization. Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Stalin's Soviet Union all held periodic plebiscites in which, unfailingly, more than 95 percent of a mobilized citizenry went to the polls and voted yes. There were endless political rallies, public spectacles, rousing oratorical performances by the leadership, tireless propaganda extolling the leaders, the party, and the ideology, and warnings that heavy sacrifices lay ahead.

In contrast, inverted totalitarianism thrives on a politically demobilized society, that is, a society in which the citizens, far from being whipped into a continuous frenzy by the regime's operatives, are politically lethargic, reminiscent of Tocqueville's privatized citizenry. Roughly between one-half and two-thirds of America's qualified voters fail to vote, thus making the management of the "active" electorate far easier. Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism. Yet apathy is not simply the result of a TV culture. It is, in its own way, a political response. Ordinary citizens have been the victims of a counterrevolution that has brought "rollbacks" of numerous social services which were established only after hard-fought political struggles, and which the earlier Republican administrations of Eisenhower and Nixon had accepted as major elements in a national consensus. Rollbacks don't simply reverse previous social gains; they also teach political futility to the Many. And along the way they mock the ideal and practice of consensus.

Where cla.s.sic totalitarianism-whether of the German, Italian, or Soviet type-aimed at fashioning followers rather than citizens, inverted totalitarianism can achieve the same end by furnishing subst.i.tutes such as "consumer sovereignty" and "shareholder democracy" that give a "sense of partic.i.p.ation" without demands or responsibilities. An inverted regime prefers a citizenry that is uncritically complicit rather than involved. President Bush's first words to the citizenry after 9/11 were not an appeal for sacrifice in a common cause but "unite, consume, fly."

Yet elements of inverted totalitarianism could not crystallize in the absence of a stimulus that would rouse the apathetic just enough to gain their support and obedience. The threat of terrorism supplied that element. It could evoke fear and obedience on demand ("according to unverified reports . . .") without causing paralysis or skepticism.

What is the temptation of a democracy without citizens?

A clue was suggested in the recent remarks of a member of the president's inner circle: "Even the president is not omnipotent. Would that he were. He often says that life would be a lot easier if it were a dictatorship. But it's not, and he is glad it's a democracy."28 Presumably, the nation exhaled.

X.

The n.a.z.is developed an extreme form of politicalization. The leadership continuously drummed into its population the necessity of personal sacrifice, of subordinating one's personal concerns to the good of the whole. It was, however, a "politicalization without politics." It actively suppressed free public discussion, discouraged the airing of policy alternatives, and clamped down upon the expression of group conflicts. Instead of a politics of open contestation and public involvement, the n.a.z.is pursued a vicious politics of cronyism, intrigue, ruthless ambitions, and periodic purges within the party and its various auxiliaries (SA, SS, etc.). There, hidden from view, individuals and cliques fought over the spoils and prerogatives of office.

Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.

XI.

The twentieth-century totalitarian systems in Italy and Germany were made possible by the weakness and eventual collapse of parliamentary government and the failure of the conventional political parties to mount and sustain an effective opposition. The latter proved incapable of countering the tactics and appeals of both extreme Right and Left that had made no secret of their ultimate purpose of dismantling elected governments and outlawing the system of free politics. Cla.s.sic totalitarianism first gained power by capturing the existing system and, once in power, proceeded to destroy it. The break was abrupt and complete.

Inverted totalitarianism has a different background, undramatic, no ma.s.s movement driving it, no putsches or Marches on Rome, no abrupt discontinuity. Instead a scarcely noticeable evolution, an undramatic convergence of tendencies and unintended consequences. In historical terms, corporate power itself is at least as old as the "trusts" of the nineteenth century; similarly, the role of big money in corrupting politics was well established by the end of the nineteenth century and had aroused a whole generation of "muckrakers" in the early years of the twentieth. In the 1920s political scientists were already describing interest groups and lobbies as "the fourth branch of government." What is unprecedented in the union of corporate and state power is its systematization and the shared culture of the partners.

