President of the United States

Contains ideas some people may find offensive.

What a fascinating cyborg the President of the United States has become! Heads of state always had their vast networks of beings and things – “all the king's horses and all the king’s men” which, then as now, couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again. But the US President, or ‘POTUS’, as the internet has crowned him, is the boy with the most toys. The White House, the secret service, Air Force One, the Presidential Emergency Operations Centre bunker, not to mention all the military hardware connected through his role as ‘Commander in Chief’, which includes – for the last three Presidents – an army of killer robots that can assassinate anyone deemed worth killing in complete disregard for international law.

Now a lot of ink has been spilled, or rather, pixels enflamed, over just who carries the title ‘President of the United States’. And to be sure, this is a highly influential position, quite possibly living up to the sobriquet ‘most powerful man in the world’ (and for now, at least, it appears this role does require a penis). But there is something highly misleading about treating the vast cybernetic network surrounding the Oval Office as crystallising in the absolute power of the one individual. For it rather seems as if, with the state of, well, the States, the President is more akin to a rodeo clown clinging to a careening bronco, more engaged in clinging on than having the capacity to steer this lumbering behemoth of a nation in any specific direction.

The murderous drone fleet is a dead give away in this regard. It began under Bush Jr., escalated under Obama, and continues to do so under Trump. Now if we understand the President as being ‘in charge’, what are we to think? That all three men held in common a reckless disregard for human rights agreements the US had been instrumental in drafting? Or perhaps a strong desire to encourage terrorist recruitment and the entrenchment of ‘America’s enemies’? No, I doubt this is what we’re dealing with here. It seems vastly more likely that the institutions of state in the US, and the vast cybernetic network surrounding them, are beyond the direct influence of any elected official and that it is either impossible or at the very least tremendously challenging for any individual to steer it in new directions.

I love the United States, I love the ideals it was built upon, and I love its citizens, both liberal and conservative – I even married one. But I cannot buy into this story that the occupancy of the White House is the root problem with this once-great nation. I fear that POTUS is secretly IMPOTUS, and that the entrenched battle over who can sit in the top seat obfuscates a far more troubling crisis of communication and citizenship identity, and the horrifying absence of any honourable disagreement that might allow a politics that is something other than endless figurative and literal war.

A Hundred Cyborgs, #37

Comments

[dmf]

it's a sad state of affairs
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/u-s-officials-concerned-trump-discussing-sensitive-information-unsecured-cellphone-n924376