Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Meet Mike Rogers, al-Qaeda


Steven Johnston
Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Service, University of Utah

Edmund Burke wrote: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Seriously, what did Burke know about evil? He may have lived through the French Revolution, but given the opportunities it created for his “romanticized” fantasy life he was also one of its jubilant participants. More importantly, while he may have known republican fanatics when he saw them, he also had the good fortune to deal with literate fanatics—unlike today’s Republicans. Robespierre may have a lot of blood on his hands, but at least he could read Rousseau—and in the original French! But I digress.

As is now well known, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, aided and abetted by Saddam Hussein, launched murderous attacks against the United States in late summer 2001. While bin Laden knew he could not defeat the United States militarily, he did believe he could provoke America into self-destructive overreaction, as if this country were governed by warmongering hotheads. Over a decade and two wars later, however, he appears to have been vindicated—his rather unmanly assassination in the middle of the night while at home in his jihadist pajamas notwithstanding. The country has spent trillions on wars it cannot win (even rhetorically) and has done irreparable damage to the basic principles of liberty to be found it its governing political document. Though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are winding down (regarding American involvement anyway), the assaults on the Constitution continue. Their effectiveness has been remarkable, suspiciously so in fact, which means that we should be suspicious. Suspicion, of course, constitutes grounds for suspicion. There is no such thing as an accident.

This being so I must bring to public attention the presence among us of one of the very enemy we have spent so much life and treasure fighting. I proceed here with deep regret and sadness, and, I might add, despite the obvious dangers this truth-telling will pose for me, my wife, and especially our children and family dog, Rambo, who in particular has been feeling the stress but remains steadfast in his loyalty and support in these trying times. As a great patriot once said, “we’re all in it together.”





Representative Mike Rogers, Republican from Michigan, 8th Congressional District, Chair of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, belongs to al-Qaeda. He is on a list of American members of al-Qaeda that is currently in my possession, disclosure of the location of which would mean its disclosure, which cannot be risked, of course.



Representative Rogers may not have declared public war against the United States as any real, self-respecting terrorist would do, but he has achieved notoriety of late for his numerous assaults on the Constitution of the United States and its citizens. Among other things, Jihadi Mike (it’s his official terrorist nickname, bestowed at a secret al-Qaeda ceremony celebrating jihadist of the month) has recommended the assassination of Edward Snowden, the democratic citizen who exposed unprecedented NSA wrongdoing at great personal cost and sacrifice. What’s more, without any evidence and in an effort to discredit Snowden’s democratic activism, Rogers has suggested that Snowden must have been assisted by and thus working for Russian intelligence: “I believe there's [sic] questions to be answered there,” Rogers said. “I don't think it was a gee-whiz luck event that he ended up in Moscow under the handling of the [Russian intelligence service] FSB”. This is the kind of slander that any democratic citizen who challenges or opposes his or her government’s prosecution of the war on terror can expect. Rogers himself, meanwhile, seems unconcerned by the NSA’s efforts to spy on everyone, anywhere in the world on behalf of American national security (both political and corporate): “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated”.



Rogers has also effectively called for the arrest and trial and Glenn Greenwald, an American citizen, political-legal analyst, and civic-minded journalist who routinely brings governmental and corporate criminality to public attention, for selling classified stolen government material: “And if I’m hocking stolen classified material that I’m not legally in possession of for personal gain and profit, is that not a crime?” As Rogers knows, since he was in the Army, even if only to infiltrate it, First Amendment protections enable the media to play a structural role in the American system of checks and balances. Rogers would destroy this check on state power by criminalizing the very possibility of investigative journalism. He does his insidious work out in the open before a disbelieving world, but he knows that in America, if you keep saying something long enough, people will probably believe it.

This is Mike Roger’s notable public record to date. What other purpose could he have in mind than our utter destruction? Mike Rogers belongs to al-Qaeda.



Who is this Mike Rogers? We are told that he graduated from Adrian College, which is located in Adrian, Michigan. Has anyone ever heard of Adrian, Michigan, let alone Adrian College? I didn’t think so. Does the college even exist? Sure, it has a website, but everything has a website these days. He is listed among Adrian’s notable alumni (all six of them!), but isn’t this just a little bit suspicious, no doubt planted there just in case someone decided to conduct a background check? After all, one of the other six Adrian notables is credited with “having completed a summer internship in Washington, D.C.” As impressive as this may sound, the list is not like any other I have seen.