Inverted totalitarianism begins to crystallize amidst the affluence of the world's most dynamic economy. In contrast, the n.a.z.is' ascendancy was aided in no small measure by the severe economic depression, high inflation, and acute unemployment afflicting Germany during much of the 1920s and early 1930s. Once in power they began to mobilize the society for total war. The resulting full employment reduced the regime's need to exploit economic fears. Where Hitler's party, the National Socialists, had-for a brief period-made gestures in the direction of socialism and the working cla.s.ses but remained cool toward capitalism, inverted totalitarianism is just the opposite. It is resolutely capitalist, no friend of the working cla.s.ses, and, of course, viscerally antisocialist. In contrast to the n.a.z.is, the ever-changing economy of Superpower, despite its affluence, makes fear the constant companion of most workers. Downsizing, reorganization, bubbles bursting, unions busted, quickly outdated skills, and transfer of jobs abroad create not just fear but an economy of fear, a system of control whose power feeds on uncertainty, yet a system that, according to its a.n.a.lysts, is eminently rational.

XII.

One of the most revealing contrasts between cla.s.sic and inverted totalitarianism is in their treatment of what an inspired university president designated "the knowledge industry." Under cla.s.sic totalitarianism, schools, universities, and research were conscripted into the service of the regime. Scientific establishments and independent critics were either silenced, purged, or eliminated. Those who survived were expected to faithfully echo the party or government line. The primary task of all educational inst.i.tutions was the indoctrination of the population in the ideology of the regime.

Inverted totalitarianism, although at times capable of hara.s.sing or discrediting critics,29 has instead cultivated a loyal intelligentsia of its own. Through a combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation funds, joint projects involving university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors, universities (especially socalled research universities), intellectuals, scholars, and researchers have been seamlessly integrated into the system. No books burned, no refugee Einsteins. For the first time in the history of American higher education top professors are made wealthy by the system, commanding salaries and perks that a budding CEO might envy. During the months leading up to and following the invasion of Iraq, university and college campuses, which had been such notorious centers of opposition to the Vietnam War that politicians and publicists spoke seriously of the need to "pacify the campuses," hardly stirred. The Academy had become self-pacifying.

CHAPTER FOUR.

The New World of Terror.

I.

The victor will not be asked later whether he had spoken the truth or not.

-Adolf Hitler.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. . . .

Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

-Barry Goldwater.

Weakness is provocative.

-Donald Rumsfeld, "Rules of Life"

In Western thought the idea of a New World was typically used to support a myth of a fresh beginning, a place of promise, a new birth. As the "first new nation," the United States was widely regarded as fulfilling that promise, even though there were several old nations already occupying the land. But today the myth of a "new world" is not superimposed on an uncharted land, a tabula rasa, or blank tablet, awaiting inscription. Rather the idea is necessarily superimposed on an existing world. To the extent that it envisions a radically changed system, a new world represents a willful act of power, a determination to supersede not an old order-for in postmodernity maturity and old age are unacceptable-but a current one.

The most recent example of this mode of thinking-although it seems long ago-was the celebration of the arrival of a new millennium in 2000. At the time it was widely prophesied that advanced societies were poised at the threshold of a new age of dazzling technological marvels.4 A year later, following September 11, 2001, many public officials and commentators were quick to declare that a different kind of "new world" had come into being, a world of fears where "barbarians" were turning sophisticated technologies against the advanced civilization that had invented them. Citizens were told that the destruction of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon meant as well the destruction of the comforting a.s.sumption of invulnerability that had implicitly underlain American foreign policies and military strategies as well as their own daily lives.5 The most complete statement of the ideology of will-to-power was The National Security Strategy of the United States issued in 2002. In that doc.u.ment the administration declared its intention to reshape the current world and define the new one. "In the new world we have entered," it declared grandly, "the only path to safety is the path of action."6 Clearly neither politicians nor the news media could truly know that a new world had been born that instant and that an old world had been superseded. Declaring a new world is a positive act canceling an old one and discarding along with it the old restraints and inhibitions upon power. "If they [Iraq and North Korea] do acquire WMD [weapons of ma.s.s destruction] their weapons will be unusable," Condoleezza Rice warned, "because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration"7-the wrath, if not of an angry G.o.d, then of a divinely appointed agent. The United States, the president announced, is the "greatest force for good on the earth," and in fighting terrorism the nation is responding to "a calling from beyond the stars."8 Terrorism is both a response to empire and the provocation that allows for empire to cease to be ashamed of its ident.i.ty. Under empire the claims of power can be relocated in a context different from the one defined by the traditions and constraints of const.i.tutional government and of democratic politics. Among the first actions of the administration, with the acquiescence of Congress and strong public support, were the creation of a Homeland Security Department, Superpower's super-agency, and pa.s.sage of the Patriot Act, introducing super-citizens to their diminished bill of rights.

