[NYTr] How Gonzales Destroyed the American Dream

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

New America Media via Alternet - Sep 4, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/61519/


How Gonzales Destroyed the American Dream

By Roberto Lovato

Alberto Gonzales went down dreaming.

While announcing his resignation earlier this week, Alberto Gonzales
deployed one of his most powerful and romantic rhetorical weapons. "I
often remind our fellow citizens that we live in the greatest country
in the world and that I have lived the American dream," he stated.
"Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my
father's best days."

More than any public official in recent memory, the often smiley and
sometimes smirking Gonzales -- and his supporters -- consistently
framed his story as a brown embodiment of the American dream.

His rise from "extremely poor" circumstances in his hometown of Humble,
Tex. became the stuff of small-town myth-making and tear-inspiring
speeches in Washington corridors, especially on those occasions when he
had to be confirmed -- or rebuked -- by Congress.

During Gonzales' nomination, Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a fellow
Texan, said, "The nomination of Judge Alberto Gonzales to serve as our
nation's 80th attorney general -- and our first of Hispanic descent --
is the American dream come true."

Following the Tejano Horatio Alger script, many -- but not all -- of
the leaders of the largest Latino organizations lent their credibility
to the Gonzales dream story. Hector Flores, former national president
of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) called Gonzales
"the American dream personified." Janet Murguia, president of the
National Council of La Raza (NCLR), said his was "a compelling American
success story."

As we watch the Gonzales' compelling personal story wind down to a
tragicomic resolution, it becomes clear that the meaning behind his
smile and the moral of his story has nothing to do with whether or not
he expanded the American dream (he didn't). It has everything to do
with manipulating his story while he did the dirty work of defending
powerful interests against the death of the dream.

Rather than look at his story through the looking glass of political
and media spin, it is best to view the story from the vantage point of
its authors: the rich and powerful.

Viewed from the optic of elite political and corporate interests, who
know better than anyone of the death of the American dream (they are,
after all, the ones who created and killed it), Alberto Gonzales did
his job.

He may have left too much evidence of state-sanctioned torture and
lying and malfeasance and corruption (he may also still be put on trial
for perjury in the attorney firing scandal).

But he did what he was supposed to. More than anyone, he was
responsible for securing the legal systems necessary to better control
a citizenry that was increasingly angry and frustrated at big
government and big business for destroying the American dream. his saga
provides an object lesson in how to hide elite interests behind a
dreamy haze of real-life ethnic success stories.

While many of us were debating whether or not the son of migrant
workers was or wasn't the embodiment of the dream, he worked loyally --
as fiercely as his farm worker parents -- to lay the legal foundation
to make it easier to snoop on, arrest, prosecute and jail a population
growing less and less patient with the status quo.

In the time it took most of the country to admit that it no longer
believed in the dream -- a July poll by veteran pollster Celinda Lake
found that only 18 percent of people in the country believe they are
living the American dream -- Gonzales prepared for the fallout by
helping fashion the Patriot Act. This made it easier for government to
define as "domestic terrorists" those who choose to speak out against
the Iraq war and other dream (and budget)-killing policies.

While Hollywood and Washington tried to keep the global dream machine
working, Gonzales crafted the legal rationale for the global nightmare
exemplified by Abu Ghraib. As more and more people joined the ranks of
the uninsured -- 9 million since Bush was elected in 2000 -- Gonzales
facilitated the government's ability to access intimate medical,
financial and other personal records.

As banks foreclose on the homeownership part the American dream,
Gonzales worked feverishly to set up the conditions to keep the now
thoroughly politicized Justice Department in the business of denying
fundamental rights like habeas corpus and jailing more citizens and
non-citizens, especially blacks and Latinos, than any other country.

If the country takes a more democratic direction, future retellings of
the scandal-laden Gonzales tale may institutionalize the storyline
about a Tonto-like, up-from-the-bootstraps friend falling on the sword
for a failed administration.

But if history continues along the conservative, even reactionary,
course favored and advocated by many in the Bush-Cheney era, smiley
Gonzales may yet have the last laugh as we continue to live under the
boot of unprecedented legal structures designed to rein in what the
elite haves clearly consider a threatening -- and rapidly growing --
populace of have-nots.

What the ultimate moral of the Gonzales story becomes depends on
whether we are ready to not just to accept the death of the American
dream, but to take part in dispelling whatever illusions of it are left.

Principal among the illusions still held by many Latinos, for example,
is the old-school practice of ethnic politics propped up by many major
Latino organizations, most of whom stood by Gonzales until March of
this year before saying they were "reconsidering" their support for him.

Like the immigrant rights activists still seeking basic rights for the
undocumented, Latinos must draw on the traditions of justice in our
newspapers: Latino papers like Los Angeles' La Opinión and New York's
El Diario/La Prensa denounced Gonzales from the beginning. And their
pages have, for many years, told thousands of stories about poor
migrants and their children making a difference.

Compare that with Hispanic magazine's designation of Gonzales as the
"Hispanic American of the year" in 2005, well after he became the
person most responsible for policing, prosecuting and jailing more
Latinos -- including poor farm workers -- and non-Latinos than anyone
in U.S. history.

Despite the tragedy and comedy of it all, Gonzales' scandalous story
offers us an opportunity to dispel obsolete notions, like the dreamy
idea that government is looking out for the little guy -- or that
ethnic politics can only be played one way -- and other dangerous ideas
rooted in the American dream he embodied.


[Roberto Lovato former director of CARECEN, representing Central
American immigrants and refugees, is a New York based writer and an
associate editor at New America Media. ]

© 2007 Independent Media Institute.