It's worse than you think. With the evolution of Occupy Wall Street, the threat that made George W. Bush reticent to go for full-blown dictatorship is now out of the bag: People are actively resisting and disrupting the money and power structure that underlies the Republican Party and, sadly, major portions of our own party - structures that now completely define the ideology, rhetoric, and policies of a huge proportion of our government without even a pretense of addressing the American people. We are resisting this state of affairs with increasing sophistication, volume, and success, while government institutions are flailing to stop us without even pretending to address our grievances. But all of what we do is dependent on a few, fragile liberties and lines of communication that a sufficiently ruthless, shameless, and desperate regime could easily shatter.
I present to you the internet blacklist bill - legislation that essentially gives any corporation the legal authority to arbitrarily ban websites, remove internet content, and block banking transactions they deem to be supporting violations of their copyrights, all without court orders. It would also effectively give the government arbitrary power to determine who has access to the web and what they can post there. I further present the concept of the internet kill switch - an alleged national-security measure repeatedly advocated by federal law enforcement and military policymakers that would give the Executive branch arbitrary authority to shut down the internet in part or in whole.
Let there be no mistake: If Republicans are in the majority in Congress after the 2012 election, these measures will be passed, with their eyes directly on Occupy Wall Street. And if there is a Republican in the White House, these measures will be used. Even if Democrats achieve a weak majority, the threat remains strong. Which brings me to the next bit of rumbling thunder on the horizon: The Senate compromise defense bill - yes, the one that was less insanely right-wing, and passed committee 25-1 - contains a provision not merely authorizing, but requiring indefinite detention without trial of non-citizen terrorism suspects. President Obama has threatened to veto the bill over this provision, but it goes without saying that a Republican would probably have objected on the grounds that the measure doesn't go far enough - and a more powerful Republican Congress would have passed something even more insane, perhaps striking the "non-citizen" stipulation in favor of a more general application.
George W. Bush's people were not stupid when it came to cultivating their own power, at least in the baser terms: They refused to institute a draft for their Iraq War in order to avoid giving their opposition the powerful motive of self-preservation - in other words, to avoid creating something like Occupy Wall Street that is based on people who have nothing left to lose (or at least see that condition approaching). The interests that supported them would not have gone along with their agenda if the cost in domestic disruption had gotten that high - it would have been bad for business, and distracted from the main objective of robbing people. But when the threat is directly aimed at those interests, and the disruption is manifest, there is no longer any such scruple - they will take it as far as they are capable.
So I ask you to imagine the following the scenario: Unlimited campaign cash flows into the 2012 election courtesy of Citizens United, and Wall Street allies with the national revenues (and possibly intelligence information) of China and Saudi Arabia to fund and otherwise support the Republican Party. The lukewarm or stingy corporate money flowing to centrist Democrats does not come anywhere close, even in concert with large numbers of small donations going to progressive Democrats. The businesses that own the media openly collude to suffocate any attempt to introduce progressive issues into the debate, slander Democrats shamelessly, and promote outright lies bandied about by Republican candidates. Big Lies on a level not seen since the lead-up to the Iraq War are promoted in lockstep, and Democrats are practically made to prove their membership in the human species while Republicans could club baby seals on national TV and be effusively praised for their patriotic heroism. Most of the Democrats do not have Barack Obama's remarkable ability to overcome such propaganda, and drown in it.
Major contingents of progressive activists, drunk on the aroma of near-term successes with OWS, drink the neo-Naderite "Republicrat" Kool-aid, and cite as evidence the very media portrayals of the election that are intended to sabotage Democrats. Small donations are considerably smaller in number than in 2008, both due to disaffection and economic hardship, while the big, unlimited donations are staggering. Some other Democratic activists fall victim to over-confidence, assuming that Republicans are simply too batshit, and the public too fed-up, for there to be any possibility of GOP victory. Significant numbers of people who turned out in 2008 to vote for Democrats are too disaffected to vote.
