THE END OF POLITICS

Since I was pretty miffed over Artvoice’s recent campaign against the Seneca’s casino project, I haven’t read your newspaper for a few weeks. But a friend talked me into reading the article by Bruce Jackson on the recent law passed allowing the President of the US to lie about whether he sanctions or even orders torture of political criminals (“Normalizing Torture,” Artvoice v5n43). I thought Professor Jackson had pretty much wasted the past year fretting about whether Buffaloans gambled their monies away, which is a worry we just don’t need right now. However, with his article on this phoney torture legislation, he has come a far way to redeeming himself. When the American government effectively writes the president’s dishonesty, brutality and hypocrisy into law, then any law we thought we had in America stands revealed as hypocrisy pretending to be law, and the government by law (and not the personal whim of the head-of-state) ceases to exist, the only public sanctions to our behavior devolving into violence and the threat of violence. When that happens, the only real political question to raise publicly is whether there is to be a politics at all. Right now, it appears to be the case that our votes count for nothing; what good is it to discuss social causes, whether gambling or snowplows or jobs or taxes, if the government is wholly unresponsive to our voices?

During the Reagan years, many Americans were misled by the media into believing that certain issues—indeed, most issues—could be resolved in a “bipartisan” or even “nonpartisan” manner. This is as much to say that politics itself prevented solutions to these issues, since politics necessitates “partisanship,” that is, the effort to arrive at consensus among differing, and even opposing, community interests. This effort, to provide any basis of community action at all, must then be written into law, to be observed by all members of the community, regardless of interest. Eliminate partisanship, and politics is also eliminated; eliminate politics, and law is also eliminated. Eliminate law, and the community falls apart, replaced by what are little more than warring social groups—primitive tribes, no matter how sophisticated the technology.

For myself, I thought, for the past few years, that the most important issues for discussion were the colonial war against the Iraqis, or the devastation we have inflicted onto the biosphere. I am beginning to see that even these issues, no matter how pressing, cannot be properly discussed at all, unless we reconstitute a political arena in which to discuss them.

With the end of habeas corpus, the Constitution of the United States comes to an end. The history of the American Revolution of 1776 is over—and it was a failure.

I believe it will be quite a while before the real implications of this historic catastrophe are understood, even a while before they manifest themselves fully in our social environment. But the fact remains that the damage done to Constitutional government, to its politics and laws, by the Bush regime and its congressional lackies, is probably irrevocable, because it has been both sweeping and yet minutely detailed—simple reform legislation cannot undo it.

I don’t know what will, and I fear very much that I will not even see such effort begun in the remainder of my lifetime.

But I do know that such difficulties are best addressed with open acknowledgement that there such problems confront us. Therefore, I am pleased to hail Professor Jackson’s remarks for their cogency, accuracy and finely tuned reasoning. Whatever our differences on other issues, I respect Professor Jackson’s intelligence, and now believe we can find common ground on important social matters of the present. Finding common ground is what politics is all about.

Emmanuel John Winner

Buffalo

TO: BRIAN HIGGINS

FROM: THE DENTANS

Dear Congressman Higgins:

We’re a middle-class family, no big bucks, but we contributed to your campaign back in the old days when there was a chance you might not win, so strongly did we believe in your promise. We didn’t do that because we expected any personal benefits—we hardly ever even write letters to politicians. We voted for you because we’re, you know, idealists. Assemblyman Sam Hoyt confirmed our hunch that you would perform ably as our Representative. As far as bringing home the pork to Buffalo and getting somnolent local officials to stir, you have done even better than we expected. Thank you. Good work.

We were disturbed by your votes in favor of government-enforced pregnancy, but figured that you voted out of religious conviction. We don’t share the religion or the conviction, nor do we favor mixing religious dogma and the state administration. But we realize that a good Congressman is an independent person and could let that slide.

We were going to contribute again, after some thought, and have already agreed to display a sign for you. But we are increasingly deeply disturbed by the consistency with which you vote to transfer more and more power to a corrupt, entrenched, incompetent, unresponsive, plutocratic bureaucracy, which will—thanks to votes like yours, first for extending the slickly named “Patriot Act” and now for abolishing habeas corpus—remain in power long after all of us are dead. Thanks to votes like this, our kids are talking about leaving not only Buffalo but the country itself.

We are dismayed.

The Dentans

Dear Representative Higgins:

We recently sent you a letter praising your performance as a pork-provider but expressing our dismay at the consistency with which you vote to transfer ever-more power to a power-crazy sclerotic and corrupt bureaucracy devoted to fostering an emerging permanent plutocracy, no matter what the cost to ordinary citizens. We put it more mildly then, because we hoped for a reasoned reply. Instead, a couple of weeks later one of your flunkies mailed us a form letter rerunning (pretty much verbatim) the talking points President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, distributed to justify the abolition of habeas corpus and the institutionalization of politically motivated torture. The permanent entrenchment of what Theodore Roosevelt called “malefactors of great wealth” is, your reply indicates, not an issue that concerns you. The staleness of the regurgitated message aside, your failure even to devise your own justification for your actions in terms of democratic or Democratic values suggests that you conceive your job as merely elbowing your way to the federal trough for your constituents and blowing off whatever traditional values they may have in the process. You’re younger, but how are you otherwise different from Tom Reynolds, except that you lack his clout and belong, nominally, to a different political party?

