Now if, and I’m just supposing here, if certain elected government personalities are desperate enough to conspire with the terrorism threat for domestic political reasons what are the potential outcomes?
Will a gullible public, already wallowing in a tub of fears, accept that the status quo can deliver them from threat?
Is it possible that they might see, regardless of the truth of the threats, that an opposition (or even just a different mix) will offer better solutions?
The great part about a fear strategy is that it overrides the need for logical thinking, but I guess that doesn’t mean we all need to abandon logic.
The question needs to be asked in the light of increasing manipulation of the terror threat by incumbent governments. Governments, which logic tells us, share a burden of responsibility for the steady elevation of terrorism and associated disorder.
There are now a predictable, monthly, string of terrorist related incidents. Of late these have consisted of pre-emptive strikes against people alleged to be planning attacks. No doubt they are out there, and under intense surveillance, but the timing of the arrests or round-ups is the key factor.
On the latest episode a London police official said: “Last night the investigation reached a critical point when the decision was taken to take urgent action to disrupt what we believed was being planned.”
But he added that the treat was no imminent, and that the raids were triggered by intelligence received from abroad.
The reports themselves are laced with words like ‘plot’ and bore all the hallmarks, reflecting in part the necessary secrecy of security investigations, but leaving far too much to the imagination. My imagination leans to the skeptical, but I know that the majority will take reports at face value. It is what they do with them then that is the critical factor.
The laconic frog over at Blognonymous (Kvatch) clearly sees a domestic politics plot, and one that will possibly entrench the Republicans in November. The Frog and the President are both focused on this one issue swinging voters. But there are other issues, some like personally economics, even more frightening and pressing.
Staying in the US for now (Blair has his own fight for survival) there are clear signs that voters are not seeing the November election as a single issue. Take the steady fall of incumbents for example. Some pundits are saying that it would be a mistake to credit Joe Lieberman’s loss to an anti-war sentiment. They argue that the issue is more fundamental, that Lieberman, lost in the heady world of Washington politics lost touch with his electorate.
If that argument can be sustained then the Bush team, in their haste to capitalize on the Democrats split and court Lieberman, have done themselves untold harm. Let’s face it, with the possible exception of the William Jefferson affair, the Democrats have appeared to be willing to reorder their house, to respond to their electoral support base.
The Republican’s, on the other hand, continue to show stoic refusal to react to the concerns of the broad electorate on virtually every issue confronting it.
Creating war tensions to gain domestic electoral advantage is an old tried and true strategy, the question will be; how does it stand up against a complex of other issues concerning voters. How does it stand up against an opposition who are not doing anything fundamentally wrong and who don’t offer the threat of radical change?
My gut feeling says that the fear tactics of the incumbents is rendered virtually neutral in the broader context, both in the US and Britain. Terrorisms is here to stay, at least for some time to come, and it will be managed by essentially the same agencies in the same way.
Economic imperatives, not those disclosed in official figures, but the real daily effect on people’s lives will be the decider.
But then, you still need to ask; how desperate are the incumbents to cover up their dirty secrets? How far will they go? If, in the US, the Democrats were to win a majority, would they be content to keep the inevitable witch hunt to domestic and corruption issues or would they launch further into probing the possibility of terrorism manipulation?
Left to the voters the choice would, again my gut feeling, be for change. At the same time I suspect few voters would relish to prospect of seeing their institutions of government dragged through the mud of political intrigue. A bit of good old greed is one thing but having their own gullibility paraded before the world would not be acceptable.
3 comments:
cartledge, I wish I were as confident as you that voters will choose change over the status quo, but I suspect behind the demagoguing of the London terror arrests by Bush, Cheney, Snow, Mehlman and Lieberman are some very solid internal poll numbers showing that IF the GOP can bring the mindset of the country back to November 2002 when people were scared shitless about terrorism and thought the majority party was doing a fine job of combating it, the GOP will maintain power this November.
IF Democrats can combat that notion by pointing out 5 years after 9/11 so much of our infrastructure is still vulnerable to terrorism, so much money that could have been used to make the nation safer at home was wasted on the Iraq war, etc., then perhaps Dems can make inroads into the GOP majority or take back a chamber in November. But this is where the battle is going to fought for these November midterms. Rove told us as much when he made his victory lap speech after not being indicted in the CIA leak case. RNC chair and confirmed bachelor Ken Mehlman also tells us as much. Terrorism is the ONLY card the GOP has to play this fall and it is significantly weaker than it has been in the past. But I suspect they have a three-pronged strategy to strengthen it. The ifrst was this terror plot disruption in London. Next will be weeks of campaign ads and speeches decrying Democratic weakness in the war on terror and tying the Iraq war to the larger war on terror. The final prong will be the October Suprise. It may be Osama, it may be Zawarhi, it may be another major terror plot broken up, only this time by the Bush administration here in the U.S. Either way, they will go into the last two weeks of the election season reiterating that the war on terror is working and a vote for a Democrat will make the country weaker and more vulnerable to terrorism.
I bet the polling shows this strategy to be pretty adept. We'll see. Iraq gets worse every week, so the GOP still has to contend with that. The economy is only going to worsen too before the election, not a good sign for them. And gas prices are going to continue to rise in the short term at least (and probably interest rates too.) The GOP are definitely in a precarious position, but they've got their terrorism trump card and they are going to play it.
I know I'm putting my arse on the line, but the stupidity of voters cuts both ways.
The Bush gang will use every trick, but they still don't own the voters mind.
Polling has its dangers too, for examole people won't admit they are jaded on the terrorist arguement, that would be unpatriotic or whatever.
Anyway, they aren't always certain enough to speak their thoughts to polsters.
I'll stick with the gut for now, might modify later :)
I hope your right, cartledge. I guess I have just gotten so cynical and pessmistic these last six years.
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