There Is Nothing Like a Dame

The last thing I would want to see in Wal-Mart is Big Sister staring down from some Orwellian wall screen asking me to report any funny business I might spot in the car park. Does she mean a shifty figure eyeing an untended 4 x 4? Somebody loitering with an unspecified intent, like waiting for the wife to finish the boring chores of shopping? Littering maybe? Or was that a suicide bomber that you saw next to the fresh meat counter on your way in, fiddling with some nefarious wires in his trouser pocket to blow the entire mall to kingdom come?

A lot of people in the States are in a twitchy get-even mood these days, cranked up all the scares. But when is an opportunity not an opportunity? Why not turn in the pesky guy next door, who gets up at an unsociably early hour to mow his lawns, or hosts noisy barbecues which turn into late night crack parties. And how about the other nuisance across the street whose ravishing teenage daughter attracts revving hot-rods like oversexed wasps. Or that shifty Mex window cleaner with seven kids you just know is moonlighting snort, because he looks the type. Or that fancy stuck-up floozy who was ahead of you in line for that clerking job you desperately wanted and walked away with it just by fluttering her eyelashes at the moonstruck interviewer.

Janet Napolitano is running for president. Yes, the idea is totally ridiculous. It is so absolutely ridiculous and absurd in a rational society that perhaps you should take a break and think about it very carefully. Because the United States has abandoned all pretence to a rational society.

Behold, this Sister of Fear. What a nice take on Orwell’s 1984, post-modern, even egalitarian one might say. A woman’s touch on great affairs of state. See what a mighty Wurlitzer of morbid suspicion she has assembled. In an extraordinary short time at the helm she has turned the Department of Homeland Security into the chief instrument of the American Stasi State and very possibly the pivot of all power.

‘Security’ is always the giveaway word. Tap Gestapo at Wikipedia and see what you come up with. Here’s the roll call: Nazi Germany’s Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) ("Reich Main Security Office") sister of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) ("Security Service") and also branch of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) ("security police").

Each one of these agencies of state power was re-incarnated, intact, in the Soviet rump of Germany, the GDR. Hence the Ministry for State Security -- the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, commonly feared as the Stasi.

Janet Napolitano heads up the Ministry for State Security, Washington DC. -- call it Department of Homeland, Fatherland or Motherland Security, take your pick -- and she is having herself a ball.

Note the running theme. In any totalitarian system the chief suspect is always the citizen who may commit harm at the expense of the state. That is America today, at the airports where individuals are stripped of their privacy, women and children publicly molested, private areas of the body invaded by prying fingers. How can we forget these are the same desensitising tactics practised by the Nazis against the Jews? The Ministry of State Security has kindly promised to roll out similar intrusions on the subways, train and bus stations, shopping malls, sports stadiums, anywhere that large numbers of docile ‘suspects’ can be cornered, confined, interrogated, abused and dragooned.

Soon it will be a FEMA re-education camp, or worse, for those whose reserves of apathy are finally exhausted. One massive coast-to-coast Gitmo.

The stripe of the various forms of the German national security state in its various forms included unlicensed eavesdropping, interception of mail -- and wholesale enrolment of citizen spies and sneaks; even children were encouraged to shop their own families. Every street and neighbourhood had its own curtain-twitching sheriffs. You can tick all these boxes one by one along the way to the Totalitarian States of America, which if you think about it just happens to be what you see on the cap badge of the paramilitary TSA.

I find myself puzzled that Hillary Clinton looks very odd these days, invariably sporting a kind of semi-detached faraway look. It could be just that she finds the job is not worth, as once was said of the vice presidency (by incumbent John Vance Garner), ‘a bucket of warm spit.’

For sure she has not shone in the office and never seems to gain any secure traction. Okay, but how about her recent strange remark that she won’t be running for ‘elected’ office again? This is such a peculiarly precise qualification it surely deserves some explanation. Is Our Lady of Whitewater preening herself for some high appointment that avoids the tiresome stump around the electoral process, assuming that is still in working order? Or does she know something veiled as it were from public confidence that might cause alarm should it escaped prematurely?

Janet Napolitano as every American knows is an oft-mentioned serial contender for the White House. She has made herself the best-known member of the administration, apart from Hillary Clinton and the hapless Joe Biden. As two-term governor of Arizona, she reached for the veto button 180 times, still a standing record for any state. Odd don’t you think that she runs for office as a Democrat? She has got into hot water several times for spreading alarmist views that point to a country crawling with disaffected dangerous persons, including her famous and subsequently retracted indictment aimed at returning war veterans.

I have it on good authority that she is known -- and feared -- by some in her camp as Lady Macbeth, which if I were Barrack Obama might cause me some restless nights. Assuming of course that Obama is no Duncan but simply Caretaker in Office, for which there is steadily accumulating solid evidence, then it may be that he feels fairly secure on his brief watch, the transition already unfolding.

Lady Janet is certainly very good at keeping Americans balanced on a knife edge of fear and dread. Just when you thought it was safe to relax and hope some of those irksome restrictions might be lifted, hey the FBI hires a patsy to bomb a Christmas tree, But for me, the final assumption of the personality cult, which the Wal-Mart screens represent and unless I am much surprised, will not too long from now glower from every available public space in the country, is proof positive of an unquenchable thirst for power. And not the passing variety.

Make no mistake, Janet Napolitano occupies far and away the most powerful public office in America. She rules by dictat and advances her empire by stealth and cunning with consummate skill. She has the full support of the national security apparatus across the board, Pentagonia and key henchmen in Congress such as Joe The Netkiller Lieberman. The Supreme Court is safely in her pocket. She can and does ignore the White House and is secure in the knowledge that for the most part, the mostly the bought and sold Congress has gone to sleep, thanks to the collective sedative administered in the form of huge corporate bribes. The Murdoch Empire is her public lectern.

There is no precedent in political history for any figure acquiring such a rich storehouse of powers -- and then not putting them to use to secure the ultimate and highest objective.

If anyone is foolish enough to believe the next couple of years leading up to the general election will be placid and peaceful, my advice is to think again. There will be a steadily cultivated atmosphere of fever and hysteria, just like that which marked Hitler’s advance to power, and before that Mussolini’s. American nerves will jangle like dentistry performed without anaesthetics, the remorseless playing up of the ‘enemy within’ which is the standard chord of advancing authoritarianism. There may be more in the line of the Twin Towers, Oklahoma, scares, false flags and real acts large and small. Fold in the steady decay of the democratic fabric of the nation and the Constitution, which is already seriously and terminally compromised. Plus of course pitting neighbour against neighbour in the general air of insecurity. Tried and trusted tactics, all.

At times such as these, the usual ‘strong figure’ customarily emerges. Step forward Janet Napolitano! Never Underestimate the Big Sister of Fear.

Two remarks in conclusion. She has started her bill-board campaign good and early. And expect to see a lot more of her.

Permanently.

Richard Cottrell, former European Union MP, is the author of Fighting Dirty: How NATO, Neo Nazis and the Mafia fought a Secret War in Europe, a forthcoming attraction from Progressive Press.