If the last-minute polling trends showing a powerful Republican comeback carry through the Nov. 7 elections, the end of America as we have known it for more than two centuries will be at hand.
In a political version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," the country might look the same – people driving their SUVs to the mall or eating at fast-food restaurants – but it will have internally changed. Election 2006 will have been the ratification of George W. Bush's grim vision of endless war abroad and the end of a constitutional Republic at home.
Though not understanding the full import of their actions, the American voters will have endorsed the elimination of the "unalienable" rights handed down to them by the Founders, instead allowing "plenary" – or unlimited – power to be invested in the President. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights will have been turned into irrelevant pieces of paper.
Bush will have the authority to send American young men and women to war wherever he chooses; he will have the power to spy on anyone he wants; he could imprison citizens and non-citizens alike under the Military Commissions Act while denying the detainees the right to file motions with civilian courts; he could order harsh interrogations which could then be used to convict defendants (assuming they are ever brought before one of his hand-picked tribunals for trial, conviction and execution); he could ignore or reinterpret any laws that he doesn't like; he would have rubber-stamps in Congress and very soon in the U.S. Supreme Court; he and his potential successors would be, in effect, dictators.
While many Americans don't want to believe that an American totalitarian state is possible, let alone an impending threat, Bush's last-minute barnstorming, which has equated a Democratic congressional majority with a victory for terrorism, has put that dark reality within a day's reach.
The American Right has thrown all its prodigious forces into the fray, particularly its powerful news media – from talk radio and Fox News to the Internet and print publications – making hay out of everything from John Kerry's botched joke to the death sentence against Saddam Hussein.
Indeed, one reason this new America has the look of incipient totalitarianism is that the Right has created such a powerful media apparatus that it can virtually create its own reality. Most often, the cowed mainstream media tags along, as happened with the media frenzy over Kerry's misinterpreted joke.
Assuming the Republican comeback trends continue through Election Day – and the GOP holds both houses of Congress – it will be hard to imagine how this right-wing juggernaut will ever be stopped. The only dissent that will be tolerated in the future is the ineffectual kind, the sort that doesn't threaten the power structure.
Timid Protest
By the time, "respected" mainstream figures finally raise their hands in timid protest, it will be too late. An example of the tepid warnings from prominent insiders was the New York Times Op-Ed piece on Nov. 6 by former ABC news anchor Ted Koppel.
Koppel, who clambered aboard the Iraq War bandwagon in 2003, now sees some reason for concern in the way the Bush administration is waging the "war on terror" abroad by throttling liberties at home.
With mild alarm, Koppel noted that senior administration officials have framed the "war on terror" in "existential terms," which means that they are claiming that the very existence of the United States is at risk. That, these officials argue, justifies extraordinary legal strategies for eliminating perceived enemies simply for associating with some suspect group.
"This practice falls into the category of what Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty calls 'preventive prosecution,'" Koppel wrote. "It's an interesting concept: a form of anticipatory justice. Faced with the possible convergence between terrorism and a weapon of mass destruction, the argument goes, the technicality of waiting for a crime to be committed before it can be punished must give way to pre-emption."
Koppel described this "anticipatory justice" as "the somewhat jarring notion of recalibrating our constitutional protections."
But Koppel then offers only the modest suggestion that "we should be building protective ramparts around our legal system, safeguarding our own freedoms, focusing on our own carefully constructed democracy and leading by example." [NYT, Nov. 6, 2006]
To say that "respected" figures like Koppel don't get the magnitude of the situation would be an understatement.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
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