You have to admit one thing about Mussolini: he made the trains run on time.
We have heard a lot recently from Democrats, commentators and political strategists about the reasons for their victory this past November 7th. Certainly, there were a lot of big issues that weighed on the minds of the voters, especially the occupation of Iraq. I wrote recently about how miraculous it was, in fact, that a mere three years after the supposed death of the Democratic Party, we now control both Houses of Congress.
But reading thereisnospoon's reminiscence on George Will's article on Katrina changed my thinking slightly in this regard.
The spectacular failures of this administration, coming as they did in the aftermath of September 11th, have created a new paradigm in American politics. An intersection of "conservative" and progressive. A union of the philosphies of Hobbes and Locke. In short, something I would call a consensus of competence.
My thinking on these issues was further modified by OrangeClouds115's empassioned diary on the subject of fascism, and it got me to thinking: how close were we, really?
What scares me, really, is--despite how amazed I was at the quick transition between the death of the Democratic Party and its newfound majorities--is the phrase I just found myself uttering in disbelief as I revisited some of the devastation visited upon our country by this administration in One Pissed Off Liberal's singularly spectacular diaries:
it had to come to this?
And--as horrible as it is to say--actually, yes it did.
I'd like you to picture an America in which this administration had executed its policies with efficiency. An America in which George Bush captured Osama Bin Laden and then occupied Iraq with overwhelming force. An America in which martial law was declared in New Orleans. A Republican Party that even slightly tempered its plutocratic economic policies for the sake of continued political dominance. A 109th Congress that didn't just so happen to be one of the most corrupt in history, if not the most.
What would America look like today? I can just about guarantee you that whatever it would look like, it would not have a 110th Congress with a Democratic House and Senate. And the Republican Party, and President Bush, would have likely been able to continue its policies of suspending our Constitution at will.
The Republic shall be reorganized into the First Galactic Empire!...for a Safe and Secure Society!
--Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars Episode III
When thereisnospoon talks about the tenuous thread, he may have been referring what George Will called the thin and perishable crust of civilization. But thinking about the diaries provided by OrangeClouds and others on the nature of totalitarianism, I would prefer to focus on the thin and perishable crust of democracy.
America, in my opinion, has had its tradition of democracy amplified every now and then by a little luck. When other countries got, say, a Hitler or a Mussolini, we got FDR. When we had our internal struggle with McCarthyism, we had an Edward R. Murrow to challenge it at the height of its popularity.
But with the new McCarthyism, we weren't that lucky. Our opposition party lost its voice, as did the fractured media. Communities like ours weren't yet enough of an influential force with regard to creating and driving media narratives.
A competent Republican administration would have easily been able to take this country further down the primrose path toward authoritarian imperialism. The bottom line is--they were so bad at it that we lucked out, plain and simple.
The average American voters--the independents who broke 2-1 in favor of Democrats this time around--weren't voting on the principles of authoritarian overreach, though they may have accidentally done that in the process. They were voting against scandal. Voting against war against the middle class. Voting against fiscal recklessness. Voting against incompetent execution of the Iraq occupation. The exit polls indicated that they weren't voting against torture. Against the complete and total suspension of the 4th amendment. Or the 5th amendment. Or the 6th. Or the overt threats against the 1st. It's a sobering thought--but most Americans really wouldn't have minded competent authoritarianism, if it made the trains run on time.
Their atrocious incompetence, however, was our saving grace. And rising like a phoenix from the still-smoldering ashes of the colossal failures of this administration, is a new political paradigm stressing the virtues of a competent government.
And, as thereisnospoon and George Will successfully point out, the problem was Katrina.
George Will's article concludes:
So Katrina has provided a teaching moment. This is a liberal hour in that it illustrates the indispensability, and dignity, of the public sector. It also is a conservative hour, dramatizing the prudence of pessimism, and the fact that the first business of government, on which everything depends, is security.
What George Will doesn't seem to realize is that those ideas are no longer mutually exclusive.
America has finally seen--in extremely rapid succession, and, even more amazingly, within the same amdinistration!--what happens when:
a) you have an authoritarian government that judges itself only by its own press clippings; and
b) you don't have government at all.
In neither case is the outcome good--and it is this demonstration that has given rise to the concept of Libertarian Democracy--which, far from being a more "conservative" doctrine, as some have suggested, is in fact an intersection of the idea of Hobbes and Locke. And the bottom line--the intersection of the traditional Hobbesian conservative and the modern progressive--is this:
a strong, effective government that operates under the constitution and the rule of law is the best way to guarantee personal freedoms--and what happens in people's bedrooms is only a minor sidelight.
We have an opportunity to stop authoritarianism in its tracks in this generation--but not by arguing against authoritarianism itself, as sad as that may be. We can do it, however, by arguing against authoritarian ideas and tendencies using the backdrop of the atrocious incompetence of the Bush administration, which tried to cover for its own incompetence by arguing solely on the basis of the necessity of authoritarianism to protect the American public.
Mussolini supposedly made the trains run on time. But under bush, the trains looked like this (ht to melvin):
Call it the train wreck that saved American Democracy. And if you see authoritarianism of any type--military, Christofascist, you name it--rear its ugly head, this should be all you need to quell any of those unfortunately attractive notions.