In my political circles, we used to go through the rhetorical exercise of asking each other, What does President Obama have to do to irretrievably alienate his core of supporters? What horrific atrocity would Obama have to commit, that would cause him to lose his solid Black base?
The problem with this little game of What If, was that Obama kept upping the ante, with one outrage after another, each more nightmarish than the last. What if he put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block? Obama promptly did that, two weeks before taking the oath of office. So we had to pick another hypothetical Obama act that might constitute a deal-breaker with Black America. How about: What if the First Black President launched an all out military attack on Africa? Seven months ago he did just that, in Libya, following up with a huge intensification of the cruelest war in the world, against Somalia, and the assignment of U.S. Special Forces to central Africa.
It was becoming evident that there was no line of civilized behavior that Obama would not cross in service of corporate empire at home and abroad. And yet, his core supporters had still not reached their limits of tolerance for the man in whom they had invested so much hope in 2008.
Now, with preventive detention the law of the land and political assassination official U.S. policy, Obama is poised to enter the realm of the unthinkable – a future of pure horror in which there is no rule of law. When a president can lock up or kill whomever he chooses, without formal charge or trial, the rule of law ceases to exist. The finality of that verdict is not mitigated by the fact that George Bush also believed, as does Obama, that U.S. law already implicitly gave presidents the power to indefinitely detain. It is now codified – a law that negates the rule of law.
Obama’s guiding hand finessed the legislation through Congress, anointing this president and those who come after with the power to lock up American citizens for life without trial, or even being charged. Obama has given President Gingrich or President Romney or President Palin those powers – the same powers Egyptian generals have used to imprison thousands of protesters in military jails.
