Authors: Gore Vidal
Now it is wonderfully ironic for anyone to complain about what the zoo calls “people programs” because, wasteful or not, there aren’t any. But no one can point this out on television because both journalists and politicians are hired by the same people and behind those people is the corporate wealth of the country, which requires that the budget be faked. The famous entitlements consist largely of disbursements for Social Security, and although Social Security contributions are always counted as part of the federal revenue, they are not. Social Security is a separate trust fund whose income and outgo have
nothing
to do with the actual budget. So why does the government like to pretend that Social Security payments are part of its annual revenue? Because if you take those payments
out
of the budget, everyone would realize that perhaps three-quarters or more of the federal income, over the years, has been spent on “defense” or war-related matters or on servicing the debt on money borrowed
for war.
If Social Security payments are not counted as revenue, Bush is currently spending $1.1 trillion a year, while taking in only $726 billion from taxes. The real national debt is about $4 trillion; in 1980 it was a mere $1 trillion. It is true that the Pentagon itself gets less money these days than it used to, but debt service, foreign aid, nuclear energy and payments to the true victims of our wars, the veterans, still account for most federal expenditures and deficits.
From time to time it is shyly suggested that taxes be raised—for individuals but never for corporations. To those who maintain that our political life is not controlled by corporations, let me offer a statistical proof of ownership—the smoking gun, in fact. In 1950, 44 percent of federal revenues came from individual taxpayers and 28 percent from a tax on corporate profits. Today, 37 percent comes from individuals and only 8 percent from the corporations (see John McDermott, “The Secret History of the Deficit,”
The Nation,
August 21/28, 1982).
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Once Bush’s only fiscal notion becomes law and the capital gains tax is eliminated, the work of corporate America will be complete, and the ownership will have ceased to support the United States. Naturally, should a badly run company like Chrysler go bust, the American people will be expected to pay for mana-gerial mistakes. In any case, let it be solemnly noted that during the forty years of the national security state, corporate America not
only collected most of the federal revenue for “defense” but, in the process, reduced its share of federal taxes by twenty percentage points. Was this a conspiracy? No. They all think alike? Yes. They all think alike.
Since it is unlikely that Japan and Germany will forever continue to buy our Treasury bonds, how will the ownership pay for itself? Well, we could always renege on servicing the debt, but as Richard Nixon would say,
that would be the easy way
(and will, alas, be taken). The sublime way, which will be taken by the next administration, will be to sell off that 31 percent of the United States that is held by the federal government in our name.
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This fire sale will be highly popular with the buyers but it will be odd for Americans to have so little real estate to call their own.
When I was at the press club three years ago Opinion makers were mildly interested in overruns at the Defense Department. There was to be an investigation, and John Tower would be in place to make sure that nothing untoward was discovered. But Dick Cheney got the job instead, and there have been no meaningful investigations on his watch.
It is a commonplace that half of those qualified to vote for president don’t vote; also that half the adult population never read a newspaper. No bad thing, all in all, assuming that they
could
read a newspaper, which is moot as our public schools are among the worst in the First World while our prison population, symmetrically, is the highest, surpassing the
ci-devant
Soviet Union. Naturally, we lead the First World in the execution of criminals or “criminals.”
Every four years the naive half who do vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won’t be. Any individual who is able to raise $25 million
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to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace, or banking, or whatever moneyed entities are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress.
Before the national security state was invented, we had something called “representative government.” It did not work awfully well but at least there was some sense that, from time to time, something might be done about a depression—the sort of thing that cannot be done by a system in which most public revenues are earmarked for weaponry and war and secret police forces and, of course, the servicing of trillions of dollars’ worth of debt.
“When we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries
by a govern-ment
, which we might expect in a country
without government
, our calamities is [
sic
] heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.” I quote from
Common Sense
, by Thomas Paine. How do we get rid of this bad government? There is certainly no road back to Eden in any society. Even if we could return, our own Eden was a most serpentine affair, based as it was on the enslavement of Africans and the slaughter or deportation of an indigenous population.
But until 1950, when our ramshackle world empire was institutionalized as the national security state, we
were
improving ourselves, and the generality took part in government while Opinion was not so cynically and totally manipulated as now. Since we cannot pay for the empire any longer, we shall soon be coming home—but to what? Our “inalienable” rights are being systematically alienated. Never has an American government been so busy interfering with the private lives of its citizens, subjecting them to mandatory blood, urine, lie-detector tests. Yet the war on drugs has nothing at all to do with drugs. It is part of an all-out war on the American people by a government interested only in control. As this grows more evident, I suspect that we shall begin to see an organized resistance to so tyrannous a state. Meanwhile, as we have neither political parties nor, indeed, politics, only issueless elections, I see only one peaceful way out of this corpse of a Republic, this literally bankrupt national
security state.
Article Five of the Constitution describes two methods whereby it may be amended or otherwise altered. One way, and so far the only way yet taken, is by a vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress. The amendment is then sent for ratification by the state legislatures. The
second
procedure is very interesting indeed—in fact, one might almost call it democratic.
