John McCain and the New Fascism by Terry Woods

in currentevents •  6 years ago 


Blatantly calling for a New Fascism in his Wisconsin acceptance speech, John McCain declared Tuesday night that, “we must re-think and re-build the structure and mission of our military, the capabilities of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the purposes of our alliances, the reach and scope of our democracy, the capacity of all branches of government to defend us.”

At first blush, calling for a re-think/re-build of military structure and mission, as well as a capability assessment of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, sounds like the usual reformer hooha and no big woo. But what does John “100 Year War” McCain mean by re-thinking the purposes of our alliances?

This is a landmark scary speech.

About four minutes in he points out the perils of an uncertain world, specifically mentioning Pakistan, calling it “indispensable.” I didn’t like it when Madeleine Albright said that the US was indispensable. If we want to re-think the purposes of our alliances, I’d like to know which alliance made Pakistan indispensable. We should re-purpose that one.

John also wants to discuss and re-build “the reach and scope of our democracy.” Is “our” democracy reaching far enough? Barack Obama devotes a lot of space on his web-site to the voting rights act, but I don’t think that’s where John is going. I think he’s joined the Trotsky-ites and signed up with George Walker Bush and the permanent revolution. We’re literally back to the war for small nationalities, the war for democracy, and the war to end war rhetoric that kicked off the last century.

Finally, by calling for “all branches of government” to be subservient to the mission of the Defense Department, John is proposing to usurp the Constitution and install himself as Supreme Executive via the president’s role as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

From this throne and with the power of all regulatory and judiciary authority, his Imperial Highness will embark on the following program (verbatim from the Wisconsin Acceptance speech):

“We need to marshal all the elements of American power, our military, economy, investment, trade, and technology, and our moral credibility, to win the war against Islamic Extremists and help the majority of Muslims, who believe in progress and peace, win the struggle for the soul of Islam.”

The “war against…extremists” is to be funded by co-opting every industry in our economy, every investment by our nation and its people, all of our profits from trade and technology, and finally spending even the very last dime of our moral credibility.

This is the new Fascism. All productive aspects of society must harnessed to serve the goals of the state. All motive must be in harmony with the goals of the state, and all measure of progress is the advancement of the goals of the state. We must make sacrifices to meet the transcendent challenge of the 21st Century. You can have your Bill of Rights back in another hundred years, okay?

And don’t forget, it’s completely altruistic. We don’t want anything for ourselves. We’re not Crusaders, we’re a great and noble people willing to travel to the ends of the earth, spend untold fortunes, kill and be killed, torture and spy, because Pakistan is indispensable.

This piece was originally posted on February 21, 2008 by Terry Woods in the now defunct blog politicalenquirer.com.

An archived version can be found here.



Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://earthbus.org/2018/08/26/john-mccain-and-the-new-fascism-by-terry-woods/
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