9/18/2014 Too Late for Empire | The Nation

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Too Late for Empire
ThirtyyearsafterWatergate,weagainfaceaconstitutionalcrisisathomeandamisconceivedwarabroad.TheUnitedStateswillremaina
helplessgiantuntilwefinallylearnthatpowerinthenuclear,postimperialageisdiplomatic,notmilitary.
JonathanSchellJuly27,2006|ThisarticleappearedintheAugust14,2006editionofTheNation.
Opposing One-Party Government
The need to repeat these familiar points, as I have just
done (while also begging the indulgence of the reader, as I
do), is itself a symptom of the crisis. The same
concentration of governmental and other power in the
hands of a single party that led to the abuses stands in the
way of action to address them. The result is a problem of
political sanitation. The garbage heaps up in the public
square, visible to all and stinking to high heaven, but no
garbage truck arrives to take it away. The lawbreaking is
exposed, but no legislative body responds. The damning
facts pour out, and protests are made, but little is done.
Then comes the urge to repeat.
The dilemma is reflected in microcosm in the news media,
especially television--a process particularly on display in
the failure to challenge the Administration's deceptive
rationale for the Iraq War. The reasons for severe doubt
were, at the very least, available before the war, and they
were expounded in many places. More truthful, contrary
voices could and did speak up, especially on the Internet,
the freest of today's media. But they were not widely
heard. They were drowned out by the dominant voices in
the mainstream, acceding to the deceptions of power and
their variations and derivatives. All over the world,
autocratic-minded rulers, from Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to Russia's
President Vladimir Putin, have learned that de facto control of the political content of
television is perhaps the most important lever of power in our day. They have learned that it
does not matter politically if 15 or even 25 percent of the public is well informed as long the
majority remains in the dark. The problem has not been censorship but something very nearly
censorship's opposite: the deafening noise of the official megaphone and its echoes--not the
suppression of truth, still spoken and heard in a narrow circle, but a profusion of lies and half
lies; not too little speech but too much. If you whisper something to your friend in the front
row of a rock concert, you have not been censored, but neither will you be heard.
The one major breach in the monopoly has been made by the Supreme Court, especially in
its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld requiring application of the Geneva Conventions and the
Uniform Code of Military Justice to detainees. The decision's reasoning, if it carries the day in
practice, would roll back many of the usurpations by the executive, which has already
claimed that it will apply the Geneva Conventions to prisoners in US custody (though there is
doubt what this will mean) and will seek a constitutional opinion by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act court on its wiretapping. When the Supreme Court speaks, it is more than
repetition. It is effective action.
Yet in the last analysis, the outcome of the contest will be decided in the political arena,

AbouttheAuthor
JonathanSchell
JonathanSchellistheLannanFellow
atTheNationInstituteandteachesa
courseonthenucleardilemmaat...
AlsobytheAuthor
HowAmericaChangedthe
MeaningofWar(WarandPeace,
NuclearArmsandProliferation,USWars
andMilitaryAction)
After 9/11, the US invented a new
kind of borderless, pre-emptive
warfare, plunging the world into an
endless cycle of violence.
JonathanSchell
EdwardSnowdenand
ChelseaManning,theNew
Dissidents?(Crime,InternationalLaw)
The United States is no Soviet Union
and yet it has set up machinery
that satisfies certain tendencies that
are in the genetic code of
totalitarianism.
JonathanSchell
LeslieSavan:You'llHavetoRipBenghaziFromFox'sCold,DeadHands
9/18/2014 Too Late for Empire | The Nation
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where public opinion and, ultimately, voters are the decision-makers. It's notable that the
reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan by one Republican Congressional
leader was to accuse Democrats who applauded the decision of wanting "special privileges
for terrorists."
One-party monopoly of power is not the only inhibiting factor. Any oppositionist who is
honest will keep in mind that a majority, however narrow, of Americans voted that one party
into power in a series of elections. Especially important was the presidential election of 2004,
when many, though not all, of the abuses were already known. (And then the election itself
was subject to grave abuses, especially in Ohio.) The weight and meaning of that majority
does not disappear because it was demonstrably misinformed about key matters of war and
peace. It's one thing to oppose an illegitimate concentration of power in the name of a
repressed majority, another to oppose power backed and legitimated by a majority. In the
first case, it will be enough to speak truth to power; in the second, the main need is to speak
truth to one's fellow citizens. As the end is restoring democratic process, so the means
should be democratic. It's true that since 2004 the President's positive ratings in the polls
have plummeted, but there is no guarantee that this shift in opinion will translate into
Republican defeats in the forthcoming Congressional election, and a renewal of Republican
majorities in both houses of Congress would add another stamp of approval to the Bush
policies, however misguided.
The mechanisms inhibiting opposition to state power, especially when backed by electoral
majorities, are not something new. Even in the freest countries there is at all times a
conventional wisdom, which may wander more or less far from reality. Sometimes it strays
into a fantasyland. Then marginal voices (which of course are not correct merely because
they are marginal) have a special responsibility to speak up, and sometimes they shift the
mainstream--as happened, for instance, in the 1960s regarding the Vietnam War and legal
segregation. For the better part of a century, segregation fit squarely within the banks of the
American mainstream. Then it didn't.
JonathanSchellJuly27,2006|ThisarticleappearedintheAugust14,2006editionofTheNation.
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9/18/2014 Too Late for Empire | The Nation
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Comments for this thread are now closed.
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Cooper James Henckel It must be nice
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2 comments a day ago
Walter Pewen It's good to read Mr.
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wildthang We may even have to
seriously question the beheadings if it is
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Katrina
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deliaruhe I would never blame an
American progressive for feeling a bit
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