Two-thirds of the state legislatures can request a constitutional convention, which Congress must then convene. Unlike us, the founders did not worship their handiwork. Many thought the original Constitution was bound to fail. Thomas Jefferson wanted to hold a constitutional convention at least once a generation because, as he said, you cannot expect a man to wear a boy’s jacket. As it turned out, the jacket has been so reshaped over the past two centuries that it is now a straitjacket for the people at large and satisfying to no one except those who gain election—and profits—from a most peculiar institution.
In recent years there have been several movements to convene a constitutional convention. These efforts have been the work of single-interest groups usually on the far right. One group wants to forbid abortion to every woman. Another wants a balanced budget embedded in the Constitution. What
is
interesting is that in the 1970s and 1980s thirty-two state legislatures voted in favor of such a convention; but many of them cautiously noted that no subject other than a balanced budget, say, could be discussed.
In 1967, Senator Sam Ervin was so intrigued by Article Five that he researched the subject and explained the mechanics of such a convention in S.2307. He came to the conclusion that, as
We the People
are the true
de jure
sovereign of these states,
We the People
cannot be held by anyone to any single issue once we convene
our
convention. If we so choose, the entire Constitution could be rewritten. At this point I part company with the American Civil Liberties Union, who, for once, are more pessimistic about the people than I. The first thing
they
will get rid of is the Bill of Rights, the liberals moan. To which the answer is, first, I don’t think the people are suicidal and, second, what is the difference between losing those rights at an open convention as opposed to a gradual loss of them behind the closed doors of the current Supreme Court?
It is true that we are a less homogeneous and less educated people than the three million original inhabitants of the thirteen colonies. But I cannot believe that our convention would do away with our liberties while granting more power, say, to the Executive to fight wars that in the end harm only
us
. I am aware that the people at large have been kept ignorant by bad schools and by the dispensers of false Opinion. That is true. That is a problem. But ignorance is not stupidity. And self-interest, as both Hamilton and Madison agreed, is a great motor to the state, properly checked and balanced.
In any case, we are now faced with the fury of those who have been deprived for too long of decent lives. It takes no unusual power of prophecy to remark that they will not be apathetic forever. “If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” Rather than be
un
ready for anarchy, I submit that we must sit down and in an orderly way rethink our entire government as well as our place in the world.
The founders’ last gift to us is the machinery to set things right. Article Five. Let us use it.
Thus, I ended my speech to the National Press Club—outrageously, of course.
The Nation
27 January 1992
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T
HE
U
NION OF THE
S
TATE
Over the years I have written quite a lot about the state of the Union. Now, in the interest of novelty, I’d like to discuss the
Union
of the State. I have always tried to say something so obvious that no one else has noticed it. For instance, I once suggested that we criminalize most firearms, and legalize most drugs. This would put an end to the now eternal War on Crime that, we are told, is devastating our alabaster cities and not doing the amber waves of marijuana much good either. I realize, of course, that vested interests are now too great for us to do anything of an intelligent nature in this—or almost any—regard. The National Rifle Association will never wither away as long as there is a single Congressman left to be paid off or a child unarmed.
Our violence and murder rate are unique in the First World. This may be a negative uniqueness but it is all our own, and to be cherished; at least we are number one at something other than indebtedness. We now have over a million people in prison
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and another couple of million on probation or parole; why not just lock up half the population and force the other half to guard them? That would solve crime; it might also entice Amnesty International to start whining here at home. After all, 58 percent of those in our federal prisons are there for drug offenses. Most are not dangerous to the public, and even though our overkindly government thinks they are dangerous to themselves, they should still be allowed to pursue their constitutional, if unhealthful, happiness in freedom. Certainly they do not deserve to be confined to a prison system that a Scandinavian commission recently reported to be barbarous for a supposedly First World country.
Unfortunately, the rulers of
any
system cannot maintain their power without the constant creation of prohibitions that then give the state the right to imprison—or otherwise intimidate—anyone who violates any of the state’s often new-minted crimes. Without communism—once monolithic and on the march—our state lacks a Wizard of Oz to terrify all the people all the time. So the state looks inward, at the true enemy, who turns out to be—who else? the people of the United States. In the name of correctness, of good health, or even of God—a great harassment of the people-at-large is now going on. Although our state has not the power to intimidate any but small, weak countries, we can certainly throw most Americans in prison for violating the ever-increasing list of prohibitions. Will this change for the better with a change of Congress or President? No. Things are going to get a lot worse until we apply the state’s new white hope to the state itself: Three strikes, you’re
out. How then to “strike out” the state? I have an idea.
Kevin Phillips recently attacked—in
Time
—Washington, D.C., a beautiful city, built, if not on a hill, at least on what, in 1800, was a quite attractive swamp. He quoted Jefferson’s warning that when every aspect of government is drawn to Washington—he meant the city, not the general—Washington, in his words, would become “as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” (This was England, by the way, not the Disney studio so recently and bloodily thrown back at Bull Run.)
Phillips tacitly acknowledges that the people have no representation within the Beltway, unlike the banks or insurance companies. Consequently, officeholders and their shadow, the media, are equally disliked by a vast majority. Unfortunately, the people are without alternative. That is what makes the situation so volatile and potentially dangerous. Think what might have happened had Ross Perot possessed the oily charm of Charlton Heston. Certainly, it is plain that when a people comes to detest the political system in which it is entrapped, that system will not endure for long.