Gradual sacralization and royalization of the US "presidency"
institution and designation of the president as Commander in Chief of
the military, poses the greated threat to US "democracy."
Currrently with the syzygy of Republican control of the three
branches has suspended the checks and balance of the Constitution to
limit the warmaking power of the president. He needs only to declare
a national security emergency to justify military dominance of the citizenry.
The basis of the declaration is solely up to him as if a war is
underway. Eventual Congressional approval of warmaking is required
but not in an emergency.
Continuity of Government (COG) regulation allows singular military
command by the president instantly by a notification (order) to the
military leadership. This established to respond to a national threat
of the ICBM type wherein there is no time to consult with
Congressional or Supreme Court members, many of whom are dispersed or
unreachable.
COG is regularly war-gamed as realistic training, and may be
publicized as warning to potential enemies, but the full operation
classified and not disclosed. A training session could be used to
cloak a real operation underway secretly, that cloaking is a
component of the operaton to deceive an enemy.
Mr. Trump is most certainly capable of ordering a national emergency,
and he does not have to disclose the basis of it. That is the great
fault of the presidency which allows autocracy to be invoked in
secrecy to protect the nation.
All this has evolved under the creation and vast institutionalization
of "national security" to justify the world's top military force
supported by some 16 spy agencies and innumerable federal, state and
municipal law enforcement offices which can be commanded in secret by
the president under wartime conditions. Internal threats are quite
useful for this.
To be sure, autocrats of royalty, theology, ideology and revolution
have utilized these same measures to institute a reign of oppression
and subjugation. The USA has presented itself as a bastion of
opposition to autocracy, leveraging military supremacy to enforce
takedowns of tyrants.
As with any supreme power what happens when it becomes excessively
self-serving as empires have alway done under control of the few who
are sacralized as uniquely qualified to rule, by deity and by
weaponry and by law and by the best and brightest willing to sell
their souls for kings coin and Nobel dynamite prizes. To wit, nettime and ilk.
At 04:10 AM 11/13/2020, you wrote:
Hi everyone,
I must admit, amidst post-terror assault on civil liberties and covid
cases spiraling out of control here in Austria, the US election drama
has moved a bit lower in my attention, but not that much.
>From what I understand, the numbers show that Trump lost. Period. No
recount will change that.
But, the game of the Republicans is to create so much doubt about the
fairness of the elections (without any evidence) to make it impossible
to certify them in time. Frivolous lawsuits are great at gumming things
up. This would then allow the Republican dominated legislatures in swing
states to appoint their own electors which would bring Trump the
majority. In the mean time, the minister of defense, who previously
refused to send in troops against mostly peaceful protestors, has been
fired and replaced with a loyalist. Apparently, similar moves are in the
wings for the FBI and CIA.
I know, Trump is often portrayed as an incompetent child, and the
strategy is totally outlandish, but the Republican party has shown to be
a pretty ruthless and successful power machine playing both a short and
a long game, and it's exactly the outlandishness of the strategy that is
its strongest point.
In the mean time, the democrats pretend all of this to be irrelevant (an
'embarrassment' at worst) and happily appoint a transition team full of
corporate insiders like it's 1992.
Am I totally misreading the situation?
Felix
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