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https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/31/patrick-lawrence-deaf-but-not-blind-to-us-decline/

Deaf, but Not Blind to US Decline

In Fiona Hill’s recent speech it’s possible to detect the very faint signals of Washington’s policy elite responding to the immense global power shift that is underway.  

I count the advance among non–Western nations toward what we now call a new world order the single most momentous development of our time. 

This turn in history’s wheel will define our century, it is not too much to say. But to listen to the speeches, pronouncements and offhand remarks of the power and policy cliques in Washington you would think there is no such elephant in the room.

And so, I ask: Can I be the only one to wonder whether those shaping and conducting American foreign policy are blind to this immense global shift, or deaf to what the non–West lately has to say to the West, or too stupid to understand events, or in denial, or maybe some of all four?

Blind, deaf, stupid, in gutless denial, this last a subset of stupid: Each of these explanations has its temptations as we assess the cognitive capacities of the elites who sequester themselves inside the Washington Beltway. 

But it has been awfully hard to settle with certainty on the cause of our policy people’s apparent inability or refusal to acknowledge that world history has entered a period of epochal change.

At last an answer to this perplexing question, or a useful suggestion of one. Blind or stupid are not the explanations we are looking for. Deafness and denial are.

I draw these conclusions by way of a speech by Fiona Hill, an over-credentialed foreign policy operative of conspicuous neoliberal convictions. She delivered it last week at a research institute in Estonia, a nation that that sits on the knife’s-edge divide between East and West.

By way of background, Hill is one of those revolving-door people who float on the froth of academic and think tank salaries when not in government. A Russianist by training, she was an intelligence analyst for the Bush II and Obama administrations. 

She then served on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council until she turned on Trump during his 2019 impeachment hearings and had a few moments under the Klieg lights. Hill is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and will take up duties this summer as chancellor at Durham, the British university.  

Maybe Hill speaks with a looser tongue now that she will return to her native England. This is hard to say. But I read her speech as a significant expression of the perceptions commonly shared among our policy cliques on both sides of the Atlantic.

It turns out that Hill and her colleagues in Washington and other Western capitals know perfectly well that the non–West’s most influential nations are building a global order that restores the authority of international law and international institutions after decades during which both have been abused or ignored.

I take some comfort, honestly, in knowing that those shaping and executing Western policy are not so blind or stupid as to miss this.

It is cold comfort, I have to add. I conclude from Hill’s remarks that the technocrats, scholars, and political figures who think through and determine U.S.  foreign policy, and by extension the Atlantic world’s, cannot hear those now bringing a new world order into being, and they are in abject denial as to the right responses to this world-turning and profoundly promising undertaking.

‘The Rest’s Rebellion’ 

Hill titled her speech “Ukraine and the New World Disorder,” and subtitled it, “The Rest’s Rebellion Against the United States.” Immediately it is clear she is about to get some things very right and others very wrong. The transcript of this speech is well worth reading. It is here.

To posit that some pre–Ukraine order is to be replaced by a post–Ukraine disorder is to turn the world upside down. To refer to the non–West as “the rest” is hopelessly retro, and in my read Orientalist to the core. 

These errors betray a Western-centric ideology that severely limits the ability of people such as Hill to understand the world as it is. This is what I mean by denial.

At the same time, there are some startling observations in this presentation, given who is doing the observing. Here are a few that are bound to turn the heads of those who have wondered along with me about the blindness, deafness, and so on in Washington:

“The war in Ukraine is perhaps the event that makes the passing of pax Americana apparent to everyone.”

And:

“… countries that have traditionally been considered ‘middle powers’ or ‘swing states’ — the so-called ‘Rest’ of the world — seek to cut the U.S. down to a different size in their neighborhoods and exert more influence in global affairs. They want to decide, not be told what’s in their interest. In short, in 2023, we hear a resounding no to U.S. domination and see a marked appetite for a world without a hegemon.”

