The Duopoly and the Hegelian Mambo

For those in need of memory refreshment, the Hegelian Mambo works this way:

1. Move further in a leftward direction.

2. Make the few unprincipled exceptions you are going to make, even while still moving in a more leftward direction on other issues.

3. Display your unprincipled exceptions for all to see, fooling conservatives to accept you as a conservative yourself, especially those conservative whose positions are a matter of tradition, piety and religious faith, but who themselves do not have a strong intellectual defense against leftism.

4. Eventually your positions are accepted as the new “conservatism” by most people.

5. Hold to these positions for a time, either because you are not yet bothered by some of your illiberal positions or because you need to shore up support.

6. Start the dance all over again.

Bush/Cheney famously made their contribution to the Dance by accruing to the Executive the power to commit crimes against humanity in the name of national security. Obama, temporarily repealing torture (while retaining the power to inflict it again should the Executive really want to) has built on this legacy with more expansions of Executive power, granting himself the right to murder anybody he chooses (including citizens) without arrest, trial, evidence or conviction. Just his say so is enough. And, in addition, the duopoly isolates itself from having to actually do anything about previous crimes.

“You’ve got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]. And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action,” – former CIA director Michael Hayden, celebrating Obama’s embrace of the unchecked executive power he once promised to restrain. He does not mention a vital difference: Obama’s ending of the active torture regime of his predecessor.

Ben Wizner puts it more succinctly:

“It can fairly be said that the Bush administration made torture the law of the land and the Obama administration is making impunity for torture the law of the land.”

At the end of the day, what you’ve got is more concentration of tyrannical power in the hands of the Executive (something Obama’s more zealous supporters are only now figuring out after major attempts at denial). The Executive may choose, for strategic reasons, not to exercise absolute despotic power of life and death over his subjects. But the power to do so is very clearly claimed by and him (and tacitly granted by us, on the wager that he will never use it, except against Those People Over There). As history very clearly shows, that’s a totally smart bet. Since when has a tired democracy or republic ever ended in despotism while its citizens wasted their time on bread and circuses?