We were dismayed before. Now that we realize the betrayal was deliberate, we are disgusted. Sorry about that. You seemed to promise so much better. I hope your time in the BAC is worth it to you, because it’s worth nothing to us.

Sincerely,

The Dentans

Dr. Robert Knox Dentan

Buffalo

ON HIGGINS’ SUPPORT FOR BUSH’S FOREIGN POLICY…

I wonder if you were as disappointed as I am in Congressman Brian Higgins’ vote for the detainee act…Heretofore, I noticed his insensitivity to violation of American citizens’ rights at our border when they returned from a conference in Toronto, and to Bush’s violation of our law in his secret surveillance of citizens, and indefinite detention. He insists that it was right of Bush to invade Iraq even though it was based upon lies and incompletion of the UN inspection process. I can imagine President Bush embracing him, and perhaps kissing him on both cheeks, at the next State of the Union address.

Peter T. Rusczyk

Buffalo

…AND WHAT THAT POLICY MEANS

With the House of Representatives elections coming up in November, it is essential to know how some of the local House members voted on HR861, a resolution that essentially supports Bush’s policies on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thomas Reynolds and Brian Higgins voted in favor of the resolution. Among the many ancillary resolutions and head-spinning justifications for the Iraq war is one key statement within the major resolution: that the House “declares that the United States is committed to the completion of the mission to create, a sovereign, free, secure, and united Iraq.” The “completion” of that “mission,” if we are to believe the Bush government, can only be accomplished by continuing the “war” against the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq. Nothing in the resolution indicates that the US is seen by most Iraqis as a foreign “occupier,” that the sectarian violence is still a reality in the country and that the invasion of Baghdad actually created a hotbed of insurgents and decentralized jihadists, a flaming cauldron that did not exist prior to our invasion. On this last issue alone, the Bush government and the Republican-dominated Congress apparently feels no culpability in having created the very terrorism it claims to be working so diligently to end.

In spite of history, the public opinion polls that lean heavily against this war and the most recent statement from 16 federal US intelligence agencies that the US presence in Iraq has spawned a “new generation of Islamic radicals and worsened the threat of global terrorism,” the Bush government, with the support of those who voted for HR861, is telling the American public that the US is permanently committed to a war that cannot be won militarily.

Given the low ratings of Congress by the American public (around 25 percent, according to some sources), it is no wonder that Americans are deeply cynical of the House and the Senate. And it is no wonder that many of us are feeling a profound sense of powerlessness in trying to convince them that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the disastrous consequences of a foreign policy driven by ethnocentrism (the belief that American culture is superior to all other cultures), greed (stemming from the belief that the US has an intrinsic right to global oil to feed its consumer-driven economy) and the desire to create a dominant American sphere of military influence throughout the world (clearly evidenced by its global Army Central Commands, training and test centers; Naval forces and fleets; Air Force bases; and Marine Corps air stations and battalions—according to one internet source, there are 702 US military bases in about 130 countries.)

Unless US foreign policy is completely overhauled, we will continue on the road to more and more extreme jihadist reactions and to Congressional foreign policy legislation steeped in ethnocentrism, greed and the desire for US military dominance throughout the world.

John T. Marohn

Buffalo

THE REBIRTH OF MANIFEST DESTINY

The following is an editorial that appeared in the Cheyenne Daily Leader on March 3, 1870:

The rich and beautiful valleys of Wyoming are destined for the occupancy and sustenance of the Anglo Saxon race. The wealth that for untold ages has lain hidden beneath the snow capped summits of our mountains, has been placed there by Providence, to reward the brave spirits, whose lot it is to compose the advance guard of civilization. The Indians must stand aside or be overwhelmed by the ever advancing and ever increasing tide of immigration. The destiny of the aborigines is written in characters not to be mistaken. The same inscrutable arbiter that decreed the downfall of Rome, has pronounced the doom of extinction upon the red men of America.

Does anyone have any doubt that this arrogant, ethnocentric creed called “Manifest Destiny” lives on in America? Now it’s called Compassionate Conservatism! The Bush administration gives lavish tax breaks to the very wealthy, while cutting funds to hundreds of programs for the sick and poor. They are obsessed with plundering the “wealth hidden beneath the snow capped summits,” by cynically repealing and gutting more than 400 of our laws and regulations that safeguard the health and safety of our citizens.

By paraphrasing part of the Manifest Destiny creed, we get the real meaning of Compassionate Conservatism:

The middle class and the poor must stand aside to be overwhelmed by the ever advancing and ever increasing tide of the right wing of the wealthy and powerful. The destiny of the lower classes is written in characters not to be mistaken. The same inscrutable arbiter that decreed the downfall of Rome has pronounced the doom of extinction upon the middle class of America.

Frank Hugar

East Aurora