U.S. military adventures have historically combined imperial ambition\u2013the acquisition of territory and colonies, limiting the reach of competing empires and \u2018acquiring\u2019 economic resources\u2013\u2018natural\u2019 resources, existing economic infrastructure and labor, under advantageous terms. The U.S. orchestrated coup in Honduras was for United Fruit, in Chile for ITT, Kennecott and Anaconda Copper and the CIA\u2019s \u2018war of attrition\u2019 against Nicaragua in the 1980s to undo the nationalization of Coca Cola facilities. The botched war on and occupation of Iraq was a continuation of imperial designs on Middle Eastern oil by the U.S. and Britain dating from the early twentieth century. All of these and many, many more conflated the economic interests of particular U.S. \u2018based\u2019 corporations with the \u2018national interest.\u2019<\/p>\n
Selling wars of economic conquest as \u2018democracy\u2019 and \/ or \u2018freedom\u2019 was an open joke amongst Washington elites for the bulk of recent decades. Presidents hired advertising agencies to devise \u2018marketing\u2019 schemes to sell their wars. The visible idiocy of these schemes fed on the psychological trauma fear-mongering and regular mass slaughters in the \u2018national interest\u2019 caused the purposely-misinformed populace. The Cold War was perpetuated by successive administrations because the contrived bogeyman of \u2018communism\u2019 had been so effectively sold in support of Western economic predation. By putting a \u2018political\u2019 patina on imperial wars the hoax \/ fallacy of political morality became a fundamental part of the American story. And the irony of cynical demagogues selling botched foreign policy as \u2018they hate us for our freedoms\u2019 meets its match in dim corporate-state fascists selling totalitarian surveillance to \u2018protect\u2019 us from the consequences of botched foreign policy.<\/p>\n
It is in this historical context recent disclosures of \u2018classified\u2019 government documents led to charges of treason against those making them\u2013Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and others, by \u2018official\u2019 Washington. Treason is yet another well-sold term popularly meaning the knowing betrayal of \u2018the nation\u2019 as legal construct, historical artifact and broad set of social relations. Those making the charge, President Obama and prominent Senators and Representatives, proclaim themselves empowered to make it as Marketers-in-Chief of imperial power. Deference to unity in \u2018nation\u2019 through the charge of treason is a sleight-of-hand to peel-off those the current chair-occupiers of empire wish to exile.<\/p>\n
It is no accident the first line of attack against Mr. Snowden was to impugn his credibility by arguing he was a \u2018high school dropout\u2019 and a \u2018lowly analyst.\u2019 In the first place, this is irrelevant to the disclosures\u2013they in no way depended on Mr. Snowden\u2019s \u2018credentials\u2019 because if they did, and the official line was he lacked the credentials to be a credible \u2018leaker,\u2019 then he also lacked the credentials to be treasonous. (If what was leaked wasn\u2019t credible then charges of treason are moot). The received wisdom is this attack was to diminish Mr. Snowden\u2019s standing. But the more likely explanation was to separate the right to \u2018treason\u2019 into classes of those with and without the right. President Obama and Senator Diane Feinstein claim the right to create law at their whim, break existing laws at their whim and commit \u2018treason\u2019 at their whim and they don\u2019t want \u2018just anyone\u2019 impinging on their territory.<\/p>\n
The American public largely supports this view, but on what basis? Part is no doubt the inculcated premise America is classless, and therefore political-economic power accrues to those who \u2018deserve\u2019 it. But as the political and economic catastrophes of recent years amply illustrate\u2013the war on and occupation of Iraq and the financial \u2018crisis\u2019 requiring trillions in public largesse to (faux) rectify, fools, liars and thieves are just as likely to inhabit the rarefied environs of power as those who \u2018merit\u2019 it. (That this leadership is largely inherited suggests societies \u2018winners\u2019 come from a decidedly pedestrian gene pool). And evolving from modern history, the notion of common interests in governance was always a play to American gullibility\u2013Ms. Feinstein and Mr. Obama aren\u2019t arguing they better serve the public interest through acting against the Constitution, they argue they have the power to do so and others (Snowden, Manning) don\u2019t. Only the riff-raff need explain themselves goes the thinking.<\/p>\n
The evidence of class bases for laws, policing and incarceration resides in plain sight here in the U.S. In addition to the history of U.S. military power being used in corporate interests, bankers and their representatives wrote the banking laws that led to recent catastrophe and they are writing the laws to \u2018rectify\u2019 the laws they previously wrote. The official rationale is they know best how to operate \u2018their\u2019 businesses despite the fact they still exist on the public dole from their last catastrophe. Several decades ago the policing of business and the rich was abandoned under \u2018deregulation\u2019 while the policing of the poor and social \u2018out\u2019 groups was militarized and made increasingly intrusive. And representation in the jails and prisons is overwhelmingly of social \u2018out\u2019 groups and those who can\u2019t afford competent legal representation (a\/k\/a the poor). In claiming their right to decide their own laws and to stand outside of effective policing and incarceration, Barack Obama, Diane Feinstein et al are the political representatives of the ruling class.<\/p>\n
