Death of a President

So, I just finished watching the film ‘Death of a President’, which was suprisingly well done. The mainstream reviews at the time of its release, of course, were full of outrage and condemnation that anyone would dare to make a film about the assassination of a currently sitting president, as though making a film was equivilant somehow to handing a would-be assassin a rifle and saying “go to it!”; but after actually watching the film it comes across as an argument for why assassination of george “bomb the world” bush would be a bad thing – Cheyney as president, patriot act III and the final destruction of civil liberties, more wars, all that.

Now, I of course can’t actually say that i think it would be a good thing to assassinate George Bush because in America where freedom of speech is sacred it’s a felony and a federal crime to say anything that might be interpreted as a threat to the President. Even if I could say it would be a good thing, however, i don’t think i would – Anarchists stopped using assassination as a tactic almost a century ago for the same reason we don’t bother voting: the problem is the system, not the individuals who play roles in that system. George W. Bush plays a specific role and takes specific actions because his self-interests, defined in terms of identity, class, and ideology/religion, dictate that he should take those actions; but all of the actions he takes and all of the machinery used to carry them out is filtered through the machinery of a military empire. To me, and most anarchists, the defining characteristic of those actions thus becomes the empire.

In other words, The trouble is Rome itself, not which emperor happens to be sitting on the throne. Brutus assassinating Ceaser didn’t stop Rome from becoming a dictatorship, and Leon Czolgosz assassinating William McKinley didn’t stope the US government from colonizing the Phillipines or brutally repressing dissent at home. Assassination is, of course, still a very usefuill tactic in countries where power resides in individuals (places like Cuba under Fidel, Zimbabwe under Mugabe, or Russia under the Czars) and killing the individual forces a re-alignment of power, but in Republican countries like the US power rests in the State – individuals are expendable.

Which is basically the point the movie was trying to make.

I do, however, think it says a lot about politics in America right now that assassination of a President is even on the table. I don’t mean among the political elites of course, but they haven’t bothered to even pretend representing the majority of Americans for decades. I’m talkling about the 70%+ of Americans that don’t vote because they know their votes don’t actually make any meaningful difference, the clear majority that knows that our government is hopelessly corrupt and unreformable, the people – in other words – that revolutionaries absolutely have to open a dialogue with. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people who don’t consider themselves at all radical or even political respond to some lefty complaining about bush by saying something along the lines of “why doesn’t somebody just shoot that guy?” The lefties then respond with a rant about how if only people weren’t so apathetic and just voted he wouldn’t be in office, at which point the non-political persons eyes glaze over and they walk away.

For whatever reaon, the left in this country is totally mired in some holier-then thou bullshit and insists on acting like elitist pricks and condemning the majority of americans as apathetic, ignorant, or stupid. To my mind, just the opposite is true. The left – from the most “radical” pseudo-socialists to the most timid liberals – is absolutely full to overflowing with pompous self-important assholes who wouldn’t recognize the working class if it spit in their Frappacino before passing it over the counter. Which isn’t to say the Right is any better, but I rant about right-wingers a lot, this post right here is dedicated to all the self-styled “progressives” and “radicals” who think “direct action” means a banner drop and that if only they can perfect their rhetoric then suddenly the unenlightened masses will abandon their happy meals and wall-marts to go prance around in a utopia based on “socially responsible” capitalism  – as though Corporations behing badly were the problem and not capitalism itself. I could keep going, but I’m getting off track here and trying to avoid being as preachy and know-it-all as the people I’m criticizing.

Anyway.

my point here is that most non-political americans are far more radical then the people who call themselves radical. While the established left wears itself out with endless appeals for this or that candidate or reformist platform, the majority has already moved past the point where electoral politics or symbolic protests are appealing.

and that’s the other point I took out of movie. Because at the end of the film the first suspect, a lefty activist-type, turns out to have been trying to carry out a banner drop suggesting that someone else should assassinate the president; the second suspect is a muslim man who flirted with al queda but decided he wanted nothing to do with it (but is convicted of the crime and ends up on death row anyway), and the killer is a gulf war vet with PTSD whose son was killed in Iraq and becomes so distraught with the loss of his son in a war based on lies that he uses his special forces traing to act alone and assassinate the president. So while the Left protests and screams and cries and the muslim community is targetted and blamed, the biggest threat to the man in the white house is an ordinary working class guy who loves his country and realizes that the values he has dedicated his life to upholding and defending have been betrayed by our warmonger in chief.

now that is a radical statement.

whether you think assassinating the president would be a good thing or not (the filmakers clearly didn’t and i’ve already explained why i think it would be pointless), the fact is that the only way the empire is going to fall is for ordinary people who are disgusted with the system and don’t see any point in participating in it start to take action outside the system. What form that will take if and when it happens remains to be seen but personally I’m hoping for a mass movement to create localized participatory democracy rather then individual acts of revenge and assassination. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Posted: April 14th, 2007 under politrix.
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