An editorial in the New York Times yesterday pointed out, for those of

us who didn't realize it, that the Bush administration had inserted two

provisions into last October's defense budget bill that would make it

easier to declare martial law in the US. Senators Leahy and Bond have

introduced a bill to repeal these changes, and it is important that

voters keep track of this bill and hold their Congresspeople to account

on it. Along with several other measures the Bush adminstration has

proposed, the introduction of these changes amounts, not to an attack

on the Congress and the balance of power, but to a particular and

concerted attack on the citizens of the nation. Bush is laying the

legal groundwork to repeal even the appearance of democracy. Any

senator who does not vote in favor of the Leahy/Bond repeal of these

provisions should promptly be recalled by his or her constituents.



That said, and without underestimating the seriousness of these

provisions, I have to point out that with this as with other legal

maneuvers like the Military Commissions Act, I have to wonder who Bush,

Cheney, Rove, etc. think they are governing. Were they planning to

spring these things on us? One day, we were supposed to wake up, and

martial law would be declared, and we were supposed to actually pay

attention to it? Where are they keeping the troops who were going to

patrol our neighborhoods? Who was it who was going to disarm the

population? Who was their base going to be, when they sought public

support for martial law? Who was going to round us up and where were

they going to put us?

It is in these sorts of things that the byzantine thinking and strange

psychological make-up of the Bushies comes out. Let's say that Bush

imagines (with Gonzalez and Cheney) the enhanced joys of bringing the

war home. No longer is his command "over there"--it is now "over here".

He can go out onto the White House lawn and issue edicts, and then

perhaps he can be driven around Washington, or over into Virginia, and

watch civilians obey his orders in a way that the Iraqis seem unwilling

to do. I am assuming that the purpose of such an exercise would be to

renew and intensify the now-diminishing frisson Bush gets from feeling

himself the boss of all he surveys. But we all know it would not work.

Very few people believe Bush or take his needs and desires seriously

any more. Bush, or his keepers, know this, too, or they would not have

introduced these provisions secretly. There was a time, when the nation

was in a panic, when he could purloin things openly, and no one dared

defy him. That was the appropriate occasion for these martial law

changes. Now, or even last fall, was not that time. The Republicans

must have suspected that to make such provisions known would have meant

jeopardizing an iffy mid-term election even more than it already was,

so they hid them. But the fact that they hid them makes them a hundred

times more suspect--are the Bushies planning a coup after all?



And if they are planning a coup, what's the goal? Who is going to fall

in line? Arnold Schwarzenegger, my very own governor? Chet Culver?

Kathleen Sebelius? Eliot Spitzer? Since the US is a corporatocracy,

would we then all be forced to work for $2.00 per hour? Give up all

workplace benefits? Attend the religious services of our choice on

Sunday? Devote even more of our tax dollars to the war machine and the

oil machine? Haven't they taken everything already? Try as I might, I

cannot imagine martial law in the US, except as something the

population would agree to under threat from...from whom? Correct me if

I am wrong (I know you will), but the last time martial law was

declared was during the Civil War, and Americans, though the threats to

the Union were profound and omnipresent, didn't like it then. I can't

even imagine what would happen now.



Our armed forces can't subdue Iraq. I can't imagine that Bush thinks

they could subdue New England or the West Coast, much less the whole

US. To imagine himself commanding such a thing seems like magical

thinking at its most obvious. So, what would you did if Bush declared

martial law, laugh?