These and other actions were responses to 9/11. But they were simultaneously attempts to reshape the existing political system, most notably by enlarging the powers of the executive branch of government, including the military and police functions, while reducing the legal protections of citizens. In the shaping of a fearful new world much would depend on the administration's definition of the enemy, the evidence supporting that definition, and the definition's problematic nature. Definition, evidence, and consequences, however, were to be preceded by the invention of a context consistent with the new world. Following 9/11 and virtually every day thereafter, government announcements and news bulletins sounded a drumbeat, cautioning citizens that a furtive network of fanatical enemies was tirelessly plotting death and destruction-especially for occasions when citizens congregated-and only awaited the opportunity when a free society relaxed its guard.

Accompanying the invention of a new world was the concerted effort to fix in the public mind a certain shapeless character and ident.i.ty to terrorism. The National Security Strategy-more of its doctrine later-declared that terrorism was "[a] shadowy network of individuals [that] can bring great chaos and suffering to our sh.o.r.es for less than it costs to purchase a single tank. Terrorists are organized to penetrate open societies and to turn the power of modern technology against us."9 Thus the diffuse character attributed to terrorism is reproduced in an enveloping atmosphere whose effect is to arouse a primal fear about the precariousness of every moment in daily life, to surround the most taken-for-granted routines with uncertainty. As many commentators have been quick to point out, terrorists do not present the single, determinate threat of an enemy nation-state. Potentially they are everywhere-and nowhere. The amorphous character a.s.signed to the new world of terrorism then justifies enlarging the power of the avenging state both at home and overseas. "The best way to protect America," the president claimed, "is to go on the offensive, and stay on the offensive."10 Power becomes not only spatially but also temporally limitless.

At the same time, the character of absolute evil a.s.signed to terrorism-of a murderous act without reasonable or just provocation-works toward the same end by allowing the state to cloak its power in innocence.11 In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 Americans asked, "What have we done to deserve this?" The official silence that met the question made plain the obvious answer: Nothing. When a few voices suggested that acts of terrorism had been committed in retaliation for U.S. government actions abroad, the media quickly dismissed the notion as implausible and vaguely unpatriotic. (It was an object lesson in how the system can enforce censorship and stifle opposition without appearing to do so.) Terrorism was made to appear as irrational violence, without apparent cause or reasonable justification. It became stylized as "threatening," its intentions unknown until too late. Action in response to it could thereby appear as "pure," without ulterior or mixed motives, provoked. An innocence that under normal circ.u.mstances might raise suspicions about motives served to justify extensions of power at home and abroad. In the ponderous summary of one commentator, "The most carefree and confident empire in history now grimly confronts the question of whether it can escape Rome's ultimate fate."12 The moment that marked the turning point from the old to the new was not the immediate, horrified response of the citizenry but the astonishing speed with which the entire nation was to be defined in a single, all-encompa.s.sing purpose. By declaring a war on terrorism, America had, in the pastoral language of its president, found "its mission and its moment." In his message urging the expansion of the government's powers under the intrusive Patriot Act, the president turned from his New Testament friendly G.o.d to a.s.sume the role of the Old Testament G.o.d of vengeance and wrath, vowing, "We will never forget the servants of evil who plotted the attacks and we will never forget those who rejoiced at our grief."13 "The struggle against global terrorism," according to the administration's National Security Strategy (NSS), "is different from any other war in our history. It will be fought on many fronts against a particularly elusive enemy over an extended period of time." The characteristics of the hastily constructed new world were like terrorism, vague and indeterminate. "The war against terrorists of global reach," according to NSS, "is a global enterprise of uncertain duration."14 A world where warfare has no boundaries, spatial or temporal, and hence no limits was not the simple product of terrorism but that of its exploitation. "Progress," according to NSS, " will come through the persistent acc.u.mulation of successes-some seen, some unseen."15 The dark vision of a radically new condition produced a wish, an opportunity, and a justification for converting an event into a permanent crisis. Terrorism, power without boundaries, becomes the template for Superpower; the measureless, the illegitimate, becomes the measure of its counterpart.

