-Caveat Lector- PEOPLE AGAINST RACIST TERROR (PART) P.O. Box 1055 Culver City, CA 90232 Tel: 310-288-5003 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://people.we.mediaone.net/part2001/index.html - Thursday, 4 January 2001 - ____________________________________________________________________ PART's Perspective: ABOLISH THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY ____________________________________________________________________ This editorial, under the title: PART's Perspective: Abolish the Imperial Presidency appears in the new issue of "Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research & Education," Volume 13 number 4, Winter 2000-2001, available from PART (People Against Racist Terror), PO Box 1055, Culver City CA 90232. Samples are free; a four-issue subscription is $15 payable to Michael Novick, editor/publisher. George the Second, President-Select, takes office as the first U.S. president of the Twenty-first Century under an unprecedented cloud. Despite his media-maintained mantle of "inevitability," "Dubya" came in second to Al Gore in the balloting across the country, and even in the actual vote in the pivotal state of Florida. Bush's coup clings to a fig leaf of legality by virtue of the approval of five Justices of the US Supreme Court, all appointed or elevated by Reagan-Bush or Bush-Quayle. In Chile or the Philippines, such a coup would require bloody repression to enforce and martial law to maintain. Even in imperial metropoles like France or Germany, it would be greeted by massive street protests and civil strife. Yet in the U.S., the predominant response has been "relief" that the electoral uncertainty is over. Bush's mass base is in the old Confederacy, and he won through large-scale disenfranchisement of Black voters. Fittingly, he serves due to the Electoral College mechanism designed to placate the slave owning states, and by the anointment of 5 reactionaries and racists on the US Supreme Court. But he also "won" because in the campaign and in the post-electoral contest, Gore and the Democrats were more afraid of waking up the voters or rocking the boat, than they were of allowing Bush and the GOP to take power. Bush relies on the complacency of even most Democratic voters, and the still larger body of people who don't bother to vote. His reign, like those of supposedly more "legitimate" presidents, ultimately rests on the fact that masses of people in this country continue to "buy in" to our own oppression What has this "civics lesson from hell" taught us about the true nature of the government and society of the United States? Americans have learned that our votes don't count, may not be counted, and that in fact, under the Constitution, there is no "right to vote." Not only this time, but every time, the campaign and election are a necessary spectacle, a grand farce, a ceremonial exercise whose winner is pre-ordained, a contest with carefully circumscribed parameters so that, whoever wins, the rulers win. Well, the sausage-maker who has seen what goes into the casing would never eat a link. Hopefully, this exposure of the everyday criminality and subterfuge that passes for democracy will deepen our distaste to the point that the legitimacy of the entire state apparatus, not just the head of state, is called into question. We must begin to withdraw our consent to be governed in this way. It's a measure of the system's intolerance for even the narrowest dissent from the economic and political program demanded by the corporate elite, that they were forced to resort to this level of naked coup to install Bush in power. Gore and Bush differ only marginally on the best way to maintain and extend the U.S. empire and corporate economic interests. Even so, the more naked white supremacist and Christian right Bush camp could not countenance a Gore victory. They resent any concessions to the people of color, organized labor, bourgeois feminists and environmentalists in the Democratic Party's mass base. Opponents of Bush and defenders of democracy must recognize not only that Bush won the dollar election of corporate contributions, but also that an overwhelming majority of white male voters, and even a bare majority of white women voters, went for Bush, an ill-prepared and dim-witted liar whose main claim to the office, apart from inheritance, was his alleged "affability." This is a measure of the continuing grip of white supremacy and allegiance to empire on masses of Euro-Americans. It is this racist racial solidarity which must be broken with and challenged directly. More so than guns or the media monopoly, it is the main strength and resource of the system of exploitation and oppression. The problem is not just the illegitimacy of the gangster scion of a gangster family -- the Kennebunkport Corleones or Texas Prizzis, as the Bushes have been called -- though their multi-generational involvement in the secret government that links the intelligence agencies, organized crime, the fascists and the corporate elite is well documented. The problem is the illegitimacy of a gangster system that most people in the U.S. still revere and accept. The undemocratic election of 2000 is the result not only of the hollowing-out of democracy that has been carried out during the recent period of corporate globalization and direct corporate rule through NAFTA and the WTO. It is the consequence of the essentially undemocratic nature of the U.S. state and society. We need to look back farther than the last 40 days since Election Day, or the last 40 weeks since the