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Whether I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby turns out "innocent" in his current trial or not, CNN has correctly observed a "cloud" hanging over the trial.(1) At the last minute, Prince Cheney decided not to testify for Libby, who is accused in connection to an investigation of the leak of a CIA officer's identity, Valerie Plame.
The risk of Cheney's coming up for perjury in this case was too great for Cheney to risk, so he did not testify at Libby's trial despite promising to do so. What is important about Cheney's not testifying is that it shows he sometimes needs to let his underlings fry. This will cost him for the rest of his administration, regardless of the outcome of the Libby trial. In a dictatorship of the proletariat, individuals are less able to pursue office for profit, so conflicts like those over Libby will start to simmer down. The partisan divisions that led to the outing of the CIA officer Plame stem from bourgeois class conflicts underneath.
Even more important, the two leading Republican candidates for president have distanced themselves from the prevailing wisdom. Giuliani let it be known he does not believe the Iraq war will be won. Shortly thereafter, McCain found himself saying that Rumsfeld was the "worst" or one of the worst secretary of defenses in history.(2)
Youth should know that McCain's solution for the Iraq war was always all along to send five times more youth to get the job done. He and Hagel would have supported a draft to get the job done.
Jeb Bush is not a credible threat for 2008 and so the Bush regime is lacking in support from potential successors. Such support is politically essential for lame duck presidents in the united $tates. Currently it was not clear to either Giuliani or McCain that they could save Bush even on the Iraq question.
In any case, the rats are leaving the sinking ship. On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon had to leave office amidst MIM-like approval ratings from the public. His reason he gave was that he could not work with Congress anymore.
Certain figures in the Bush regime also have MIM-like levels of approval. Bush himself is just a notch above MIM level unpopularity. One more shot could sink the ship. We at MIM are not too eager to see this shot delivered, because it would just bring new imperialists to power.
Nonetheless, in naming the trend of ultra-reaction that we have seen in recent years, MIM has found some use in discussing monarchism. The ditching of the Bill of Rights and the effete response from the left-wing of parasitism left us contemplating the nature of oppositional elite minorities in monarchies. Such a strategy gets MIM away from thinking in dumbocratic terms of watering down the truth in order to attract 51% of the Amerikkkan public, a bourgeois public. The illness of a large portion of U.$. society that would not miss a beat if Bush named himself global emperor and the spread of parasitic bureaucracies such that spies outnumber communists, socialists etc. more than 10 to 1 has pushed MIM toward developing the theory of fighting within the world's ruling class, Amerikkka, that centers on "persynal offense." When we do not take "persynal offense" at MIM when things go too far, we are seen as bloodlessly theoretical. We should delegitimize imperialism overall and also maneuver for the international proletariat and it is possible to do both at the same time.
The strategy connected to taking "persynal offense" reflects the times we live in and the lack of a vibrant proletariat able to overthrow imperialism from within. It is the task of the MIM to reflect the interests of the international proletariat, not the 51% within U.$. borders. At the moment we are not able to unseat the imperialists in our wildest dreams; however, we are capable of taking "persynal offense," when individual imperialists overstep the boundaries of a normal bourgeois status quo while retaining majority support. Even in monarchies there is constant maneuvering of family alliances for power. Our strategy and tactics hit at the individual and patronage level. By doing so we can maneuver for advantage for the international proletariat and decide what is a "normal" bourgeois.
People of the social-democratic or "revolutionary" sort who act as if Euro- Amerikans can understand, much less side with the international proletariat are doing nothing but drag down the possibilities for progress. Euro-Amerikans will only understand far down the road after the structure of power in which they benefit has been yanked out of them, like a huge splinter in the eye. In the meantime, conspiratorial tactics are necessary. Those who believe in the majority, those who believe there is no state or that their lifestyle rises above it somehow--various such fools have to be kept away from the struggle. And when they inevitably ask why the proletarian struggle is secret, we should smile, because Marx already told us that exploitation is the "dirty secret" of capitalism. Our opponents who ask this question are already won over to the imperialist reformist line, an implicit belief in the exploiter majority--this despite how the 60 million voted for Bush just two years ago.
Notes:
1. http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/22/cia.leak.notebook/
2. http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/16765230.htm