It Could Never Happen Here
Many Americans remain convinced that tyranny and oppression could never happen here in the United States. We are different from other countries, they say. We are more enlightened. We are exceptional. The United States will always be a free country, no matter what.
Of course, there is always a problem with the meaning of the word “freedom.” It means different things to different people.
For example, today’s Americans feel free because they live under a welfare state, a national-security state, a foreign military empire, a government-managed economy, a paper-money system directed by a central bank, an income tax, a drug war, and an immigration police state.
Yet, our American ancestors prior to 1910 rejected all those things and lived in a society that had none of them. Yet, they were convinced that they were free. I happen to believe that they were right and that today’s Americans have simply deluded themselves into thinking they are free.
But let’s take civil liberties. Many Americans would agree that people who live in a society in which civil liberties are absent cannot possibly be considered to be a free people. That is, many Americans favor the procedural protections found in the Bill of Rights.
Let’s assume that a duly elected president of a country has the full support of a big, permanent military-intelligence establishment that loyally obeys his orders. Due to an increase in violence in the government’s war on drugs, the president declares a “national emergency.” The president orders the military to begin rounding up people who are deemed to be threats to “national security.” Tens of thousands of people are quickly arrested, incarcerated in secret prisons, and brutally tortured to give up information on criminal activity. Some of them are executed. No trials are held.
The courts go into action and declare the president’s actions unconstitutional. The courts order the president to stop what he is doing. However, the president, citing his “national emergency,” simply ignores their rulings. When judges cite the president and his goons with contempt, the president and his military forces simply ignore them or, even worse, order their arrest and incarceration. The president also replaces recalcitrant judges with his own judicial lackeys.
A few members of the country’s legislature call for the president’s impeachment. But they are quickly shouted down by others who are loyal to the president or too scared to object to what he is doing. The president would ignore or shut down any impeachment proceedings anyway, citing his “national emergency.”
Again, I think most Americans would describe this as an unfree society. They would see that a system in which a ruler and his military-intelligence forces wield and exercise omnipotent power over the citizenry by being able to jail, torture, assassinate, and execute anyone without any interference whatsoever cannot possibly be considered a free society. I think many Americans would even think about Nazi Germany or George Orwell’s 1984 when hearing a description of that type of society.
Yet, the problem is that many American conservatives, as well as the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA), deeply admire and respect that kind of system in various foreign countries.
Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Chile license.
Consider the U.S. prison and torture center at Guantanamo Bay. The reason that the Pentagon and the CIA set it up in Cuba, with the full support of U.S. conservatives, was to enable them to avoid any interference by U.S. courts with how they treated people accused of terrorism. The Pentagon and the CIA wanted a total Constitution-free zone in which they would wield and exercise omnipotent powers over inmates, including being able to torture, indefinitely incarcerate, and even execute them.
Before that was right-wing Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who the U.S. national-security establishment helped take power in a coup in 1973 in Chile. He nullified the courts and the national congress. Employing Chile’s national-security establishment, he and his military-intelligence goons rounded up tens of thousands of suspected communists, incarcerated them in secret prisons, brutally tortured or raped them, and executed or disappeared thousands of them. No trials at all. Pinochet established “law and order” in Chile and restored a sense of “patriotism” to the land by purifying the nation of communists. Moreover, he brought “free enterprise” to Chile and even reformed Social Security to conform to conservative principles. American conservatives loved him and still do.
Look at the current dictator of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. Declaring a “national emergency,” he assumed dictatorial powers that have enabled him and his military-intelligence goons to round up, incarcerate, and torture tens of thousands of people. No trials. No judicial interference. No congressional interference. Simply total, raw, dictatorial power. But Bukele has brought “law and order” and “patriotism” to El Salvador and, in the process, made El Salvador great again. Consequently, American conservatives have fallen in love with him. President Trump is even using Bukele’s “Terrorism Confinement Center” to imprison immigrants who have been accused of illegally entering the United States but who have never been tried or convicted in a trial in a court of law.
Why is the right-wing love of Gitmo, Pinochet, and Bukele a problem for Americans? Given that American conservatives love right-wing tyranny for foreigners, it is not beyond the realm of reasonable possibility that that, deep down, American right-wingers would love to impose the same system here at home — under the guise of establishing “law and order,” restoring “patriotism,” and, of course, “making America great again.”