Last
summer I spoke at a conference of law enforcement officials from both sides of the
Texas-Mexico border. One of the other speakers was a senior representative of
Customs and Border Protection, the DHS agency that houses the U.S. Border
Patrol. He repeated a statement that the Secretary of Homeland Security began
using more than two years ago, and has used as a consistent theme in her most
recent appearances: “Our southern border is the safest it has ever been.”
A wave of laughter rippled across
the room. A senior official from the US government was repeating as the
government’s official position, a statement that experts in the subject knew to
be untrue. Ironic laughter was the only
response anyone could think of.
That
ironic distance between ground truth and fiction masquerading as policy has
been on full display recently, and especially during the budget debates. The
point of this article is not to support one side or the other in the budget
battles, or the battle over immigration, or the arguments over Benghazi, or the
mud-slinging match over the sequester. My point is that the broad political
response by the public to this habitual campaigning is a growing tendency not
to believe anybody. And that can be a national threat in a national emergency.
I
(part of the point of a blog is that you can use the first person) am not
suggesting that we have drifted away from some golden age of the past where
citizens and their representatives spoke in measured tones of their honorable
opponents. Republicanism (or democracy
if you prefer) has always been a rough and tumble sport where opponents play fast
and loose with the facts. But from a strategic perspective, it seems to me that
the United States has arrived at a particularly dangerous moment when a large
part of the populace simply does not believe the US government and its agents
-- to include the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security,
the Department of Justice, and the Department of State – on a day-to-day basis.
The implications for our ability to mount a unified national response to a
crisis are not good.
The
reasons we have arrived at this nexus of distrust are many – some
technological, some ideological, some just a matter of how bureaucracies work.
I will cite but a few.
Changing
technology allows attackers to quickly turn charges into broadly accepted “truths”
that stick, destroying the opposition by destroying their reputation. The Romney
primary campaign is a good example. Nixon suffered a major political defeat and
came back to be President. So did Reagan. So did Bush (41). And Romney was
defeated in a presidential primary, only to come back and win in the next
cycle. But Romney’s own negative
campaign against Republican primary opponents one after another didn’t just
defeat them. It delegitimized them – probably knocking them out of future
contention. Then Obama did the same to him. The result on both sides was a
sense that the opponent was not just wrong on policy issues, but morally
defective and not to be trusted.
An
associated catalyst is the growing polarization of America into two camps, so
opposed in their beliefs that only one can survive. It is now clear that
Progressives have no intention of reducing the National Deficit or Debt, and
instead plan to tax or otherwise confiscate wealth for social redistribution,
under the theory that whoever has wealth has it unfairly. Conservatives for
their part increasingly see Progressives as a band of lawless looters, using
bureaucracy and executive orders in a politically and economically oppressive
way, and relying on “rule of law” only when it is to their advantage. The
result is a climate of fundamental distrust on every issue.
A
third factor in national alienation from our political leaders is the growing
conviction that officials everywhere are “cooking the books” to advance their
policy prescriptions. Arguing with the opponent’s statistics is nothing new,
nor is releasing questionable numbers that support your side of an
argument. Candidate Kennedy argued that
the Republicans had allowed a “missile gap” to develop, even though he knew that
was not the case. But this did not prevent the two parties from working
together during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or supporting the national interest
in other crises that followed. Dishonesty about Vietnam and Cambodia and Iran
ended the presidencies of Johnson, and Nixon and (nearly) Reagan. But none of
that ended the American government or American system.
But
I have a sense (as do others) that something is different today. Dishonesty (or poor judgment - take your
pick) over the presence of WMD in Iraq left a significant part of the citizenry
distrustful of the entire war with terrorists.
The terrorists attacked us by the way, which all the world could see,
but our government’s behavior has left some people trusting the enemy’s
communiques more than our own.
On
the other hand, warrantless wire-tapping, born in a Republican administration,
has now become proof to some of the nefarious intent of a Democratic
administration – leaving people on both sides distrustful. By the way, in a
great example of bipartisan distrust, Tea Party members have been most vocal
about their concern over government surveillance, but it was the ACLU which
brought suit to end the wire-tapping program. And it was the conservative side
of the Supreme Court which affirmed the Obama administration’s program of
massive monitoring and copying of conversations, while the liberal minority
strongly dissented.
How
many examples of RECENT government half-truths or lack of transparency can you
think of in 60 seconds? Here is my list.
·
The
Sequester. Benghazi. The Fed. The Fiscal
Cliff. 1.8 Billion bullets purchased by
DHS. Counterinsurgency success in Afghanistan. Drones. Domestic Drones. The
security of the US border. The claim that we can solve the debt problem “if the
rich will pay just a little more.” The claim that we can solve the debt problem
“if we just cut corporate taxes and reduce regulations.” The idea that we can
destroy private health care with a huge government program “but you can keep
your own doctor and program if you want.” The protection of Green Jobs. The
protection of Defense Contractors. Printing our way to economic stability. The
claim from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that we can put women in
combat jobs without reducing physical standards. The structuring of budgetary
cuts to inflict the maximum possible pain on the American people so they will
call their congressman and demand a change. The bank bail outs. TSA scanners.
Government conferences. Education standards. Cyber security. Katrina response.
Sandy response. The Drug War. FEMA camps. Money to Brazil to drill for oil. Tanks
to the Muslim Brotherhood. The failure to pass a federal budget – for 4 years.
The GSA. The Secret Service.
That only took 60 seconds. I could go on and on. So could you.
At
this point, if you are trying to figure out whether I am criticizing Democrats
or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, you have missed the point. Here it is: Our political differences and the
dishonest way they have played out leaves a significant part of the US
population skeptical about anything anybody on any side of government says.
People are worried that any crisis could be used to further some unrelated
agenda – gun control, internet censorship, property confiscation, raising
taxes, cutting taxes, illegal immigration, environmental restrictions, welfare
expansion – there seems no end to way the people paid to look out for us are
ready to manipulate us at the drop of a hat.
And that could be very dangerous in a national emergency in the future.
We
have just passed the 20th anniversary of the first terrorist attack
on the World Trade Center. After his conviction, the mastermind of the attack
flew over the site on his way to jail. Gesturing to the WTC, an FBI agent said:
“It’s still standing.” “We’re not done,”
the terrorist replied.
They
will be back. And when a bad thing happens we need to be worrying about our
enemies and not our government. A bit more honesty a bit less demonization of
political opponents would help us prepare for that moment. As would an active
and professional media which would hold people accountable for what they say.
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