Bye-Bye Bill of Rights: Obama’s Corporate Fascism

With indefinite military detention for U.S. citizens soon to be signed into law by President Obama, what Benito Mussolini would’ve surely recognized as “fascism” is upon us — the outlines of a corporate-military police state loom ominously ahead in a future appearing grimmer by the minute. These last ten years of the “Global War on Terror” have served our rulers’ insidious purposes well, training us to surrender the Bill of Rights in return for an illusion of safety from another 9/11, and conditioning us to accept ever more police presence and militarization in everyday life. Now taking shape is an Orwellian sci-fi dystopia set on a ruined and broiling planet, the skies filled with Predator drones, the streets of starving cities patrolled by mercenary cyborg militias. One can almost hear Nineteen Eighty-Four’s O’Brien:

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?… A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain…. there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything… If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

The “land of the free and home of the brave” now imprisons more of its citizens, both on a per capita basis and in absolute numbers, than any other nation — at present, some 2.5 million, with 5 million more under some form of correctional supervision. Each year, under the aegis of the War on Drugs, police S.W.A.T. teams conduct 40,000 commando-style raids on private homes, breaking down doors and terrorizing nonviolent citizens with assault rifles and flash-bang grenades, often on the flimsiest suspicion, and often for a simple marijuana bust. Through Pentagon give-aways, police across the nation have amassed huge arsenals of the latest in military technology and hardware — even tiny villages in the hinterland have armored personnel carriers; drones will be next. Indeed, the U.S. may be the most militarized nation on the planet — and with the largest military budget (equal to that of the rest of the world combined), we have become the single biggest threat to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” on earth. Once a “beacon of freedom,” we’re now known far and wide for our aggressive military posture, our complicity in torture, our remote-control bombing of civilians, our genocidal hatred of Muslims, our disregard of international treaties — the list could go on. We are the Evil Empire — the name Ronald Reagan once gave to the Soviet Union.

And what is most evil — perhaps cosmically evil — is the irresponsibility and greed of our so-called leaders and ruling class at a time when the existential threats to our civilization, in fact, to our species, grow ever more imminent. If our scientists are to be trusted, species-suicide is on the horizon, but rather than turn the state’s considerable resources towards dealing with any of the profound problems facing humanity — declining oil production, global warming, unsupportable debt, pervasive ecosystem breakdown, growing food insecurity — our imperial ruling class is using the current economic crisis to consolidate power, pillage public assets, put the screws to the global proletariat and “roll back the Enlightenment.” In all likelihood, this drive for what the Pentagon calls “full spectrum dominance” will only cause mounting instability, driving more people into desperate poverty, and hence into crime and violent insurgencies, hastening the Empire’s collapse into chaos  — but, hey, who thinks of the future when they’re sitting on top of the heap? Why worrry when the most fearsome military-police apparatus in history is doing your bidding? When the entirety of the media and political classes sing your praises and bow and scrape in your presence?

Panicked by the recent outbreaks of popular revolt around the world, the U.S. servants of the One Percent are girding their loins for the fight of their lives. The cracked facade of our sham democracy is becoming ever more difficult to hold together, and when it crumbles to reveal the ugliness within, politicians like Barack Obama will have no trouble calling out the storm troopers. The police violence we saw during the recent crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street movement is just a foretaste of things to come. Brace yourself for wild ride in 2012.