August 9, 2007 – The Late Richard Rorty on “How It’s All Gonna End"

I guess this is all old news as far as many of you are concerned, but this “final interview,” (he died a few days after giving it) with the noted American philosopher and intellectual Richard Rorty wherein he predicated how (what passes for) liberal democracy in America will finally come to a crashing, complete, and no-BS end, without even the façade of individual rights and liberties, (like what we have now), and never mind the boiling frogs stuff.

“Rorty said,” in the interview, “that after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, ‘it became clear that the political right would try to substitute the 'global war on terrorism' as an excuse not only for keeping the national security state intact but for undermining the political institutions of the old democracies. I was terrified that the Bush administration would carry American public opinion with it, and would succeed in brushing the liberties of the citizen aside.'

Even though public support for the Bush administration is at low ebb, Rorty still believed that ‘sooner or later, some terrorist group will repeat 9/11 on a much grander scale. I doubt that democratic institutions will be resilient enough to stand the strain.’ “

I completely agree. Whether the next Commander-in-Chief is a Dem or Rep, “liberal” or conservative, whether the US Congress has a Dem or Rep majority in either or both houses, or whether the SCOTUS is 5-4 strict-constructionist or ACLU sympathizers, it ain’t gonna matter one fookin’ bit. Before the dust even settles the tanks will roll out, the cops and feds will start rounding people up, and the whole rest of the coup d’etat protocol we’ve seen over the years in the Turd World States where they have this thing down to science.

I am not just being paranoid either. This what I honestly have felt to be our precarious situation for long time, and now someone of substance and stature and, given his terminal condition, nothing to lose by saying it, has said it too. Sooner or later al-Qaeda, Hamas, North Korea commandos or someone such as them is gonna get hold of a suitcase nuke or dump a few barrels of ricin into some major city’s water supply…and well, you get the idea.

I dare anybody to tell this won’t happen. It’s just a matter of when.

Richard_Rorty the_Apocalypse American_Democracy terrorism al-Qaeda