campaigns began. We need to rethink the past 240 years of U.S. history. First of all, we must recognize that the U.S. is neither a democracy nor a republic, but an empire. The people who run it understand this quite clearly. Their tactics and strategies flow naturally from this understanding. In an empire there are no citizens, first or second class -- there are only subjects. But until we understand our true colonial condition and situation, we will be incapable of struggling effectively for our rights. The Electoral College isn't an anachronistic throwback to an earlier, less democratic period of US history. The Electoral College is an accurate manifestation of the imperial nature of our state and society. It only one reflection of the fact that the U.S. "Revolutionary" War simply replaced British colonialism with settler colonialism. The Electoral College is hardly less democratic than the winner-take-all presidency itself, the Supreme Court, or the US Senate, where each state has two powerful Senators regardless of population. Bush's selection gives the lie to the US claim to be a government "of laws, not men." But beyond the man, the law itself is the heart of the problem. What is the Constitution, the vaunted Supreme Law of the land that the Supreme Court claims to uphold and the President swears to defend? The slave-holding and mercantile ruling elite of the late 1700's chafed at the limited powers of the government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. They adopted the Constitution to create a powerful executive - George Washington, the original imperial president - and a legislature with the power to control commerce and coin a common currency. But to win approval, they had to guarantee the inviolable power of the slave-owners. They did this with the Electoral College, with the bicameral legislature, with the apportionment of Congressional representatives based on 3/5 of the non-citizen African slave population, and with a ban on Congressional action against slavery or the slave trade. They feared Indian resistance, African insurgency, and the possibility that poor whites might make common cause with indigenous people and slaves against them. They designed a system to guarantee stability and prevent further revolutionary upheaval through a seductive ability for whites to participate in the loot of empire and a deceptive distribution of power in branches and levels of the system. Thereby they assured themselves a steady supply of lieutenants and a difficult target for opponents. This rotten deal cemented the ability of the newly formed state to protect, defend and extend the colonists' empire in America. The compact was strengthened by the Jeffersonian recoil against the truly democratic slave-led Haitian revolution. Federalism is a blueprint for further expansion. The purchase of Louisiana territory, the conquest of Florida, the genocidal ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee Nation and other indigenous people of the east coast, were all accomplished by "Democrats." They acted in the spirit of the Constitution, although often contrary to the letter of its law. The US flag, with its 13 stripes for its original settler colonies and 50 stars for the added conquered territories, is the visual depiction and symbol of this imperial expansion, carried out under the racist doctrine of "Manifest Destiny," the "god-given right" of Europeans to conquer the continent. "Democratic" reformers like Andrew Jackson -- a militarist, Indian killer and slave owner -- extended the franchise to more white men as a tactic to strengthen white supremacy and empire. This sorry record continued with the annexation of Texas and the conquest of the remainder of northern Mexico; the Civil War itself was necessitated from the rulers' point of view by a struggle over whether slavery would be extended into the territories stolen from Mexico. Consolidating the power of the national government over the states of the empire allowed the purchase of Alaska from the Czarist Russian empire; and subsequent to the Civil War, the violation of the sovereign Indian Nations in the Plains and the northwest. At the dawn of the century that just closed, the U.S. empire went global, with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and the illegal annexation of Hawaii, despite the defeat in the Senate of the treaty of annexation. In a war with Spain, the U.S. seized the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico, the last of which is still a direct colonial possession. It is no accident that the two states where the Bush boys are governors, and from which they launched their takeover of the White House, are the two former Confederate States that had been added to the U.S. by military conquest. This conquest, slavery and the white supremacist consolidation of settlers loyal to the empire, form the key strongholds of racism and reaction not only in the U.S. but globally. So when we talk about defending democracy in the U.S., it must go far beyond abolition of the Electoral College, campaign finance reform, updating antiquated ballot machinery in poor areas, or even protecting the voting rights of people of color. Direct democracy can only begin with de-colonization. Economic democracy cannot be based on a "fairer" distribution of the spoils of empire. What we must do is dismantle the empire and replace it with a system of economic self-management and political self-determination. -end- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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