The Republican convention and the specter of dictatorship

[Guest guest]

It is a sad commentary on what the major media is worth

when socialist sites are one the few political groups who are

willing to get at some of the truth. F.

 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/bush-s04.shtml

 

The Republican convention and the specter of

dictatorship

By Bill Van Auken, SEP presidential candidate

4 September 2004

 

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George W. Bush’s closing speech Thursday night at the

Republican National Convention should serve as a

warning of what is being prepared by his

administration in its pursuit of the interests of

America’s ruling elite.

 

The festival of fear, intimidation and hatred staged

inside Madison Square Garden carried with it the

implicit threat of escalating war abroad and

dictatorship at home. It expressed the perplexity of a

ruling elite that perceives itself as besieged by

economic and social contradictions that are spinning

out of control.

 

The speech was delivered in an atmosphere dominated by

police repression of demonstrators in the streets of

New York City, and grotesque attempts inside the

Garden to cast the sadist in the White House as a

divinely chosen leader of the people.

 

Bush strode onto the stage through a pair of

Corinthian columns and climbed up terraced steps to a

raised circular platform to deliver his address. He

stood above the crowd on a blue rug bearing the

presidential seal, reading nervously from his

TelePrompTer. The production suggested something out

of the Roman Empire.

 

The message sent by the elaborate facade constructed

in Madison Square Garden is best summed up in the

famous words of France’s Louis XIV, “L’etat c’est

moi”: I am the state.

 

This image reflected the pretensions of a government

that has abrogated fundamental constitutional rights

and assumed unprecedented powers. It has asserted the

authority of the president, as commander-in-chief, to

detain anyone indefinitely and without charges merely

by labeling him an “enemy combatant,” to wage

preemptive and unprovoked wars, and to employ

assassination and torture in pursuit of Washington’s

global aims.

 

The speech was peppered with phrases such as “nothing

will hold us back,” “we’re not turning back,” and “I

will never relent.” The overall impression was that of

an administration determined to keep hold of the reins

of power, no matter what.

 

Bush’s principal means of persuasion, exhibited

throughout the four-day convention, is terrorizing the

American people by invoking a supposedly ubiquitous

terrorist threat that only he is prepared to counter.

The “lesson of September 11,” according to the US

president, is that US military action is justified

anywhere and any time Washington claims to perceive a

potential threat. “We are staying on the offensive,

striking terrorists abroad so we don’t have to face

them here at home,” Bush declared.

 

In a crude political sleight of hand, he justified the

invasion and occupation of Iraq in the name of the

so-called war on terror, despite the near-universal

acknowledgment that no ties existed between Saddam

Hussein and Al Qaeda. He went on to refer to all those

resisting US occupation and the US-controlled puppet

regimes in both Iraq and Afghanistan as “terrorists.”

 

Addressing himself to US troops in both countries,

Bush declared, “Because of your service and sacrifice,

we are defeating the terrorists where they live and

plan, and you’re making America safer.” That these

“terrorists” are fighting in their own countries and

seeking to expel a foreign occupation army, and are

growing rapidly in numbers and popular support, are

details that escaped Bush.

 

He cast the eruption of US militarism around the globe

in messianic terms. “America is called to lead the

cause of freedom in a new century,” Bush declared,

adding, “The freedom of many and the future security

of our nation now depends on us.”

 

That this divinely inspired crusade has led to the

deployment of hundreds of thousands of US troops

astride the world’s largest oil reserves, shipping

routes and pipelines was dismissed by the US

president. “We have fought the terrorist across the

earth, not for pride, not for power, but because the

lives of our citizens are at stake.”

 

Bush spent more time than any other principal speaker

at the convention on his administration’s domestic

agenda. Here, looting of the public treasury combines

with robbing working people in order to further enrich

the top 1 percent who form Bush’s most important

political base.

 

“America must be the best place in the world to do

business,” said Bush. In other words, all barriers to

the American financial oligarchy expanding their

immense personal fortunes must be eliminated. All

regulations covering employment, wages and safety must

be scrapped, and all fetters on the extraction of

profit from labor done away with.

