MSNBC's Matthews: Would You Rather Die or What?

Chris Matthews, MSNBC's Hardball host, has thrown in with the Bush gang's justification for warrantless spying on Americans: Would you rather die or what? Here's a summary of what Matthews said (from Media Matters):

On the January 12 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, host Chris Matthews asserted that wiretapping Americans in an effort to track down terrorists -- which his guest asserted would be "breaking the law" -- was "maybe ... part of the job" of the president of the United States."

In the "all terror, all the time" post 9/11 construction of the Bush public relations theater company, all the bodies of the body politic are in jeopardy and the first reponsiblity of government is the preservation of those bodies, a responsiblity which overules the rights of citizenship and justifies the total power of the sovereign. The sovereign is law.

In his endorsement of this view, Matthews is endorsing the teachings of Carl Schmitt, German political theorist and enthusiastic supporter of Hitler who believed, that "Debate, deliberation, and persuasion obscure what is essential for politics -- firm sovereign decisions for dealing with political enemies" (From Richard Bernstein's The Abuse of Evil , page 91).

Grounded on the familiar conservative judgment that enmity is the basic existential condition of mankind from which it follow that a strong sovereign must be in place to staunch chaos and enforce order, Schmitt, according to Bernstein, contends that "Sovereigns may pretend that they are making decisions in the name of some 'higher principle' or that they are following proper legal and political procedures, but this should not disguise the fact that such decisions are ungrounded; they are solely the sovereign's decision." (page 91). The "higher principle" here is actually the low materialist principle of bodily preservation.

The directors of the Bush theater know that bodies running before the scream of sirens and exhausted in the aftermath of adrenal panic, would gladly bargain away the preservation of rights for the preservation of the body. Matthews, in saying breaking the law is part of the president's job, gives away the rights of citizens under the "argument" of the siren.

He is not alone in this, of course. The media, under Wall Street's demand for higher corporate profits, has been cranking up the society of the siren for the last two decades. Knowing that fear, terror, sex and loathing captures more "eyeballs" for resale to advertisers than do reasoned appraisals of the issues confronting the commonweal, the media races to find new stimulations for eyeballs and the bodies attached to them, aiming now squarely for the reptile brain -- the limbic system -- the lowest common biological denominator. Increased stimulation means more eyeballs, higher ratings, higher advertising rates, higher profits, higher returns on investment for the wealthiest Americans especially the top 1% of the American ruling class who hold 44% of all privately held stock.

The Bush PR theater has been embraced by Big Media because they have mastered the stimulation of the American body. Unlike television shows and advertisements which inculcate fear and envy on the mundane basis of one's appearance or possessions (the possiblity of social death because one's deodorant does not fully repress body odor), the Bush gang are able to place the American body in total somatic jeopardy: "Buy Bush As Sovereign or Die."

Side-effects like the loss of rights are masked or downplayed -- e.g., the loss of rights is limited to a small population who have spied on Americans -- just like in the pharma industries' direct-to-consumer advertising where the announcer glosses quickly over the side-effects and keeps pointing to the benefits of the enhanced and continued life of the body.

At the same time the sovereign put the body in jeopardy and protects it, he claims for himself and his gang, higher, purer, more honorable motives than his enemies. The military, for example, are constantly held up an exemplars of moral virtue because they willing to place their bodies in jeopardy for the good of the American body politic. Those who would question Bush's unilateral military invasion of Iraq, or the invasion of the privacy of Americans, are then coded as dishonorable, weak, corrupt. And, of course, once again, as liberal.

How then to counteract the BushMedia construction of reality? I'll get back to you on that one. I promise.