It’s beginning to look a lot like the Nixon White House, minus the warmth.
A criminal war, a criminal staff, an attack-dog mentality, politics over policy, the systematic smearing of critics -- and now, government surveillance of harmless domestic organizations.
“The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups,” reported the Washington Post yesterday. For instance there are more than 3500 pages of -- get this -- “counterterrorism” surveillance info on the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace alone, as well as surveillance records on such outfits as United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar, cyber coalition. Yes, they just don’t come any more threatening than folks united for peace and justice.
As a sample -- and this would be funny stuff if it weren’t for the cryptofascism -- the FBI records contain a September 2003 memo alerting counterterrorism units in New York, Los Angeles and Boston “about Internet sites that were promoting protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention.” Asked the ACLU’s outraged executive director: “Why is this being labeled as counterterrorism when it’s nothing more than protests at a political convention, a lawful First Amendment activity?”
Two straightforward factors address that. We have a White House that eagerly chose to position itself as the people’s protector against terrorism; and, of deeper import, that White House is populated at the highest levels by disturbed partisans who will not -- pathologically cannot -- separate protection from the politics of it.
A related story by the L.A. Times, also reported yesterday, serves as confirmation: “A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said [Karl] Rove’s interest [in Joseph Wilson] was so strong that … when asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove reportedly responded: ‘He’s a Democrat.’”
That’s pure Nixonian, third-rate-burglary logic in a nutshell. The opposition is monolithic in thought, if not deed: Democrats, liberals, terrorists, the ACLU, environmental and peace groups -- they’re all one in the same; equally suspicious and equally deserving of the rawest treatment.
We thought we were through with the miscreant Bob Haldemans and John Ehrlichmans reporting to an imperially complicit president for at least a couple generations, but we’ve already replaced them with the Karl Roves and Lewis Libbys. Twice now in my lifetime we’ve had barbarians inside the gate of the world’s oldest democracy. But there are a couple major differences between then and now that frighten even more: Today we’ve no aggressive press to routinely shine light on these roaches, and so far, we’ve no gutsy Deep Throat.
In fact, even a notional Mark Felt is undergoing historical revision by the paroled political underworld as the prototypical Evil One whom our brave new democracy should guard against. For example Chuck “when you’ve got them by the balls” Colson has written that Felt’s participation in outing executive-branch criminality was “dishonorable,” and he told Christianity Today magazine that any adult admiration of Felt is “terrible” because -- and remember, this is coming from one of the darkest princes of American politics -- such admiration seduces our children into “Machiavellian ethics.”
Switch on any political gab show and you’re as likely to see other Nixon mobsters similarly commenting on Felt’s ethics -- indeed, on government ethics in general -- as a Woodward or Bernstein. I suspect these are also metaphorical defenses of Bush’s corruption, and we’ll know the jig is close to being up if these veteran commentators start smearing special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
The Bush administration has become so manifestly awful that the media may, in time, smell some easy profit in hounding it. I’m not counting on that, though. If the administration can get a pass on an illegal war that has killed thousands needlessly and needlessly will kill thousands more, what’s a little breach of national security and secret-police surveillance of peaceniks?
Meanwhile, somewhere, Dick Nixon must be smiling.
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