Illegal wire-tapping, millions of civilian telephone records turned over to the NSA, National Guard troops “temporarily” deployed on the Mexican border, “extraordinary rendition” of nameless suspects, “detainees” imprisoned in Guantanamo without due process, a limitless war on terror, an “axis of evil” — sounds like the President has been reading Michel Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended, a series of lectures given at the College de France that reverses Clausewitz’s famous aphorism and explores how “politics is war continued by other means.”
That President, however, is not George W. Bush. He’s Democrat Josiah Barlet, who departed The West Wing after two terms, seven seasons and a raft of Emmy nominations. Yes, in last night’s series finale, observant viewers spotted Foucault’s book among President Barlet’s private possessions.
I’ll leave it to TV critics to debate what this might signify. But note to the real Prez in case he decides to take the lead of his fictional counterpart and, uh, read: Though Society Must Be Defended “deals with the emergence…of a new understanding of war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power,” it is not a how-to manual.
