Abramoff and the Rationality of Domination - Part I

INT. 838 Hart Senate Office Bldg. - DAY

"Associate" sits at the witness stand. He's skinny and pale. Across the room sits Chairmain John McCain and other Senators of the Indian Affairs and Commerece Committiees.

MCCAIN

How do you know Jack Abramoff?

ASSOCIATE

I was the Director of the international organization that he owned and founded.

MCCAIN

What is the name of this organization?

ASSOCIATE

The American International Center.

MCCAIN

How did you get to be the Director of this international organization?

ASSOCIATE

Someone called me up and said, "Hey, do you want to be the head of an international organization?"

MCCAIN

What was your job before you became the head of American International?

ASSOCIATE

I was a lifeguard.

MCCAIN

Where was the headquarters for the American International Center?

ASSOCIATE

At my beach house.

MCCAIN

What is your current employment?

ASSOCIATE

Construction worker.

MCCAIN

Do you have anything else you would like to say?

ASSOCIATE

Senator, honestly, I am embarrassed and disgusted to be a part of this whole thing.

The man named "Associate" in this transcript from the 2004 "InGam" hearings is David Grosh, a lifeguard from the Delaware Shore who operated the American International Center, which presented itself as a conservative think-tank. Money meant for lobbying was redirected through the center and into the pockets of politicians like Delay, through Scanlon(Delay's COS).

As the investigation grows to poportions greater than that of the "Keating 5" Scandal, the largest investigation of Congress in U.S. History, the question looms; not who will fall next, but how many members of Congress will be forced to endure prosecution by the Justice Department, who have been sitting on their hands waiting for the inevitable.

"You could argue that our entire system is one of organized bribery," said Randall D. Eliason, former chief of the public corruption section at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington. "People say, 'I got this huge contribution but it had nothing to do with the way I voted.' On some level, it is an elaborate charade."

Of course, the main focus has been Majority Leader Tom Delay, who has denied knowing of Abramoff's crooked connections. Abramoff himself tells a different story: "Everyone is lying. Those S.O.B.s. DeLay knew everything. He knew all the details." Whether he did or didn't, one of the most interesting of the many companies involved with this scandal certainly involved Tom Delay. On the island of Saipan, a little known American outpost left over from World War II, the American garment industry, led by the Tan Companies, enjoyed a bastion of libertarianism. As Delay quips, the island was "a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island." The labor force was paid $3.05, well-below minimum wage, to keep the sewing machines running. The island was entirely unregulated. Other companies taking advantage of the free rein included Gap, Sears, Wal-Mart, J.C.Penney, J.Crew, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Anne Taylor, Liz Claiborne, Brooks Brothers, and Abercrombie&Fitch. In The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress Lou Dubose and Jan Reid write that Washington was becoming anxious:

"Bill Clinton wrote Marianas governor Froilan Tenorio saying that “certain labor practices in the islands . . . are inconsistent with our country’s values,” and proposed federalizing the Marianas’ labor and immigration laws—in other words, workers on Saipan would have the same legal rights as U.S. workers. The ruling clique on Saipan decided some heavy-duty lobbying and image tending was in order. That was when the Marianas Islands became the fervent ideological cause and favorite beach of right-wing Republicans on Capitol Hill. The Marianas’ GOP boosters included Dick Armey and John Boehner. But Tom DeLay aggressively took the lead."

Both Presidents Regan and Bush Sr. were greatly concerned that the island was turning into an industrial slum. But when Delay visited he praised the situation saying, "You [the Saipen clients] are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system."[CNN]. According to the book:

"Several Bangladeshi men, hired to work in security, were told and believed they could ride the train from Saipan to Los Angeles. Chinese workers who became pregnant were forced to return to China to have an abortion or else have it performed at a clinic on Saipan. Most of the immigrant workers were women, many of them mothers of small children. One could spot their arrivals in Saipan. They came off the plane and were hustled through immigration and aboard buses, their faces staring out in bewilderment and apprehension as the drivers sped through the winding back streets of the capital city."

Echoes of the procedure reverberate in President Bush's guest-worker program from Mexico. "Where did the model for that program come from?" asks Congressman George Miller, "Why, Saipen Island. The workers have no rights, can be fired at any time, and have to be committed to a single employer. "

What is most disturbing is not the inhumanity of the men involved, but the ease with which these deeds were carried out as part of the social machinery. "I can't imagine there's anything I did that other lobbyists didn't do and aren't doing today," says Abramoff. It was all part of the strategy. DeLay's former staffer Michael Scanlon explains his campaign strategy in the Senate's recent Abramoff document dump:
"The whacko's get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees. ... Simply put, we want to bring out the whacko's to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The Abramoff Investgations and the exposure of undercover C.I.A agent Valerie Plame, thereby jeopardizing her position and her life, come as no surprise. The two affairs fit into an increasingly disturbing pattern of events perpetrated by America’s ruling class. That pattern can summed up with the phrase: “whatever it takes.” Whatever it takes to win. This is the rationality of domination. It is rational in the sense of being able to predict with greater certainty all desired results to win. It is a zero-sum game: somebody wins, somebody loses.It is the mode of action of the modern world. It is supported by norms that reinforce standards of victory, and make clear “better” moves. This type of rationality can be lethal if applied on a macro level. The executives of Enron sold their stock knowing the company was about to collapse but kept their employees’ retirement funds invested. As he did many times, Ken Lay would issue a statement or make an appearance to calm investors and assure them that Enron was headed in the right direction. Thousands of Enron employees and investors lost their life savings, kids' college funds, and pensions when Enron collapsed. To quote Weber “It is not the number of victims or the degree of cruelty that is distinctive; it is the fact that the acts committed are split from the consciousness of men in an uncanny, even a schizophrenic manner. The atrocities are done by men as "functions" of society--men possessed by an abstracted view that hides from them the human beings who are their victims and, as well, their own humanity. They are inhuman acts because they are impersonal. They are not sadistic but merely businesslike; they are not aggressive but merely efficient; they are not emotional at all but technically clean-cut.” In Part II, an analysis.