Rogers is noted for having served in the United States Army, which would make him one of our most insidious government sleeper agents. Think about it: he supposedly served from 1985-1989, at which point the American military was taking a break from important global imperial activities and merely keeping limber by toying with the likes of Libya and Panama. What better time to be in the army and not have to actually endanger your life? Just a coincidence, you say? I think not. Is it just a coincidence that al-Qaeda was formed at roughly this time? I think not.  What’s more, Rogers’ own Congressional website says Mike “was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at the University of Michigan.” Does this mean he served in the military by never leaving a college campus? Who does this (aside from Republicans who love to talk tough about war without any actual experience of it)? Someone who wants access to young impressionable minds, someone who must live to fight another day in another, more important forum, that’s who does it.



Mike Rogers also worked, though briefly, for the FBI, specializing in public corruption and organized crime. Isn’t this perfect professional experience for infiltrating the American system of government, starting at the state level and working up to Congress? No one seems to suspect him.



When I “met Mike” on the biography page of his Congressional website, there was no mention of his religious affiliations. This is the lifeblood of Republican politics in America. It is a litmus test every politician must meet. And yet Mike is somehow silent on the issue. What is he hiding? What won’t he tell us? Is he like Socrates? Does he not believe in the gods in which we believe? In what gods does he believe? It is said that Mike has a wife and two children, one son, one daughter. Isn’t this a little too predictable, a little too statistically perfect? Next thing you know we’ll hear about a house, two-car garage, and the red-white-and blue GM truck equipped with gun rack he drives. Besides, has anyone ever actually seen all four of them together, in one place, and asked for proof of their identification? They could be part of the front. Have they been investigated? How long are we going to let Mike Rogers play us?



Now that I’ve spoken up and done my Burkean duty, it’s time for Mike Rogers to speak up as well. Why do you hate us? Why do you want to destroy us? What did we ever do to you? Didn’t we give you everything? Don’t you owe us everything? Is this how you repay us? By belonging to al-Qaeda?



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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Political Drama Without Politics: The Nihlism of House of Cards

