Boston Paper: John McCain Will be a Dictator?

By- Warner Todd Huston

Someone at The Phoenix, a small Boston weekly, is off his medication. It’s hard to believe sanity is a familiar state, at least, when reviewing the silliness passed off as serious political analysis, anyway. For the lead editorial in The Phoenix this week is a fantastic display of hyperbole filled with “truther” propensities. The editorial, you see, is all worried that John McCain will make himself a “dictator” if he wins the election next month. No, they are serious, so quit laughing.

And how is it that he will become a “dictator”? Why, it’s because he will be able to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice, you see. Yes, that is the only proof posited for this idiotic theory.

The “argument” this editorial pushes on an unsuspecting reader is that if McCain appoints another eeeevil conservative Justice, then the Courts will turn over all the power in the land to the president. After that, I suppose the writer of this schlock posing as analysis imagines that the rest of the government will just turn off the lights and go home, or something.

Even more conspiratorially, the editorial imagines that Dick Cheney created this plot. In its perfectly nutty “truther” style, quickly calling Cheney the “dark brain of the Bush White House,” the piece imagines that it was he who created the criteria for all new SCOTUS appointees. Apparently, Cheney had in mind the specific goal of heading off any “future criminal prosecution” of White House staffers and employees after the Bushies leave office.

Two things were at stake: not only, of course, the future of the Cheney/Bush-style imperial presidency (the legacy thing is big with traditionalists), but also the future criminal prosecution or administrative sanction of the hundreds — or perhaps thousands — of government employees and officials who executed the Bushies’ more questionable orders. (You have to credit that Dick; he thinks ahead.)

Now if THAT isn’t a whacked out theory…. what is? I’ll bet the space alien, Bilderbergers, had to ask their pals on the Tri-Latteral commission to help them come up with that one!

The piece goes on to warn us that Cheney also intended all SCOTUS appointees to acquiesce to handing all power in government over to the president by judicial decree. Naturally the piece does not explain why this would happen, only that Cheney’s deep, dark, evil plan is in play. Oh, what they won’t ascribe to their favorite villain.

It is flat out stupid… yes, I said stupid… to imagine that the Supreme Court, a body traditionally very jealous of its power and prerogatives, would suddenly just turn over all its power to John McCain — or any other president for that matter. The SCOTUS goes back and forth, sometimes buttressing the president, more oftentimes handing more power to the judiciary, but it retains to itself the final authority. Not only is it a foolish historical analysis to make that the court will suddenly reverse that trend, it is not even a sensible thing to imagine based on simple human nature. For if the SCOTUS handed over all power to the president, it would then be denuding itself of that power. And that is never going to happen. People don’t voluntarily give away personal power, let alone find it possible to convince eight others to go along with them in the same self-destructive behavior!

Then this idiot piece goes into some pointless, long winded discussion of the Nazi Party’s Carl Schmitt who theorized that even in a democracy a country’s chief executive should wield dictatorial powers. We get 6 pointless paragraphs on this historical figure but not once does this wild-eyed, editorialist actually prove that this Nazi Schmitt guy is in any way connected to Bush, Cheney or McCain. The writer of this mush just mentions Schmitt as if it is a given that every Bushite was basing his actions on the Nazi’s theories despite the complete lack of any quotes or proof that any U.S. official has used, or even heard of, Schmitt’s ideas.

So, why bring up this long dead Nazi? Merely to make a vague association to justify the editorialist’s claim that Bush is really Bushitler. In effect he mentions the Nazi theorist, then winks at the reader saying, “You know what I mean, right? They ALL love Nazis, right?”

Then, this garbage piece goes into the Bush torture policy as if that somehow automatically equates to proof that McCain would mount a new throne of dictator of the USA if elected despite that McCain was vocally against Bush’s ideas.

This piece is utter trash, but it is wholly emblematic of the garbled “logic” that truthers use to justify their fevered and unhinged beliefs.

However, deep inside this piece there is a real, solid point to be made. It is embodied in the last paragraph, even though half that paragraph is an out right lie.

But the most important and least discussed aspect of this presidential election is the future of constitutional government in the United States. A McCain election would keep this nation on its current path to a presidential dictatorship. Democrat Barack Obama would reverse that direction. Nothing could be simpler or more important.

Lies first. The country is not “on a path to presidential dictatorship.” While it is true that the Bush administration pushed executive privilege too far, it is not true that we have now or will have a “dictator” as president. Nor is it true that this was ever Bush or Cheney’s intentions. It is also a lie that Barack Obama would tend to reverse that trend. Based on the fascist use of government powers to quash political free speech that he has already displayed before he’s even become president, anyone interested in civil liberties should be afraid of an Obama presidency.

But, there is a germ of truth hidden deep among the slobbering, trutherism displayed in this editorial. There should be a wariness for the Supreme Court as well as the so-called “imperial presidency” here. Bush did, indeed, push his powers almost to the constitutional breaking point and the SCOTUS has aggregated far too much power unto itself.

In the presidency’s case, this has been of recent origin. The Bush administration set out to take back some of the president’s powers that were unduly stolen by the Congress in the aftermath of the Watergate debacle. There is certainly a legitimate reason to imagine he went too far and that this nation should keep a wary eye on further expansion of presidential authority.

But, the encroachment on unconstitutional powers made by the courts has been on going since the Warren Court. The courts in general, not just the SCOTUS, have stolen legislative powers and those powers need to be taken away from them and given back to the representatives of the people where they belong. Our legislators have grown lazy, it is true. They have allowed themselves to be bullied into seeing their powers slowly drained away by the courts, bit by bit.

But, once again, a President Obama will NOT be one to take on this task. He, rather, will be apt to want the courts to expand their powers so that he can get his socialistic ideas passed over the heads of the Congress and without any meddling by voters.

In any case, who ever wrote this insane editorial for The Phoenix really needs to get back to his mental health care specialist. Let’s hope the paper has a good medical plan that offers such coverage.

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston