We don't know yet, but...

[solarbird]

It looks like Democratic leadership has negotiated a deal with Chief Executive Bush to to insure retroactive immunity for the telecom companies and also grant broad, new domestic warrantless spying powers to Mr. Bush. If true, this will end the only functional route of investigation into the criminal activities of the Bush administration - investigations which produced evidence referenced several times in Rep. Kucinich's recently-introduced Articles of Impeachment. (See Item 3 here, courtesy Glenn Greenwald.) I'm waiting to see what pops out this coming week, but I presume by now most of you know my opinions on this matter.

Also, note that several Fox News-affiliated anchors have called for Chief Executive Bush to ignore the Supreme Court's ruling upholding habeas corpus rights, and continue to hold anyone he feels like indefinitely without recourse. Or to just kill them. (No lie.) I have also seen calls to remove the court through legal means, and also have seen calls (commenters, but still; this extends well down into the base) for Mr. Bush to send military forces over to the Supreme Court and remove the court by force. Seriously, read the comment chain, it's fascinating.

Comments

[solarbird]

I think - quite sincerely - that part of the problem is structural, in that there are simply too many individual voters (or, at least, citizens) per representative, so that you can freely outrage a larger number (in absolute terms) of people without caring in the least. Also, the number of representatives who need to be corrupted/bought out/etc is small enough to manage trivially.

I further think that the worst idea the Founders had in their brains was the idea that parties would be unimportant, or, at least, fluid. I have several interesting ideas about how to approach correcting this through Constitutional changes, none of which matter in the least.

However, all that aside, I also think that - as per that comment chain you read - authoritarianism, be it religious or secular, is exactly what large sections of the American public want, and I also think that these sections are geographically based. (This is evidenced in voting patterns and is in nontrivial part reinforced through self-selection over the last few decades.) This repulses me, but it is, as they say, what it is. Keeping that in mind, I suggest that you might want to read Martin van Creveld's The Rise and Decline of the State, except for the last chapter which I think is wishful thinking; I think for underlying reasons of communication and power technologies that the superstate has become outmoded, tho' it will do a lot of damage on the way down. Extended authoritarian is a natural response to this, though I think in the end a not just futile but counterproductive one.

I think, as silly as it might sound, that the EU, as a high-level collection of sovereignties, actually is the cutting edge of politics - in a very boring way, as Mr. Izzard would add. It's been extremely interesting to watch all these little nation-states re-emerge over the last couple of decades, most notably in that the first thing they do is go with their independence is join some higher-level structural organisation, be it the EU or NATO or whatever. I don't think this is a series of coincidences.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

authoritarianism, be it religious or secular, is exactly what large sections of the American public want

I've definitely noticed this as well. I think it's partially in response to the increasing rate of change of the world (oversimplified: Change leads to Fear, Authoritarianism promises Stability), and partly induced. It's the same principle as Marketing anything: create a need, and then sell them a product that seems to fill it, but leaves the actual desire unfulfilled and, if possible, exacerbated so that they're begging for even more of the same.

I put in a request for the van Creveld book from the Library. Thanks for the recommendation. My current viewpoint is pretty strongly influenced by When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten, so I'm more sensitized to that side of things right now. It's from 1995 so some of it's kind of dated, but a number of his predictions have held up remarkably well.

I've been keeping half an eye on the EU since I was over in Germany in '04, and I think you're definitely on to something there. There seems to be increasingly more action going on above the level of the Nation-State as time goes on, and I think that might well be the start of a new paradigm in human organization.