So again, it isn\u2019t \u2018treason\u2019 or \u2018crimes\u2019 Mr. Obama and Ms. Feinstein are reacting to\u2013it is the impudence of \u2018the help\u2019 exposing the workings of the political-economic elite to those who might (correctly) see themselves on the other side of them. Mr. Obama\u2019s and NSA chief Keith Alexander\u2019s attempts to link illegal NSA spying on Americans to \u2018thwarted\u2019 terrorist attacks had no content behind them. They do however have the history of cynical insiders using contrived \u2018others\u2019 to sell their personal and class agendas behind them. This makes the \u2018treason\u2019 charged by official Washington acts against the ruling class, not against \u2018the nation.\u2019 To be clear, official Washington sees acts by political and economic elites against the rest of the citizenry\u2013domestic spying, illegal murder of citizens and economic predation, being in the public interest and disclosure of those that might challenge ruling class power as against the \u2018public\u2019 interest.<\/p>\n
Likewise, there appears eternal mystery on the part of the compassionate right\u2013liberals and progressives, why the corporate media are tools of corporate leaders and their servants in government. It is no accident Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jeffrey Toobin and David Gregory use the royal \u2018we\u2019 to conflate their interests as rich, connected, white \u2018journalists\u2019 with those of Mr. Obama and Ms. Feinstein. The received wisdom is \u2018access\u2019 to elite sources is behind the \u2018affectation,\u2019 but it is no affectation. The strategy to \u2018universalize\u2019 narrow interests through the use of totalizing language (\u2018we\u2019) is class politics 101. These \u2018journalists\u2019 are responding to disclosure of class \u2018secrets\u2019 that threaten their privilege, not to acts against the public interest. (\u2018Access\u2019 is to report what elites say, not what they do (a\/k\/a journalism) and these brave folk have a greater chance of dying from choking on Jell-O than from terrorist attacks).<\/p>\n
Western economists and politicians have explained the past several decades in terms of economic policies as if these policies are disconnected from the architecture and actions of \u2018government.\u2019 The bank \u2018bailouts\u2019 are seen in isolation from the treatment bank \u2018customers\u2019 subsequently received through bank-friendly government policies. Much has been made of the vast quantities of public resources handed the banks without meaningful constraints while the astounding misery and economic harm fraudulent foreclosure \u2018prevention\u2019 programs (HAMP) caused \u2018ordinary\u2019 citizens are treated as accidents caused by poor management. And in fact, dim elites (Timothy Geithner) argued using bailout money to buy down the negative equity resulting from the housing crash risked \u2018moral hazard\u2019 while unconstrained handouts to bankers demonstrated to be corrupt and \/ or incompetent didn\u2019t. The class bases for these claims couldn\u2019t be more obvious.<\/p>\n
Likewise, positioning the rich as \u2018job creators\u2019 places them as necessary to the functioning of \u2018the economy\u2019 just as Mr. Obama and Ms. Feinstein place their \u2018right\u2019 to murder citizens and illegally spy on us as in the public interest. In recent decades the rich\u2013inherited wealth, corporate executives and financiers, have accrued great fortunes through \u2018rentier\u2019 income dependent on economically inefficient (in capitalist economics) market power. Market power is contrary to economic democracy the same way totalitarian government is to political democracy. However, as regressive tax cuts, bank bailouts and government policies to diminish the power of labor demonstrate, it is the rich who are driving government policy. This can be seen through the privatization of state functions\u2013a transfer from public to private coffers, and through the merging of state and private law making (ALEC), policing and imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Through his \u2018Insider Threat\u2019 program to force government workers to turn one another in for the \u2018treason\u2019 of unofficial disclosures President Barack Obama is proving himself the most cynical tool of corporate-state interests in recent history. The premise again is it is one\u2019s position in the corporate-state bureaucracy that determines whether actions are in the public interest, not the actions themselves. The practical effect is to shove all power up the \u2018chain of command\u2019 because it is only the ruling class that has state sanction to \u2018act in the public interest,\u2019 meaning their own. Put another way, the policy is to redefine the public interest as what the ruling class says it is regardless of political-economic effect. L\u2019etat, c\u2019est moi is historically the realm of absolute monarchs and tyrants. I put this to his dwindling supporters where this leaves Mr. Obama (and the rest of imperial Washington).<\/p>\n
But again, the government is but a tool of the rich. The anti-statists on the right have the relation of tyranny backwards\u2013capitalism isn\u2019t freedom from the state, it is the crafting of the state to work in ruling class interests. Barack Obama and Diane Feinstein aren\u2019t calling Mitt Romney and Apple Computer treasonous because they avoid paying the taxes on which the government depends. They, like the angry rubes on the corporate-libertarian right, laud inherited wealth, corporate executives and financiers, and all of their actions are toward consolidating their wealth and power while diminishing that of the rest of us. Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning aren\u2019t traitors; they are good citizens who assumed the social responsibility to act in the public interest against ruling class interests. The political framing of their actions as \u2018treason\u2019 is an effort at willful misdirection.<\/p>\n
What the liberals and progressives still unsure of what to make of the disclosures of \u2018kill lists\u2019 and NSA spying on American citizens don\u2019t appear to understand is if you aren\u2019t clearly on the inside you\u2019re on the outside\u2014 the declared enemies of Mr. Obama and Ms. Feinstein, through these programs. Cornel West frames it well as \u2018we are all suspects now.\u2019 You can blithely assume you have nothing to hide but that misses the purpose of the murder and spy programs\u2013they are to create terror (and corporate profits), not to destroy it. If you don\u2019t understand how pervasive, intrusive and insidious these programs are, yet still support \u2018official\u2019 Washington, you deserve what you get. The rest of us would benefit from joining with our comrades around the globe on the side of imperial power Washington and Wall Street has placed us on.<\/p>\n