And further on:

“… the next iteration of the global security, political and economic system will not be framed by the United States alone. The reality is already something else….”

Remarkable, coming from someone such as Fiona Hill. It makes you wonder about the extent to which a lot of intelligent people in Washington must stifle their thoughts and so seem for all the world stupid.

Captives of an Ideology

On the other side of Hill’s ledger there are misapprehensions and omissions that betray the policy cliques she can be taken informally to represent as captives of an ideology deeply rooted in half a millennium of Western superiority and deeply incapable of accommodating a world based on equality among nations. 

It seems beyond these people to grasp that “the West and the rest” is precisely the binary the non–West proposes to transcend.

Remember when, in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping issued their Joint Statement on International Relations Entering a New Era, which I continue to consider the most significant political document to be published so far in our century? The Russian and Chinese leaders were explicitly anti-anti–Western in that declaration.

Remember when the Chinese Foreign Ministry, this past February, issued its Global Security Initiative Paper, wherein Beijing stated that “the historical trends of peace, development, and win-win cooperation are unstoppable?” Anti-hegemonic powers, yes. Anti–Western, not by any stretch.

Either Hill has not read these papers — perfectly plausible, given the whole of Washington ignored them — or she cannot hear the voices raised in them. Nor does Hill seem to register the elaboration and enlargement of such non–Western partnerships as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. 

The new world order, she told her audience, “is not an ‘order,’ which inherently points to a hierarchy, and perhaps not even a ‘disorder.’”

It is simply wrong, tone deaf. All forms of order are inherently hierarchical? Fiona Hill should travel more often beyond the borders of the West.   

Thankfully enough, Hill goes on to contradict herself on at least some of these points:

“We in the trans–Atlantic community may need to develop some new terminology as well as adapt our foreign policy approaches to deal with horizontal networks of overlapping and sometimes competing structures. …  The regionalization of security, trade, and political alliances complicates our national security strategies and policy planning, but it may also intersect with our priorities in useful ways if we can be flexible and creative — rather than simply resisting and responding when things go in directions we don’t like….”

Again, remarkable. It may be that Hill, who is 57, has chosen an interim that will shortly leave her an ocean away from Washington’s policy circles to speak more candidly than she ever did during her inside-the–Beltway years. While her thinking on this point lies beyond us, those who rotate in and out of power sometimes take such opportunities to say what they would not otherwise dare to say.

Hill’s speech at the International Centre for Defence and Security in Tallinn is certainly worthy of interpretation whatever this case may be. I detect in it the very faintest signs that those most intimately involved in shaping U.S. foreign policy will gradually come to understand that pretending the U.S. remains the world’s unchallenged imperium is a game that they can play a little while longer but not forever. 

Most nations we count as non–Western fold their hands as we speak.

Washington’s policy elites still close their ears to what the vast majority of humankind has to say about the 21^st century order. They remain in denial. But I don’t think they are blind, after all, to those unstoppable historic trends the Chinese mentioned a couple of months ago.

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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/conspirators_for_the_constitution_when_anti_government_speech_becomes_sedition

Conspirators for the Constitution: When Anti-Government Speech Becomes Sedition

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”— George Orwell

Let’s be clear about one thing: seditious conspiracy isn’t a real crime to anyone but the U.S. government.

To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the charge levied against Stewart Rhodes who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for being the driving force behind the January 6 Capitol riots, one doesn’t have to engage in violence against the government, vandalize government property, or even trespass on property that the government has declared off-limits to the general public.

To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, one need only foment a revolution.

This is not about whether Rhodes deserves such a hefty sentence.

This is about the long-term ramifications of empowering the government to wage war on individuals whose political ideas and expression challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

This is about criminalizing political expression in thoughts, words and deeds.

This is about how the government has used the events of Jan. 6 in order to justify further power grabs and acquire more authoritarian emergency powers.    

This was never about so-called threats to democracy.