To be sure, before September 11 government had, on more than one occasion, manufactured and manipulated fear. This time, however, because of the indefinite spatial and temporal character of terrorism, fear became pervasive and invasive, the rule and no longer the exception, the mockery of FDR's counsel, "We have nothing to fear except fear itself." The focus on terrorism elevated fear into a public presence, creating a new atmospherics that could be appealed to and exploited.16 Miraculously, out of the rubble and phoenixlike emerged a stronger state, a "superpower" or "empire."17 Superpower was commonly defined as the capability of a state to project force anywhere in the world and at a time of its own choosing. It might also be described as power that is continually challenging the forbidden as its predestined other. The terrorism being combated by Superpower, while real enough, is one whose image Superpower's representatives have constructed. Superpower's understanding of the requirements of its own powers has been guided by the character it has chosen to bestow upon terrorism. Terrorism repays the mimicry by embracing advanced military technology and countering "shock and awe" with displays of beheadings on television. Two irreconcilable forms of power, terrorism and Superpower, locked together, each dependent on the other.

No previous administration in American history had demanded such extraordinary powers in order to muster the resources of the nation in pursuit of an enterprise as vaguely defined as "the war against terrorism" or demanded such an enormous outlay of public funds for a mission whose end seemed far distant and difficult to recognize if and when it might be achieved. World Wars I and II ended conclusively when armistices were negotiated by representatives from both sides. Terrorists, however, are reported as operating a highly decentralized organization-even a.s.suming that they could properly be described as having "an" organization-making it unlikely that any individual or group could plausibly claim to negotiate on behalf of all terrorists.

Since that September day it is not only the ordinary routines and liberties of citizens that have been changed. The const.i.tutional inst.i.tutions designed to check power-Congress, courts, an opposition political party-swore allegiance to the same ideology of vengeance and enlisted themselves as auxiliaries. Despite some solitary dissident voices, none of these inst.i.tutions attempted consistently to block or resist as the president proceeded to mount an unprovoked invasion of one country and threaten others, nor to question as he and members of his cabinet bullied allies, demanding uncritical support from all nations while proclaiming the right of the United States to walk away from solemn treaty obligations whenever convenient and to undercut the efforts of other nations seeking to develop international inst.i.tutions for curbing wars, genocide, and environmental damage.18 II.

The end of worship amongst men, is power.

-Thomas Hobbes.

[I]n every Christian commonwealth, the civil sovereign is the supreme pastor.

-Thomas Hobbes.

The new prominence of terror and fear brings to mind Thomas Hobbes, perhaps the first Western political theorist to correlate fear and power and explain how those two elements could be exploited to promote an awesome concentration of state power and authority, and, crucially, how that outcome could be represented as the product of popular consent. It is appropriate that apologists for the Bush administration's imperialistic foreign policy should have suddenly discovered Hobbes's relevance for "an anarchic world." According to neoconservative intellectuals, "The alternative to American leadership is a chaotic Hobbesian world" where "there is no authority to thwart aggression, ensure peace and security or enforce international norms."21 It is striking that, without exception, the neo-Hobbesians have suppressed that half of Hobbes's story which dealt with the domestic implications of his defense of the principle of absolute authority and of the sovereign's role as "supreme pastor."

Hobbes asks us to imagine what life would be like in the absence of a strong authority armed with the power to enforce law, administer justice, and keep the peace. He likened that condition to a "state of nature" in which human beings lived in constant fear of violent death, an unending war of each against all.22 Hobbes's solution to the problem of fear and terror required individuals to agree to establish, and then to obey unconditionally, an absolute power. He named that state "Leviathan" to emphasize that the price of peace was the invest.i.ture of a power freed from the restraints of other inst.i.tutions such as courts or parliaments. "There is nothing on earth," Hobbes wrote, "to be compared with him."

