A Monarchy of Dullards:
What do we make not necessarily of the cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, but of the Bush administration's insistence on the divinity of presidents, for if the President doesn't have to answer to the Congress or the Courts, then he can only answer to God, who doesn't seem to really give a shit at this point. Some of the things Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement told the Supreme Court yesterday reflect a doctrine of absolute power that seems so completely at odds with ideas of democracy and rule by citizens that it can only be called "motherfucking disturbing." Here's some greatest hits: Clement told the Court that the President wouldn't allow torture, although couldn't demonstrate how that would be assured. Clement said he did not know how long the citizens would be detained, that there was no end-date. Clement called habeas corpus and due process "judicial micromanaging."

One wonders if those who were kept in Soviet-era Gulags would have thought it "judicial micromanaging" if they were allowed a hearing. One wonders if nuns and aid workers kept in torture chambers in Guatemala would have thought it "judicial micromanaging" if they had been able to speak to an attorney. One wonders if the victims of the "rape rooms" and interrogation spaces in Iraq would have thought it "judicial micromanaging" if a fair and open court was allowed to decide if their treatment was right. And in each of these cases, the controlling authority, be it the unquestioned leader or party, believed that it was jailing its own citizens who were threats to the stability of their countries.

For all we know, Padilla and Hamdi could be the most brutal motherfuckers the world has ever seen. Or they could be innocents who are regularly given shocks to the nuts to make them talk. It doesn't matter. They're citizens of this country, and even Jeffrey Dahmer had a trial. But, as said before, this is less about them than it is about all of us.

Americans are, for the most part, idiots. We are so blissfully unaware of our past except in little bits of cultural seepage that we are fucking doomed. And the worst part about this is that the ignorance is of just about everything that makes this country, well, American. See, Americans were never led by a monarchy and, unlike every other country that has, we have no understanding of what it means to have a leader whose decisions are final. It is willful ignorance. We behave towards the President, who is, supposedly, a citizen just like the rest of us, as if he is a king. It's almost as if we burn with desire to be ruled, like we're a nation of submissives waiting for the big leather-clad dom to whip us clean and tell us how to live. Problem is - we don't know what it's like to be ruled in that way. Oh, sure, the idea of the caress of the whip is fine and dandy, but once it leaves a welt, then all the fun and games are over.

The Bush Administration behaves in a way that is contrary to anything that the country was founded upon. Remember: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, Hancock, and the rest knew what it was like to live under the rule of a single man, and, so, in rebelling against that rule, they were doing things selfish and altruistic. The selfish part, as in all things in history, had to do with being able to control one's own financial world. The unselfish part was setting up a nation that allowed for the Congress, President, and Courts to be able to put the smackdown on each other. That's why it's called a goddamn "balance" of powers. And if all else failed, they built in one failsafe - the election system (albeit one tilted towards their financial interests, but still . . .).

The Bushkoviks react with righteous indignation that anyone would question their motives or actions, be it the Democrats in Congress bloacking judges or the courts asking if the President should have the right to hold a citizen completely incommunicado from anyone but interrogators for as long as he wants. Part of the indignation comes with having business people in the executive branch: government is not a business - it's a negotiation. But the other part comes from its deep desire to extend dictatorial power as far as it can. And we haven't even seen how far that'll stretch into the elections. For if there's anything other nations have learned about monarchies and dictatorships it's that they'll keep extending and extending until they invade every part of our lives.