Treason

Somehow I missed Barack Obama signing his executive order for National Defense Resource Preparedness, May 16. Granted, he loves to sign these things late on Friday, when most people are distracted by their plans for the weekend. That smacks of duplicity at least, pissant cowardice maybe, and even despotism. The order is rationalized by the Administration, and most of the political punditry on both sides, as a perfunctory update of a previous executive order, established by Clinton in 1994, as there was in 1994 no Office of Homeland Security; mere governmental busywork, crossing one's T's and dotting the i's. In combination with this President's authorization of the use of the military on American soil, however, and the indefinite incarceration of American citizens without trial, in his National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), it begins to feel a lot more like a despot's battle plan, even a tyrant's wet dream - slick bureaucratic concupiscence, to control every last little thing. I think it was right about that time, May 16, that he offered his verbal support for gay marriage – enlivening support at the base, inflaming one's enemies. The act of a cynical scumbag, distracting from his true agenda.

Not that Romney isn't right there with him, even openly supportive of the idea of a surveillance, police state. You think Romney would dismantle that multi-billion dollar NSA facility Obama is building in the Utah (Mormon) desert, designed to spy on domestic - American to American - Internet communications? He practically pioneered the idea in practice, as Governor of Massachusetts. Romney has set himself up as a fixer of problems. By that, I imagine he means, as president, he would root out any dissidents not in line with the military-industrial-financial-technological empire – artists, skeptics, conspiritorialists, and freeloader poor. He probably loves Cass Sunstein, "Mr Sunshine," Obama's Harvard Law buddy, Director of Information and Regulatory Affairs, who we have every reason to suspect, has a whole network of moles, like Jonathan Gruber, feeding information supported by this President. Mr Sunshine would outlaw political speech not in line with Administration policy (like this blog), if he could dispense with the subtlety without coming off like the reincarnation of a Bolshevik or a Nazi.

I love that these guys, Obama and Romney, come off as moderates.

Basically, this Executive Order cedes control of just about everything in America to the President, through the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in the event of a national security emergency. Conservatives, despite acting like Obama is the anti-Christ, hardly squawked at all about it, because the order doesn't specifically cede control of private property to the President – even though it cedes control of all food resources to the Secretary of Agriculture, all water resources to the Secretary of Defense, all energy resources to the Secretary of Energy, (etc), it effectively nullifies all private contracts, and even sets the stage for forced labor and military conscription. Conservatives didn't squawk about it much, because they love the idea of control just as much as Obama and his ilk do, they just want to be the ones who dispense it. Stoopid Americans.

So now, we have on the books, the right of the government to invade it's own country, the right to incarcerate it's own people without trial*, the right to force us into industrial, technical labor, and military service wherever in the world the government has decided there is a national security emergency, and the right to control with military/police force, the domestic resources – food and water - most important to the biological viability (resistance) of it's people. Necessarily, nowhere in this executive order, is there any mention of the health and welfare of the American people. Because this executive order, and the NDAA, are about the maintenance and protection of the power of the State, which is emphatically NOT about the people, as much as it is about those elite who dominate America and the world. Meanwhile, the American people are oblivious, distracted unto blindness by the myriad manifestations of the techno-utopian Spectacle, captive to the constant, overwhelming media flow of manipulated misinformation, most of them perhaps incapable of doing anything meaningful to extricate themselves.

And what really can be done, once one has snapped oneself out of it? Not much. I was struck, recently, reading a website dedicated to the idea of deep green resistance, who's leading light is Derrick Jensen, at the profoundly callous naiveté of the militant green. Really? Are these folks at all familiar with the technical capacity of our American military and police, not to mention all the redneck motorhead yahoos out there, ready to defend their divinely ordained right to fuck the earth, with the barrel of their beloved guns? Maybe we can bring down civilization, if we can convince all those men and women with military and police experience, and all those rednecks like the ones I hung out with when I was young, that that is what is best for America. But as far as I can tell, the VAST majority of Americans think the earth is a place to be plundered of every last one of Her resources, to maintain whatever standard of living any one American has achieved, and desires. Militancy might be a viable and necessary option in the aftermath or process of broad scale social breakdown, to prevent either the government or men like the Koch brothers from hiring goons and thugs to despoil your local ecosystem, and enslaving people outright. But as long as this economy is more or less humming along, there is little meaningful that can be done, but learning the skills that will serve you and yours best, in collapse. That is, mostly, reestablishing a relationship with and concern for the earth, growing and building things, and getting along with people.

I think it is treason, to vote for either Obama or Romney in 2012. Because the Office of the Chief Executive is no longer a President in the model of George Washington, but a manager of corporate, financial, military empire, a director of the police state, with the power and legal framework at his disposal, to take over the country and dispense even with the illusion of democracy. Remember that, the next time someone uses that tired old platitude, “you can't complain if you don't vote,” revealing themselves to be blindly obedient to one or another of two equally potential tyrants. Local elections are something else entirely, where there may be someone running who isn't basically about looting the earth or the treasury, setting up their cronies to control things. Perhaps there is a politician somewhere who has not given him or herself over to the control of the state, who cares about local resilience. Maybe. Even if there is, the gears of governance tend to corrupt absolutely, where ever there is an absence of local oversight. Local oversight being, at it's core, democratic governance of the people, by the people, for the people.

* A federal judge nullified that wording in the NDAA about indefinite detention. That is by no means the last word. It will surely be decided eventually by the Supreme Court. I anticipate that court upholding the indefinite detention of Americans without trial. As far as I know, the right of our government to invade our country has not been legally questioned. All of America's elite are terrified of the American people.