Leviathan was the first image of superpower and the first intimation of the kind of privatized citizen congenial with its requirements, the citizen who finds politics a distraction to be avoided, who if denied "a hand in public business," remains convinced that taking an active part means "to hate and be hated," "without any benefit," and "to neglect the affairs of [his] own family."23 Hobbes had not only foreseen the power possibilities in the oxymoron of the private citizen, but exploited them to prevent sovereign power from being shared among its subjects. Hobbes reasoned that if individuals were protected in their interests and positively encouraged by the state to pursue them wholeheartedly, subject only to laws designed to safeguard them from the unlawful acts of others, then they would soon recognize that political partic.i.p.ation was superfluous, expendable, not a rational choice. Hobbes's crucial a.s.sumption was that absolute power absolutely depended not just on fear, but on pa.s.sivity. Civic indifference was thus elevated to a form of rational virtue, the sovereign having established and maintained the conditions of peace that enable individuals to pursue their own interests in the sure knowledge that the law of the sovereign would protect, even encourage them. Virtually unlimited power, on the one hand, and, on the other, an apolitical citizenry now a.s.sured of its security so that it can single-mindedly pursue private concerns: a perfect complementarity between apolitical absolutism and economic self-interest.

Hobbes insisted that the power of "that mortal G.o.d to which we owe under the immortal G.o.d, our peace and defence" could be inst.i.tuted and endure only if legitimated-if, in other words, those it defended became willing collaborators, conscious accomplices. According to his argument extraordinary, concentrated power had to originate in the freely given consent of individuals: the sovereign could therefore claim that his act was that of their "Sovereign Representative," hence the act of the whole body of citizens.24 His power was their power, the power they were to transfer to him who would protect them from what they most feared, not death itself but "violent death"-the kind of death visited upon Americans on September 11.25 He was to have an absolute right to their bodies and their fortunes. In that "covenant" each would swear obedience and surrender to the sovereign his own power of self-defense and natural freedom. The consequence of the exchange was that the citizen reverted to the status of subject.26 As subject he would receive protection as compensation for complicity in every future action of the sovereign.

Once the original covenant was adopted, the obligation to obey its authority was perpetual. There was no requirement for it to be periodically reaffirmed. The one exception to absolute obedience was that if the sovereign failed to protect the citizens, they were freed from their obligations toward him. That stipulation, far from tempering power, was an incitement for the sovereign to take advantage of any opportunity to extend his authority as far as circ.u.mstances allowed and all in the name of the security of his subjects.

The most striking aspect of Hobbes's argument was the increased potential of "fear" and "terror" for justifying unlimited power and authority. The "fear" and "terror" caused by external enemies did double duty, as it were. Not only did they serve to justify giving the sovereign all the power necessary to combat threats from abroad, but fear and terror could be made reflexive. Instead of being fearful only of foreign enemies, the citizenry, having observed the effects of extraordinary power used against foreigners, would become conditioned to fear its own sovereign, to hesitate before voicing criticism. By periodically reminding subjects of the example of his own unchecked actions and triumphs, the sovereign authority could convert fear and terror from a threat posed by foreigners into one more veiled and redirected against its own citizenry: "By this authority given him by every particular man in the commonwealth, he hath the use of so much power and strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home and mutual aid against their enemies abroad."27 In antic.i.p.ation of the 2004 presidential campaign a Bush aide described the strategy to be followed by the president as "a healthy mix of optimism and the fear factor."28 III.

It is tempting to dismiss Hobbes's account by arguing that in times of crisis American citizens should be willing to concede extraordinary powers to the state, secure in the knowledge that they retain safeguards against the danger of absolute authority and the abuse of power. According to this argument our Const.i.tution places limits on authority, prescribing what it can and cannot do. The limits, in turn, are enforced by a system of checks and balances whereby each of our major inst.i.tutions of Congress, the executive, and the judiciary is given authority to check the actions of the other branches. In addition, unlike Hobbes's stipulation that individual consent would be given once and for all time, our democratic system of periodic elections and of free political parties makes it possible to remove officeholders. Moreover, the Const.i.tution guarantees to every citizen the right to criticize and organize opposition, and grants to the press and other media of communication the right to expose and criticize the actions of public officials.

Thus const.i.tutional guarantees, a two-party system, inst.i.tutionalized opposition, democratic elections, and a free press would seem formidable safeguards against the emergence of a Hobbesian sovereign. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of September 11 those guarantees have proved ineffectual.

