{"id":22162,"date":"2013-09-18T08:36:45","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T13:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22162"},"modified":"2013-09-18T08:36:45","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T13:36:45","slug":"the-transformation-of-the-presidency-to-a-dictatorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/09\/18\/the-transformation-of-the-presidency-to-a-dictatorship\/","title":{"rendered":"The transformation of the Presidency to a &#8220;dictatorship&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the October issue of <em>Reason<\/em>, Matt Welch talks to <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2013\/09\/17\/executive-branch-dictatorship\" target=\"_blank\">Jeremy Scahill<\/a> about the changes in the role of the President from mere executive branch head to virtual dictator:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Jeremy Scahill has emerged in 2013 as one of the most trenchant and scathing critics of President Barack Obama\u2019s prosecution of an open-ended war and unprecedented tactical framework launched by George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney. \u201cObama,\u201d Scahill writes in his new bestseller <em>Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield<\/em> (Nation), has gone from a candidate campaigning against Cheney\u2019s War on Terror abuses to a president guaranteeing \u201cthat many of those policies would become entrenched, bipartisan institutions in U.S. national security policy for many years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scahill\u2019s 642-page critique, and the accompanying IFC documentary of the same name, picks up the journalistic baton from late-Bush-era books such as Charlie Savage\u2019s 2007 <em>Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy<\/em> and Jane Mayer\u2019s 2008 <em>The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals<\/em>. But while those books helped galvanize an anti-imperial, pro-civil liberties left in opposition to Republican politicians, Scahill\u2019s tome, and his ongoing commentary on Twitter and for <em>The Nation<\/em>, stands as a harsh rebuke to those on the left who sold out those principles once Democrats regained power in Washington. \u201cI think if McCain had been elected,\u201d Scahill explains, \u201cliberals would be crying impeachment over some of the stuff that Obama has done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scahill, the 39-year-old author of the 2007 bestseller <em>Blackwater: The Rise of the World\u2019s Most Powerful Mercenary Army<\/em> (Nation), is steadfastly a man of the left \u2014 he has worked in the past with documentary polemicist Michael Moore and progressive <em>Democracy Now!<\/em> host Amy Goodman. But he\u2019s also a skilled and intense reporter with good sources inside the shadowy worlds of American special ops, rendition, torture, and assassination. If Democrats finally begin to hold the Obama administration to the standards by which they once judged its predecessor, Scahill will be a prominent reason why. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the October issue of Reason, Matt Welch talks to Jeremy Scahill about the changes in the role of the President from mere executive branch head to virtual dictator: Jeremy Scahill has emerged in 2013 as one of the most trenchant and scathing critics of President Barack Obama\u2019s prosecution of an open-ended war and unprecedented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,84,13],"tags":[158,668,257],"class_list":["post-22162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-government","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-georgewbush","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Ls","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22163,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22162\/revisions\/22163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}