By PLS
There’s a Christmas carol that goes like this: “The Angel of the Lord came down, and glory shown around.”
This year, just before Christmas, the Angel of Fear came down, trailing freedom-smothering clouds of darkness and doom. I felt this baleful force hovering as I read yet another article about executive privilege, executive power, executive this, executive that, all amounting to just one thing: the President has declared war, which allows him to do anything he wants, until he alone, arbitrarily, unilaterally undeclares it.
Some fears are a natural part of life. There’s the stab of fear that comes when you stumble on a narrow track skirting a clifff. There’s the lump of fear that clogs your being when your mammogram comes up positive. There’s the tremolo of fear that possesses you when your child climbs a tree for the first time. I could add the fear of failing an exam or of losing a job. These are the normal fears of all human beings.
The fear I mean here is more like the nebulous helplessness of Kafka’s K facing incomprehensible but absolute powers in The Castle. This fear has no proportionate connection with tangible threats, however labeled. It has everything to do with manipulation and the determination of the branch of the Republican Party fronted by George W. Bush to retain power and continue to milk the economy for personal enrichment. The current banshee is terrorism, but any ism will do, as Communism once did and Satanism also does now, for some Bush supporters. Anything to put fear into the hearts of Americans insufficiently schooled in world affairs.
This grim angel has been making passes ever since 9/11, when the Bush administration began its campaign of magnifying and transforming normal shock into a state of permanent panic.
By contrast, BBC reports that English people asked in a recent poll to list the big events of the past year didn’t rank the summer’s bomb attacks on the London transport system anywhere near the top. Evidently the English are resistant to demagoguery. They are too well balanced or too well informed to succumb to it.*
Meanwhile, back in America, the Republican Party has assembled a battery of theorists intent on freeing the executive from all Constitutional checks and balances. They use, ironically, the “implied power" arguments whose validity they deny to those who contend that privacy (which often underlies arguments for reproductive freedom) is an implied right. Primary among embracers of unlimited executive power is Berkeley School of Law professor John C. Yoo, who was employed by the Bush II administration during its first term of office. Google his name and read what he has to say about torturing non-state actors and spying on Americans as well. There’s too much to link here.
Happily, there is hope on the horizon: 2006 is an election year. Congress is showing signs of life again. Moderate Republicans are getting restless.
I don’t believe in angels, actually. But I do believe, metaphorically speaking, that the chances of a visit by the Angel of Hope next year are getting pretty good.
*I heard this on a BBC radio newscast, but was unable to find it on the BBC website.