“Martial law will be declared at the exact moment when the ruling elites decide it is more profitable to exert overt control over the population as opposed to mere ideological control and social engineering like they do now. Its implementation will be totally scripted and everyone already in positions of power and trust including the mass media will be complicit in its enactment. When the elites feel they are so secure in their FEMA bunkers that their rule cannot be effectively challenged, THAT is when they will betray us all.”

Unfortunately, you’re no doubt correct in your assessment, right down to its scripted nature with ruling class complicity all around.

“It seems to me that the Bush regime has taken or is taking all the steps necessary toward a fascist state. I really don’t think Bush/Cheney are going anywhere anytime soon, and short of a bloody revolution or a benign military coup, America is pretty much finished. Ronnie deluded himself into thinking that he won the Cold War, but it turns out Marx was right all along.”

Of course Marx was right! Still is! ;)

Personally, John, I think the “f” word is used far too frequently for it to have resonance today. “Fascism” in the present context–at least barring some horrible catastrophe–is better represented in contemporary America by Mussolini’s original defintion, corporatism. Call me old-fashioned, but I hardly see a lumpenized middle class flocking to a up-dated version of Hitler’s storm troopers. Even Pinochet and the neo-Nazi Argentine generals had a mass base, one rooted in the old rightist clerical/nationalist cliques and the middle class. Bushism as a rallying cry? Hardly.

While *certain* segments of the Christian Right may have fit the bill in the early 1990s, Operation Rescue, for example, and the terrorist Army of God–both driven by a far-right, theocratic ideology with a mass base–those forces by and large have been dispersed; not primarily by the state, but by radical, grass roots, left-wing activists organized in groups such as BACORR and Refuse and Resist! The same goes for neo-Nazi bonehead formations. Anti-Racist Action and others took the field and routed them. I don’t mean to trivialize such forces, but there’s nothing on the contemporary scene that compares to the direct action antiaborts or the Militia Movement of the ’90s. The Minutemen? I don’t think so. Dangerous, yes, but an immediate threat in terms of forming a mass fascist movement? Hardly.

Bush/Cheney are reflective of particular class interests, primarily what we’ve come to know as the military-industrial-security complex. Whether or not they stay or go is almost irrelevant.. I pose the question again: would Clinton or Obama do anything concretely different? The answer, in my opinion, is no. Class money has now swung to the Democrats, just as in did in 1992 when the forces holding Reaganism together ran their course.

After all, the ground work for the USA Patriot Act was laid, not by reactionary, Neaderthal Republicans but by “liberal” Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Remember the 1996 ” Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act”? Remember the FBI’s Carnivore and the NSA’s Echelon? These were programs begun under and supported by Democrats. Bush/Cheney may have give us the doctrine of “preemptive war,” but Clinton/Gore gave us the equally repulsive doctrine of “humanitarian intervention.” And for the same objective reasons: shore-up and expand the contours of the American (capitalist) Empire. Clinton in the Balkans, Bush further east in Central Asia. Both are marked by failure, not success.

We’ve already had two “soft” coups; one was Clinton’s impeachment–a failure, the other the 2000 decision by the Supreme Court to end the Florida vote count and thus, hand the presidency to Bush. In terms of a “brand” the ruling class identifies with, Bush/Cheney are the political equivalent of the Chevy Vega! A military coup is never “benign;” don’t ever go there! But whether or not America is finished, depends, in the final analysis, on us.

“But the existence of plans does not guarantee their implementation.”

Jim, you’re correct–as far as it goes. However, the broader question is this: why is the state building detention facilities, or to be more precise, allocating hundreds of millions of dollars for open-ended contracts for their construction?

I do tend to steer-clear of the paranoid end of the spectrum when it comes to these issues, but having said that, do keep in mind the Pentagon, as I pointed out in my piece, have been training for so-called “civil disturbance assistance” to local law enforcement agencies for decades; “Cable Splicer” and “Garden Plot” are not mere historical footnotes, nor is the fact that in the wake of 9/11, the federal government created a new military command-NORTHCOM, specifically chartered to operate in the continental U.S., a first; nor is it simply a coincidence the feds passed legislation substantially weakening Posse Comitatus, and finally, it also isn’t a secret that FEMA and Bush applied significant pressure on Louisiana governor Blanco, to federalize the national guard during Katrina.

What’s important to keep in mind is that John Yoo and OLC’s October 2001 memorandum to the Bush administration on the issue of substantially altering the military’s policing role in the event of an emergency has the weight of law on its side, insofar as it represents the DoJ’s legal opinion of what is, and what isn’t permissible.

That we’re discussing such contingencies in the first place, is a reflection of the sorry state of democratic institutions in the U.S. The point I was trying to make in the piece is the dire threat posed by a runaway Executive branch and a Congress and Judicial branch all-too-eager to cede power on questions of “national security” and the “war on terror.”

How this ultimately plays out is anyone’s guess, but the issue to be kept out front is how vital it is to defend our constitutional guarantees, particularly against those who would weaken protections against “unreasonable search and seizure” i.e., Bush’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program” and all that follows in its wake, such as “Real ID,” intrusive biometric identification, etc., etc. Not to mention, the Executive’s unchallenged assertion of power to annul treaties, such as the International Convention Against Torture, the Anti-Missile Treaty, on and on.

Its not just neocons who would assert these Executive “rights.” Should Clinton or Obama assume the presidency, I seriously doubt either of them would yield on what they now consider to be precedents by the Bush administration.

I wonder if the US Senate had a thunderous applause when granting President Bush dictorial powers?

So where is this detention facility or facilities? Why has not a single “progressive” website done a follow up on this since the initial fuss, and where are the photos of the place? You can’t hide a detention facility, especially one supposedly designed to imprison all the “progressives” who might object to martial law or the hypothetical fake incident or catastrophe that would precipitate it.

I have no doubt that it is possible, considering the ideology of the Neocons and many others in government. But the existence of plans does not guarantee their implementation. It was widely rumored during the Vietnam War that Nixon was going to do the same, a rumor that decades later was revealed as one contingency plan the Nixon Administration actually discussed. But it wasn’t implemented. If this detention facility is being built, or exists, I’d like to see some proof.