Meanwhile, millions of largely Democratic-leaning voters have been purged from the rolls of electorally critical states, or otherwise prevented from voting by absurd "anti-fraud" measures targeted specifically at reducing minority and youth votes. Electronic voting machines with systems designed to facilitate the perfect crime and make election verification impossible pervade the landscape, while voting machines of any kind are sharply restricted from going to poor minority districts. Polls based on "likely voters" are retooled to reflect gerrymandering and vote suppression, setting the stage to justify Republican victory. It happens, and we are left trying to rationalize the false assumption that the American people failed, moping around as in 2004.
Eventually we get over it, and channel our feelings into an even more energized Occupy movement that grows broader, more sophisticated, and more successful. Republicans coordinate the message that they have a public mandate to "end the disorder" being perpetrated by "criminal elements" and "un-American agitators." The legislation mentioned is passed with little fanfare or media attention, and probably extended far beyond current proposals. Police departments that have largely come to mutual understandings with Occupy movements by default because they couldn't destroy them are flooded with weapons, personnel, and federal supervision from newly purged institutions.
Occupy websites mysteriously disappear from the internet or become oddly cartoonish, demonized caricatures of themselves that the original operators for some reason can no longer access or control. Money sent to Occupy movements disappears down a black hole and never reaches its intended recipient. Bank personnel insist they have no idea where it went, but suggest those people aren't very good with their transactional security. In some cases, the bank accounts involved end up coincidentally frozen in a vaguely-defined drug or other investigation and their owners subjected to thorough IRS audits. Newly de-unionized teachers, firefighters, police, and other public workers found to be involved with Occupy or even to have expressed sentiments conducive to it may find themselves Occupying a disproportionate number of those laid off when the budget cut tsunamis roll in.
The Republican Congress decries the ineffectiveness of "catch and release" arrests of the "criminals" that are "disrupting society and causing the economic hardships Americans are suffering." You see, the suffering is being caused by the protesters who are forcing governments to spend tax money on ubiquitous surveillance, huge private armies, armored personnel carriers, fences with razor wire everywhere, sonic cannons, pepper spray firehoses, tear gas, riot gear, etc. At a time of national hardship, why are they doing this to the American people? It's time someone put a stop to it! The Punishing Repeat Offenders, Perpetrators, and Rioters act (PROPR) - or some other suitably propagandistic name - passes with overwhelming Congressional support, making it a federal felony to disobey police orders, trespass, or disturb the peace twice in one year, and authorizing indefinite detention if local police need to "restore order." Republicans hail the measure, saying that it will "finally allow America to get back to work." The newly purged courts affirm the laws' constitutionality, because "The original intent of the 4th Amendment was not to prevent law enforcement from protecting order."
One day, Occupy movements that have managed to survive the information blackout and purge are inundated by paramilitary police, arresting them violently by the bushel. First-hand phone videos of the sweeps never make it past the local cell tower, where they are blocked from proceeding further. Those recorded on cameras, smuggled out, and uploaded to the internet are only there for a short time before disappearing. Arrested protesters are packed in nondescript buses, driven hither and thither across the country, and in some cases their paperwork is lost. Their families cannot locate them. Those who do find themselves somewhere may be required to pay for their own indefinite incarceration in a privately-contracted internment camp with forced manual labor on behalf of the contractor, perhaps being farmed out to build decks and extra rooms on the houses of Republicans and local business leaders - e.g., "work rehabilitation". The media says little or nothing, beyond praising officials for "cleaning up the streets." It starts with the outright protesters, but gradually extends to people who simply complain, and then to people who might complain in the future.
This is a worst-case middle-case scenario, and it could be completely wrong. But whether it happens depends on entirely on what we do. We need the two sides of the pincers - the people in the street, and the people in office who at very least will stop the other side from crushing them. Without the street, the government side of progressive politics becomes what it has been - weak and feckless. Without liberal control of the government, the street is nothing more than a convenient place to round up and dispose of dissent. Now, that doesn't mean the people are doomed if governments become dictatorial - the Arab Spring has repeatedly proven otherwise. But they had the benefit of social media existing outside the control of their governments - if America becomes one giant police kettle, there will be no external recourse. I for one would rather avoid the detour into Pinochet-land. To the greatest extent possible, we must unite the OWS clans for a progressive Democratic sweep.