Cloning Scapegoats: Martha Stewart Does Insider Trading

Since the fall of the World Trade Center (WTC), the Bush administration has been preoccupied with restoring America's penetrated and violated homeland to its imagined position as a providentially inspired nation of unsurpassed might. A state of emergency has been declared in the name of the war on terror and fiscal crisis. These operations have been guided and justified by an apparently decisive, yet slippery moral code sharply delineating good and evil, the foreign and domestic, as well as danger and safety. Moreover, at any given moment, the perceived level of threat the providential homeland faces from evildoers, foreigners, aliens, and dissenters can be gleaned through a color-coded warning system. Within the current moral framework there is little room for nuance, analysis, or ambiguity. At the same time these Manichaean typologies are broad and vague enough to allow for a fluid and ever-shifting series of targets to be demonized or exonerated.

As demonstrated by the overabundance of evidence presented in the media, promises made in the name of domestic peace and security are managed through measures that more accurately perpetuate insecurity for all but a very few patriots. Through state-sanctioned measures like racial profiling, the withholding of civil liberties, the suspension of the rule of law, and the declaration of preemptive war, the alien and foreigner are hunted down. Coveted dimensions of democracy have been suspended under the auspices of protecting the sanctity and purity of the domestic, familiar, and like-minded. After a year and a half of such authoritarian measures being implemented with impunity, fear and insecurity have escalated with no end in sight—even on the sanctified home front.

Two recent events point to the state of insecurity and danger that is being propagated domestically. Since the summer of 2002, fear has been generated by the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, which, in the name of preempting terror, encouraged citizens to spy on their neighbors and colleagues and on strangers in order to report suspicious behavior, no matter how trivial. More recently, in its racialized assumption that evil and terror are rooted in Islam, the Bush administration deemed the Muslim holiday of hajj a period of heightened threat to homeland security. Code orange was declared, ranking the level of alert at its second-highest degree. American citizens were advised to buy emergency staples, plastic sheeting, and duct tape for the purposes of sealing themselves in their homes and protecting against a biochemical weapons attack. While the biochemical attack has yet to occur, the stock price of duct-tape and plastic suppliers has skyrocketed.

These incidents suggest that an ever intrusive regime of discipline and punishment overshadows peace and democracy. One of the methods used to suspend many people in a state of insecurity has been scapegoating, which has failed to discriminate between high-profile enemies and ordinary citizens. For example, to link the war against Iraq to the events of September 11, White House officials claim that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are plotting together against the United States. This rationale, used to justify war in Iraq, is highly spurious, as it is well known that the secular Hussein and the religious bin Laden have little love for one another. Associating Hussein with the events of September 11 is just the latest in the Bush administration's ongoing attempt to fulfill its long-term obsession with deposing Saddam Hussein. On the other end of the spectrum, according to new immigration special-registration rules, any male age sixteen or older who was born in, or has a passport for, countries listed as perceived enemies of the United States must submit to being interviewed, photographed, and fingerprinted by immigration officials every year. These regulations have, and will, lead to questionable deportations and incarcerations of many innocent men. Making a public example of a broad array of people, ranging from ordinary American citizens to dissenters, undocumented workers, and refugees, as well as powerful and corrupt leaders, creates an...