Simon Glezos
Lecturer at University of Victoria 

House of Cards was the first series released in online film distributer Netflix's plan to start producing their own content. In an attempt to create a splash, Netflix sought to provide it with strongest pedigree possible, bringing together Oscar winners David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club) and Kevin Spacey (American Beauty, LA Confidential) to work on that most prestigious of genres, the political drama. A dark and searing indictment of the hypocrisies of the Washington establishment. The show was a tremendously success, nominated for 9 Emmys, winning one for Best Direction (the first webseries to ever win a primetime Emmy), receiving strong critical praise, and becoming one of the most talked about political dramas since The West Wing. Its success, both critical and commercial, is important, as it says something about what kinds of stories about politics were are interested in hearing today, and what kinds of critiques we are comfortable with. With Season two about to premiere in less than a month, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the vision of politics that it advances.
The show centres on Spacey's character, Francis Underwood, the (Democratic) representative for South Carolina's fifth congressional district, and House Majority Whip. The first episode begins with Underwood anticipating being named the new secretary of state, his promised reward for having helped the President get re-elected. However, when he finds out that he is instead being passed over for another nominee, he embarks on a scorched earth campaign to get himself appointed to a position of greater authority. Over the course of the first season he manipulates, blackmails, slanders and (spoiler alert) eventually even kills to get himself chosen as the replacement nominee for the Vice-President (given that his goal is a position of power, one presumes that he doesn't intend to remain satisfied with just the vice-presidency. Stay tuned, gentle viewer).
 The show's pedigree, however, is more extensive than just the writer and director. The Netflix House of Cards is, in fact, a remake of a beloved British miniseries, also titled House of Cards, which premiered in 1990 (itself based on the 1989 novel of the same name by author Michael Dobbs). In the British version, Francis Underwood is Francis Urquhart, Majority Whip in the House of Commons. The overall plot trajectory is roughly the same; Urquhart is passed over for a cabinet position he expected in return for getting the Prime minister re-elected, and, in retaliation, he too embarks on a trail of betrayal, blackmail and murder that results with him becoming Prime Minister (The mini-series was popular enough to be followed up by two sequels). 
In many ways the two shows are quite similar; both are headed up by charismatic anti-heroes (with a penchant for breaking the fourth wall and instructing the viewer on the intricacies of politics and the deviousness of their plans). Both men are driven only by a desire for personal power, seeing all of their relationships - personal and professional - completely subordinated to naked self-interest. Both provide the visceral pleasures of watching a brilliant but amoral protagonist unwinding complex and devious schemes. 
And yet there are subtle, but key, differences between the two shows, differences which speak to the distinct ways in which political narratives are handled in Britain and the United States respectively. 
 In the British version, Francis Urquhart is entirely a man of his time. The series starts on the eve of the first post-Thatcher election, and Urquhart is the archetypal post-thatcherite Tory. Combining the worst aspects of Aristocratic self-regard and Bourgeois self-interest, Urquhart's political machinations spring directly from Tory ideology. When Urquhart subordinates all of his personal relationships to his own self-interest, he is simply expressing the radical individualism embraced by the politician who stated that "There's no such thing as society". When he seeks to acquire more power, he is simply expressing the divine right of the strong to exercise power over the weak. When, as majority whip, he gleefully speaks about the need to "put the stick about", he is embracing that neoliberal penality which knows that the only way to provide order is through force.
Urquhart springs full blown from an ideology, and embodies a particular belief system. He is a symbol of his time, and to the extent that we're disgusted by him, we recognize how disgusting the world around us has become, and to the extent that we're enthralled by him, we recognize the ways in which we are affectively vulnerable to fascistic calls for authority, order and hierarchy. (Urquhart's frequent claim to the viewer that he succeeds because we, the public, both need and want him, serves as a nice illustration of Deleuze and Guattari's puzzling question 'What makes desire desire it's own oppression?"). 
 Contrasted with this, the American version of House of Cards represents that strangest of North American genres - the apolitical political drama. Where the UK's Francis Urquhart is the living embodiment of a time and an ideology, the US' Francis Underwood is a political cipher. Underwood is a Democrat (undoubtedly a choice made to avoid having the show appear as the supposedly usual liberal-hollywood-elite bashing the conservatives), but also a Southerner (all the better to make his Machiavellian actions standout against his folksy, non-threatening manner). Already we see the problem. Where Urquhart was representative of a recognizable type - dripping with class privilege and oxbridge mannerisms - Underwood is representative of a vanishing breed in American politics - the Southern Democrat. Indeed, a quick look at the current rolls shows that just one of South Carolina's seven representatives is a Democrat. Now, it would, I suppose, be possible to tell the story of Underwood as a relic, an artifact left over from the days of the solid south, as still pop up now and again (although less and less, and Underwood is a little young to claim Robert Byrd status). The trouble with this, of course, is that we have absolutely no sense of Underwood's politics or beliefs. Over the course of the show, we see him campaign for an education bill which substantially undercuts teacher's unions, and then go on to push for an environmentally friendly watershed development act. This political ambivalence could also be seen as an indictment of the increasing centrism and banality of the Democratic party, but words like Democrat and Republican are almost never uttered, and questions of belief, ideology, or political world-view are almost completely absent from this story ostensibly about politics. 
