The New American Order
1% Elections, The Privatization of the State, a Fourth Branch of Government, and the Demobilization of "We the People"
By Tom Engelhardt
Have you ever undertaken some task you felt less than qualified for,
but knew that someone needed to do? Consider this piece my version of
that, and let me put what I do understand about it in a nutshell: based
on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth
of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as
yet, we have no name.
And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however
inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it
in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.
Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which
at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging:
political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington
through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the
de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the
empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth
branch of government; and the demobilization of "we the people."
Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part,
on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic
class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly,
something out of the ordinary is underway, and yet its birth pangs,
while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an
exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175970/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_is_a_new_political_system_emerging_in_this_country/#more
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