 

One of the most tumultuous rounds of cheering and

applause was reserved by the delegates for a seemingly

innocuous line about tax laws. Bemoaning the amount of

time it takes for people to fill out tax forms, Bush

declared, “The American people deserve, and our

economic future demands, a simpler, fairer, pro-growth

system. In a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort

to reform and simplify the federal tax code.”

 

His audience knew very well what the Bush meant. The

administration seeks to vastly expand upon the massive

tax cuts it has already implemented—cuts that are

estimated to cost as much as $300 billion in

government revenues in 2004 alone. It wants to turn

the clock back more than a century, eliminating the

graduated income tax, doing away with estate and

capital gains taxes as well as taxes on savings—in

short, to allow the wealthiest to pay no taxes

whatsoever.

 

This policy is designed not only to line the pockets

of the country’s multimillionaires and billionaires,

but also to create a desperate fiscal crisis that will

force the outright destruction of what little remains

of government-funded social services and benefits in

the US. Reduced tax revenues—paid entirely by working

people—would be diverted to the military and the

domestic police apparatus.

 

Once again Bush trotted out the proposal to privatize

the Social Security system and subordinate its

hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement funds to

the profit interests of Wall Street. Bush portrayed

the private retirement plan as part of an “ownership”

society, which is essentially another way of saying

that the wealth and profits of the super-rich will

remain untouchable, while for the rest it will be

every man for himself.

 

The character assassination that the Republican

convention unleashed against its Democratic Party

rivals has prompted Democratic presidential candidate

John Kerry to make a slight change in course. For the

last six months, Kerry has avoided harsh criticisms of

the administration in an effort to convince the ruling

establishment that he can be trusted to continue the

war in Iraq and eschew any significant social reforms.

Now he and the Democrats find themselves compelled to

respond to the mudslinging of Bush and Cheney.

 

But the nature of their response only underscores the

reactionary character of the Democratic campaign.

Speaking at a midnight rally in Ohio following Bush’s

convention address, Kerry directed his principal fire

not at the right-wing, anti-working class policies of

the Republicans, but at their charge that he is not

fit to be “commander-in-chief” and lead the global

“war on terrorism.”

 

Yet again he invoked his four-month tour of military

duty in Vietnam, proclaiming that he had proven his

willingness to “defend my country”—as opposed to Bush

and Cheney, who avoided the war. This, even though at

the time he acknowledged that the war was not a

defense of America, but rather an act of imperialist

aggression.

 

Kerry broke his near silence about the

administration’s policy in Iraq, denouncing the Bush

White House for “misleading” the United States into

war. The word was chosen with extreme care, carrying

with it the implicit suggestion that had Kerry been

president, he would have led the country into war

properly. He reiterated his position that the

occupation of Iraq will continue, while claiming that

he would be able to drum up financial contributions

and foreign troops to sustain the imperialist

enterprise.

 

Commenting on the speeches at the convention, Kerry

added, “What we’ve learned now is that the president

and the Republican Party will say anything and do

anything in order to try to get re-elected.”

 

This is indeed the case, but there is no indication

that the Democratic Party is prepared to act with

anything approaching the determination shown by the

Republicans to prevent that from happening. Rather,

its campaign serves only to conceal the real dangers

confronting American working people.

 

Despite the fact that the entire Bush reelection

campaign is based on exploiting the deaths of 3,000

victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks—which

occurred when Bush himself was commander-in-chief and

thus responsible for the security breaches which made

the attacks possible—the Democrats have not made a

significant issue of the apparent stand-down of US

security in the months leading up to the terrorist

attack.

 

The only politically serious explanation of the

circumstances of 9/11 is that the Bush administration

was aware of an impending attack and allowed it to

take place, in order to provide the necessary pretext

to carry out plans for invasion of the Middle East and

Central Asia which were well under way before the four

airliners were hijacked. But the Democratic Party,

like the Republicans, is a political instrument of big

business. Its first loyalty is to the state apparatus

which defends ruling elite, and it therefore must

remain silent on this most critical issue.

 

See Also:

Keynote speech at Republican convention: a fascistic

rant from a pro-Bush Democrat

[3 September 2004]

Republican convention opens: panic-mongering in the

service of war and reaction

[1 September 2004]