All of this is to say that - unlike Francis Urquhart, the archetypal Tory - Francis Underwood is not, I would argue, intended to be the archetypal Democrat, or the archetypal southerner, or the archetypal 21st century congressional representative. Rather he is intended to be the archetypal Politician. Unconstrained by party or belief, Underwood represents the politician as completely corrupted by the process of politics, a radical evil marked only by the pure desire for power - power without reason, power without ideology, power without end (or rather, power only as an end in itself).
This image of the problem of politics being not a problem of any particular party or belief system (nor, it should be noted, to head off possible anarchist affinities, any particular institution) but rather simply of politics itself is a common staple of North American political commentary and satire. It is represented in frequent calls for bipartisanship, which is another way of saying the desire for an apolitical politics. We see it in the view that politics itself (and not just electoral politics) is inherently corrupt, and therefore inherently corrupting. We see it in attempts to view the problems of politics as coming equally from 'both sides' (As happened, for example, in news coverage of the government shutdown). Take, for example, the way in which The Daily Show, America's foremost source of political satire, impugns in the same breath both Tea Partiers who believe that president Obama is a Kenyan Muslim, and anti-war advocates who accuse Dick Cheney of being a war criminal. (Forget that one is an easily debunked conspiracy theory while the other is, at the very least, a clearly debatable claim under current international law. Both are engaging in 'politics', and therefore both are 'part of the problem'.)
In these contexts, satirical and dramatic accounts serve to reinforce our sense of superiority by pointing out how much better we are than politicians and politics (for differing versions of this process, see Warren Magnusson's The Search for Political Space, and Jonathan Coe's recent discussion in the London Review of Books on the effects of political satire). In this regards political dramas and satires in North America don't just tend to be apolitical (i.e. presenting themselves as coming from a place devoid of political ideology, and therefore attacking no particular ideology, but rather the practice of politics itself). They are also depoliticizing (by making us believe that the political sphere is fundamentally dysfunctional and corrupting, and therefore we are better served by simply avoiding it altogether. See Bill Connolly's take on this process here.
This depoliticizing move brings out another point of contrast between the UK and US versions of House of Cards; that, crucially, they are not just separated geographically, but also temporally. The UK version took place in 1990 just after the Thatcher revolution. The context is thus one of a completed, but not fully naturalized neoliberal revolution. In the UK version the violence, the cruelty, and, most importantly, the class-warfare based nature of neoliberalism is placed front and center (especially in the second mini-series, when the newly established Prime Minister Urquhart finds himself opposed by the new King who seeks to whip up public concern for poverty and homelessness. This struggle between bourgeois class-interest and aristocratic noblesse oblige reminds us of a time when the claims that 'there is no alternative' was contentious, rather than simple common-sense). While Urquhart stands as a symbol of the arrogance and privilege of neoliberalism, it is clear that he is merely an expression of a wider ideology and system. Indeed, the final miniseries ends with his assassination and replacement as Prime Minister, reminding us that, though the individual is gone, the ideology, the system, and the revolution go on. 
Contrast this with the American version, in which all we have are individuals. Every character in the show is out for themselves, pursuing a narrow self-interest (those few characters who seem to hold some sort of political belief are invariably shown to be hypocrites or ineffective naifs). Even the Underwoods' marriage is an uneasy alliance between power-players. It is a world-view which has perfectly absorbed Thatcher's dictum that there is no such thing as society. (Indeed, the fact that it shows politicians as inherently corrupt or incompetent only reinforces neoliberalism's cynical take on the public sphere against the private). In the last episode of the season, Underwood, afraid that his schemes might have failed, finds himself in a chapel and delivers a long monologue, seemingly both to God, and the viewer. He ends by saying "There is no solace above or below, only us, small solitary, striving, battling one another. I pray to myself, for myself. " It is a sentiment that Thatcher couldn't have put better, and yet, unlike the British version, it doesn't seem that we are supposed to be disgusted by Underwood's nihilism, or pity his alienation. Rather, in many ways, the show sets him up as a prophet, telling us the uncomfortable truths that only he is honest and serious enough to admit (neoliberalism as 'tough love', a tried and true trope). Contrary to the critique of neoliberalism that the UK version carries forward, the American version manifests as a neoliberal critique, a stinging indictment of politics qua politics, and a reinforcement of an individualized and depoliticized image of society. The problem of politics, in this account, isn't any particular ideology, or system. Rather it is the greed and avarice of individuals, a question, ultimately, of virtue, not politics.
The point here isn't to replace this account of politics with an optimistic image of American politics as the purview of committed and passionate civic minded individuals (call this the 'West Wing' gambit). There is, and must be, a place for a deeply critical perspective on politics in narrative. But it is dangerous when such critiques begin and end with questions of personal virtue, or simply repeat tired tropes of the corrupting influence of power and politics. The best political narratives (much like the UK House of Cards) go beyond the individual to critique systems, ideologies and institutions. They are attentive to the way in which they portray politics. Such perspectives can still be dark, can still be cynical, can still be tragic even. But they also recognizes the way in which cynicism can simply play into the hands of those entrenched forces which profit from a system in which the majority perceive politics as an inherently broken and corrupt system. Ironically, Fincher would have seemed to be the ideal director to walk this tightrope between pessimism and apathy. Think here of the final lines of his breakout hit, Seven. There, a defeated Morgan Freeman intones the words "Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part.". It is, perhaps, the most telling fact of our current social climate, that Fincher was able to muster greater optimism in the face of serial killers, than politicians.
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