Priorities, Revisited

" 'It was an attack not only against dedicated public servants but against citizens, one being a child,' said FBI Director Robert Mueller during an afternoon press conference. 'This was an attack on our institutions and an attack on our way of life.'

Loughner is charged with one count of attempted assassination of [a] member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to killing a federal employee."

Source.

(emphasis mine)

So:

Mueller treats citizens as a category separate from "public servants," reinforcing (perhaps unconsciously) the values assigned to persons in relation to the power of the state, determined by their roles, either as agents of the state, or as subjects of it. By relating those separated distinctions with a "not only," he makes clear exactly which consideration deserves the primary part - that of the "dedicated public servants." The "citizens" follow their masters in the hierarchy of value, relegated to a supporting role, used as emotional modifiers (he mentions only one citizen by role, that of a child) to elevate the import of the event as a moral justification for authority; adjuncts to the public cause of power, they serve Mueller precisely as needful victims, as props in a play condemning each and all threats to power. "See," he implies, "how dreadful is this attack on government? Even children and citizens have died."

I doubt he intended to strip away the pretensions which generally adhere to the shibboleths "government of the people" and "consent of the governed," but as a service to truth, however inadvertent, his slip deserves some credit. For a prince of policedom, like Mueller, the role means everything. Value depends upon identity with the power.

Mueller follows immediately with an appeal to shared experience, but one which he cannot but help to define as a member of the enforcement caste of the ruling class: enraged gunmen, to Mueller, do attack not persons. They attack "institutions." They threaten the application of power, and the beliefs people have about how those who rule, and those who enforce the rules of others. A striking admission, again likely unconsidered, by the federal law enforcement chief. Mr. Loughner's actions Mueller treats not as the murder of people, but an assault on a way of life, he asserts, common to three hundred million individuals. As the enforcer for the President, Mueller knows exactly what this means. That "way of life" depends upon the belief in fictions: nation, country, State, law, Americanness.

Fictions which all stand in for, in some way or another, obedience.

For Mueller, Mr. Loughner's rampage does not represent the killing of innocents. It cannot. Mueller has devoted his memories, his fealty, and nearly his entire adult life to the enforcement of federal law. To power. For FBI Director Robert Mueller, Mr. Loughner's actions damage the State itself. They undermine power - the obedience to authority, the sheepish acceptance of austerity, the blandishments of patriotism and cheap jingoism, which best describe that "way of life" he insists we all share. But, he does not mean common bonds of labor, or love, of experiences with a human perspective. Robert Mueller means, and he makes it plain: the power which I serve.

For Mr. Loughner's immediate victims, in their dead flesh and in the absence where minds once teased out the experience of self and world, no such "way of life' exists. Mr. Loughner acted, human persons became corpses. In their remains, the lie of the shared "way of life" to which Mueller alludes puts its own untruth to the test. Dead, they serve the needs of Mr. Mueller. Alive, he knew them as roles, or did not know them at all.

The order of power Mr. Mueller serves - willingly, of his own choice and effort, and with great reward - does not define persons as persons. It defines them as ranks.

And in that light Mr. Mueller's priorities reveal themselves as no less than the worship of power. The law he enforces, which he has used in order to translate Mr. Loughner's reprehensible act into an exercise of power, into an increase in power and the likely expansion of the military-police state, defines dead bodies as roles, roles which have value only in relation to their usefulness to the State.

And for Mueller - or Obama, or Weepy McBoehner, or Limbaugh, or the maligned and still contemptible Sarah Palin - that means as servants of power.

Mr. Loughner won't lose his freedom, or his life, for killing and wounding women and men.

That's not a priority for Robert Mueller, nor for his boss, nor for those who patronize them into positions of power.

Mr. Loughner will face the judge - and perhaps the executioner - for killing and attempting to kill those who rule...