Sunday, April 22, 2007
Karl Rove is The Borg Queen?
Gary Wolf, writing in the LA Times, has an op-ed suggesting that instead of the traditional government administration structure, the Bushoviks have developed a 'hive mind' system to decision and execution. He explains how the received wisdom of the crowd can explain the curious answers Gonzo gave in his boffo Senate appearance this week.
Almost exactly three years ago, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice appeared before Congress to talk about why she hadn't felt it necessary to take any special action after being warned that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States. "If there was any reason to believe that I needed to do something," Rice said at the time, "I would have been expected to be asked to do it." At the time, this sentence seemed a marvel of tortured syntax and evasive passivity. But with Gonzales' testimony in hand, we can now read it differently. What Rice was saying was not that she was too disengaged or too inexperienced to do her job. Instead, she may merely have been expressing her trust in the distributed system of knowledge that gives the Bush administration its remarkable confidence.Hive mind or Borg, it works if you don't want to believe that Gonzo was lying or too stupid to live on his own. But, correct me if I am off base on this, wouldn't that make Colin Powell 7 of 9?
The hive mind has a curious blindness, however. It has reasons for doing things, but those reasons are typically inaccessible to its members. Pressed hard, Gonzales simply looked at the committee and admitted that he was baffled as to why he did what he did. Repeatedly, he was asked what criteria were used to select individuals for firing. "I would like to know," he said. "I would like to ask that question."
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It may well be that this is really how the Justice department is being run under this bunch of thieves. If so, it's an important discovery. But let's not kid ourselves. Such a setup is designed only to make it easy to deny responsibility and difficult to trace the chain of decisionmaking. It also means that the AG office is being run straight out of the WHite House -- which fits with the "unitary executive" theory. So, as Sen. Schumer said, there's only one possible conclusion, and that is that all firing decisions are made in the White House. Bush bears the official responsibility ("at the pleasure of the president") -- though the actual decisions were probably made by Rove. They are looking at Congress and saying "Ha, ha, come and get us, coppers."
It will be interesting to see how Congress responds. I don't know how this country can continue to function under these conditions.
Basically, the government is being run by a small bunch of criminals, most of them stupid, as a major franchise for an international criminal syndicate. These guys care about the Constitution about as much as they care about last week's racing form.
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm
It will be interesting to see how Congress responds. I don't know how this country can continue to function under these conditions.
Basically, the government is being run by a small bunch of criminals, most of them stupid, as a major franchise for an international criminal syndicate. These guys care about the Constitution about as much as they care about last week's racing form.
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm
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