A cla.s.sic example was the charade that was played out shortly before the midterm elections of 2006. With the prospect of severe losses at the polls the Republican administration and its congressional supporters proposed a sweeping bill curtailing the rights of detainees, including those who were American citizens. The charade began when three prominent Republican senators, two of whom harbored presidential ambitions, a.s.sumed the lofty pose of protesting the provisions covering the interrogation techniques applied to detainees. They threatened to block the bill unless it respected the articles of the Geneva Conventions proscribing certain forms of torture. After much huffing, puffing, and public posturing they claimed that the White House had given in to their demands. When the bill was pa.s.sed and its details made public, it was clear that the senators had partic.i.p.ated in a sh.e.l.l game. The illusion was promoted that presidential power had been checked when in fact presidential authority was expanded. What they and sixty-two other senators had accepted was the most radical invasion of the rights of defendants since the Alien and Sedition laws of 1798. The act reduced the power of the courts to hear appeals from detainees and relied instead on military commissions to handle the cases-and this an obvious attempt to reverse the setback that the administration had received in the Hamdan case a few months earlier when the Supreme Court had struck down the military tribunals the administration had established following 9/11. The Court had held that the tribunals were in violation of the Const.i.tution and of international law. The most striking provision of the new law denied detainees the right to habeas corpus and to challenge the legality of their detention. As for the Geneva Conventions and their prohibitions against torture, the law gave the president the authority to decide the meaning of the human rights treaties while relieving courts of jurisdiction over any appeals to his interpretation. Moreover, the provision also allowed the president to delegate that authority to (of all people) the secretary of defense. Yet during the political campaigns of fall 2006 neither party called attention to the law.

The sole form of protest against the preemptive war and the repressive policies of the administration took place not in the Congress, the courts, or an opposition party, but outside "official channels," in the streets where hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens organized themselves to protest the actions of the administration. Equally striking, the administration consistently ignored the protesters. The major media, attentive to official cues, followed suit with belated, condescending, and minimal coverage.

IV.

Two centuries after Hobbes had conceived of a superpower based upon democratic consent, and about a half century after the ratification of the U.S. Const.i.tution, Alexis de Tocqueville published the final volume of Democracy in America. That work was the first comprehensive inquiry into the phenomenon of American democracy and, while not uncritical, was largely sympathetic and, on occasion, even admiring.29 Toward the close of that work Tocqueville posed the question of how democracy might go wrong and what form a perverted democracy might take. Unlike Hobbes, whose theory of the absolute sovereign was inspired by the historical reality of an England whose political order had been shattered by revolution and civil war, Tocqueville imagines "the new features" of a despotism evolving naturally and peacefully out of a democracy.

I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them but he does not see them. . . .

Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of a.s.suring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. . . . It seeks only to keep [men] fixed irrevocably in childhood. . . . It provides for [the citizens'] security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their princ.i.p.al affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?

Thus after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpa.s.s the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them. . . . it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.30 Tocqueville's democratic despotism might seem as far-fetched from contemporary America as Hobbes's Leviathan. Instead of embracing Big Brother and submitting to government regulations most Americans want government "off their backs." Far from meekly living in a drab condition of equality, the United States is a land where success is richly rewarded, so much so that it is at least as notable for its striking inequalities as for its professions of equal rights and equality before the law. Far from being pa.s.sive Americans are renowned for their drive and inventiveness. In their high energy Americans more closely resemble Hobbes's chilling portrait of a man who cannot remain content "with moderate power" because "he cannot a.s.sure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more." If, as Hobbes claimed, there "is a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death," how might that translate into the culture of state power?31 Tocqueville's democrat comfortable with despotism and Hobbes's free rationalist who opts for absolutism share an elective affinity. Tocqueville imagines a despotism made possible because citizens have chosen to relinquish partic.i.p.atory politics, which he had singled out as the most remarkable, widespread, and essential element of American political life. By abandoning their intense involvement with the common affairs of their communities in favor of personal ends they, like the signatories to Hobbes's contract, have chosen to be apolitical subjects rather than citizens.

V.

The contemporary moral to be drawn from our detour through Hobbes and Tocqueville is this: while it may prove possible to mobilize voters around the slogan "Anything to beat Bush!" it takes more persistence, more thoughtfulness to dismantle Superpower and to nurture a democratic citizenry. The lesson of Hobbes and Tocqueville can be boiled down to a brief but chilling dictum: concentrated power, whether of a Leviathan, a benevolent despotism, or a superpower, is impossible without the support of a complicitous citizenry that willingly signs on to the covenant, or acquiesces, or clicks the "mute b.u.t.ton."

CHAPTER FIVE.

The Utopian Theory of Superpower: The Official Version.

I.

to show . . . the very age and body of

the time his form and pressure.

-Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.2.