America’s Trajectory

Carl H. Flygt

September, 2005

Suddenly George W. Bush looks and sounds a lot like F.D.R. Apparently the Federal government is going to spend $200 billion to remake New Orleans, and prevent anything like what happened in the aftermath of Katrina from recurring there, or anywhere else in the nation. From here on out, when local governments appear on the verge of being outclassed by a combination of circumstances and incompetence, the Federal machinery, probably spearheaded by the military, will descend with overwhelming capability and turn mere confusion into an orderly and humanitarian response. And it seems clear, after seeing what happened to New Orleans, that no rational person would want it any other way.

Now suppose for the sake of argument that something of this sort had been the actual response to Katrina, and that twelve hours after it had become clear that a major disaster had occurred with the breach of the sea walls, Federal troops had entered the city, bringing law and order, provisions and authoritative instructions to all of the hapless souls sweltering in the Superdome or holding out on their rooftops or in their attics. Suppose as a consequence that in New Orleans there was no looting, no rape, no homicide and no bodies abandoned on streets or in flood waters. Suppose that although the death toll and the property damage was significant, there were no outward signs of social depravity and injustice, no indications that the rich did not care about and did not know how to look after the poor and underprivileged. What would we be saying to each other in that case?

I think it is fairly clear that we would be saying that the Federal government was out of control. We would think the Patriot Act had somehow gone amuck, that the Department of Homeland Security was perhaps some sort of contrivance to highjack the government and take dictatorial control of the entire country, and that perhaps Frodo had not destroyed the Ring, but that George Bush himself had gained possession of It. We would be wondering how far this sort of thing might go, into what dimensions of systematic control the government might ultimately attempt to penetrate. How soon, for example, before the government begins systematically tracking all personal spending decisions (cashless transactions) and individual bodily movements (global positioning), and thereby assessing how well or how poorly particular individuals might respond to particular circumstances, like a terrorist attack or a terrorist cabal? How soon before the government has profiles on all individual medical histories, and thereby is able to determine what sorts of sociopathic disturbances may be latent within particular individuals, and how these individuals might be assigned to special educational and counseling programs? How soon before neuromarketing technologies are applied bureaucratically not just to consumers of goods and services, but to consumers of ideologies and of philosophical lines of thought, so that the FBI can efficiently short circuit a latent Timothy McVeigh or recently imported Mohammad Atta?

But is it not fairly obvious that these are exactly the sorts of things that are now going to be streamlined by the lessons of nine-eleven, of Iraq and of New Orleans? It just doesn’t work, in the face of a truly disastrous event like a terrible hurricane or, should one eventually occur in an American city, of a nuclear explosion, for the Federal government to wait for the locals to organize a well-conceived response. To keep the world safe for democracy, we are going to need and to require a truly top-down capability in the Federal administration. And bit by bit and over time it will begin to make a good deal of sense for this top-down authority to begin to make use of the records of the cashless society, of identity implants, of global positioning, of medical and psychological profiling and of neuromarketing. That is simply what any rational person with a view to a sustainable and universally fortunate social organization will conclude.