In fact, the history of this nation is populated by individuals whose rhetoric was aimed at fomenting civil unrest and revolution.

Indeed, by the government’s own definition, America’s founders were seditious conspirators based on the heavily charged rhetoric they used to birth the nation.

Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Marquis De Lafayette, and John Adams would certainly have been charged for suggesting that Americans should not only take up arms but be prepared to protect their liberties and defend themselves against the government should it violate their rights.

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms,” declared Jefferson. He also concluded that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government,” insisted Paine.

“When the government violates the people’s rights,” Lafayette warned, “insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

Adams cautioned, “A settled plan to deprive the people of all the benefits, blessings and ends of the contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the constitution, to deprive them of all share in making and executing laws, will justify a revolution.”

Had America’s founders feared revolutionary words and ideas, there would have been no First Amendment, which protects the right to political expression, even if that expression is anti-government.

No matter what one’s political persuasion might be, every American has a First Amendment right to protest government programs or policies with which they might disagree.

The right to disagree with and speak out against the government is the quintessential freedom.

Every individual has a right to speak truth to power—and foment change—using every nonviolent means available.

Unfortunately, the government is increasingly losing its tolerance for anyone whose political views could be perceived as critical or “anti-government.”

All of us are in danger.

In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.”

The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American with an opinion about the government or who knows someone with an opinion about the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

You see, the government doesn’t care if you or someone you know has a legitimate grievance. It doesn’t care if your criticisms are well-founded. And it certainly doesn’t care if you have a First Amendment right to speak truth to power.

What the government cares about is whether what you’re thinking or speaking or sharing or consuming as information has the potential to challenge its stranglehold on power.

Why else would the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies be investing in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram?

Why else would the Biden Administration be likening those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists?

Why else would the government be waging war against those who engage in thought crimes?

Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes and truth-tellers.

For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

According to one FBI report, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories, especially if you “attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”

In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.

There’s a whole spectrum of behaviors ranging from thought crimes and hate speech to whistleblowing that qualifies for persecution (and prosecution) by the Deep State.

Simply liking or sharing this article on Facebook, retweeting it on Twitter, or merely reading it or any other articles related to government wrongdoing, surveillance, police misconduct or civil liberties might be enough to get you categorized as a particular kind of person with particular kinds of interests that reflect a particular kind of mindset that might just lead you to engage in a particular kinds of activities and, therefore, puts you in the crosshairs of a government investigation as a potential troublemaker a.k.a. domestic extremist.

Chances are, as the Washington Post reports, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

In other words, you might already be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the police state’s dictates.

As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.

In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, or appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom.

And then at the other end of the spectrum there are those such as Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, for example, who blow the whistle on government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.

In true Orwellian fashion, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.

Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day—pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.

This is also why the government fears a citizenry that thinks for itself: because a citizenry that thinks for itself is a citizenry that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, which translates to government transparency and accountability.

After all, we’re citizens, not subjects.

For those who don’t fully understand the distinction between the two and why transparency is so vital to a healthy constitutional government, Manning explains it well:

When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? … I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.

This is why the First Amendment is so critical. It gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.

The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.

A little over 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Washington Post Co. to block the Nixon Administration’s attempts to use claims of national security to prevent The Washington Post and The New York Times from publishing secret Pentagon papers on how America went to war in Vietnam.

As Justice William O. Douglas remarked on the ruling, “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

Fast forward to the present day, and we’re witnessing yet another showdown, this time between Assange and the Deep State, which pits the people’s right to know about government misconduct against the might of the military industrial complex.

Yet this isn’t merely about whether whistleblowers and journalists are part of a protected class under the Constitution. It’s a debate over how long “we the people” will remain a protected class under the Constitution.

Following the current trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, watched all the time, and rounded up when the government deems it necessary.

We’re almost at that point now.

Eventually, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we will all be seditious conspirators in the eyes of the government.

We would do better to be conspirators for the Constitution starting right now.