Thursday, August 18, 2005
(12:01 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
This Period of Heightened Security
Tonight I was on public transit and noticed several signs indicating the kinds of behaviors that were most appropriate during "this time of heightened security." Naturally, I reflected on the message of these signs. Primarily, I wondered when we will know that "this time of heightened security" is over. I cannot think of any plausible occasion for going "back to normal," aside from the arbitrary decision of a president (or of a presidential candidate who promises to go back to normal if elected) -- in other words, a sovereign decision.As the Young Hegelian points out, the new laws and new powers claimed by the government are primarily redundant. It was already illegal, for instance, to conspire to hijack planes and fly them into skyscrapers, or at least such actions were already covered by existing laws, even if the specific situation was -- as we are led to believe -- completely and totally unimaginable by the human mind. The FBI could always have tapped my phone if they felt like it, and obviously they didn't need to supply me with a warrant. I'm sure they could have even had access to my library records, or the records of the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore, where I am a member and where I could potentially have a record. Whatever information they wanted, they could have gotten, after filling out some minimal paperwork -- in the case of the library thing, they probably would have had an easier time if they hadn't made the stupid law and pissed off the librarians in the first place.
The only reason that "everything changed" on 9/11 is that those in power said that "everything changed. This was a bipartisan decision, a true show of national unity -- we should be proud. Now it can never end, of course, because "both sides" have a stake in it. During his brilliant, winning performances in the presidential debates, John Kerry said (and I quote from memory), "We need the Patriot Act." Very electable. There is no way out. Or rather, the only way out is a miracle, a sovereign decision. We could have set a timer, say -- "five years of heightened security, then we assess whether the threat is still pressing enough to warrant continued heightened security." But we don't do things like that, because we're idiots. Instead, we entered the state of exception with no exit plan, and there's no way out, because our nation can be run either by the party of fundamentalist lunatics or the party of soulless bureaucrats. I plan on voting for the second one every damn time until I die, but it won't get us out of the state of exception, ever.
We're stuck. Praise Jesus! Now Democrats will always be traitors. People on the coasts will be born traitors, grow up traitors, perhaps join and serve honorably in the military as traitors, live a full life as traitors, and die traitors. They will mount what may well amount to a fifth column by continuing to exist and by worrying that maybe the Republicans are a little bit too extreme (though in the essentials, they are of course right on). They will continually undermine the war effort by reading magazine articles and blog posts critical of US foreign policy. They will marginalize Christians from public life by ... I don't know. I've not yet figured out the mechanism for that one.
In any case, this will remain a bitterly divided nation as the faithful few right wingers continue to slander the moderate centrists, whom they will call "the left," and the moderate centrists try their damnedest to come up with a way to reframe their reasonable arguments in such a way as to be persuasive to "cultural conservatives." It will be that way until literally every one of us dies. Their years are three score and ten, four score if they are strong -- but the War on Terror/Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism is eternal, because there is no "off" switch, because we are all stupid.
