All of which is to say, there has been far more and far deeper continuity between Bush and Obama than there has been any sort of fundamental change. As is to be expected on the national security/state secrets front, Glenn Greenwald has already penned two excellent posts on this matter, “WH forces P.J. Crowley to resign for condemning abuse of Manning” on Sunday and “The clarifying Manning/Crowley controversy” today.

Rather than rehash any of the considerable territory that he has already covered, I want to hone in on an underlying question that I feel he somewhat glosses over due to his own ideological orientation. (Glenn often gives the impression it’s apparently unsurprising hypocrisy ala “both sides do it”.) That is the question of why and how Obama continues to get by with so little criticism and opposition from his activist and voter base. It’s not that people are entirely silent, but that critical voices who do exist have not made a meaningful impact on the broader mass of activists and/or voters. Obama continues to be perceived more as a liberal than a centrist, and liberals continue to support him disproportionately, despite his clearly center-right policies, not just on national security, but across a broad range of policy areas, including such central ones as economic and foreign policy, on both of which he is well to the right of Bush Sr. and relatively close to Bush Jr.

As Greenwald himself reminds us in several instances, there is a particularly striking disonnect between Obama’s campaign rhetoric and his actual governing practice:

It’s long been obvious that the Obama administration’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers “comes from the President himself,” notwithstanding his campaign decree — under the inspiring title “Protect Whistleblowers” — that “such acts of courage and patriotism should be encouraged rather than stifled.” …. Other than Obama’s tolerance for the same detainee abuse against which he campaigned and his ongoing subservience to the military that he supposedly “commands,” it is the way in which this Manning/Crowley behavior bolsters the regime of secrecy and the President’s obsessive attempts to destroy whistleblowing that makes this episode so important and so telling.

And:

Elsewhere, The Philadelphia Daily News‘ progressive columnist Will Bunch accuses Obama of “lying” during the campaign by firing Crowley and endorsing “the bizarre and immoral treatment of the alleged Wikileaks leaker.” In The Guardian, Obama voter Daniel Ellsberg condemns “this shameful abuse of Bradley Manning,” arguing that it “amounts to torture” and “makes me feel ashamed for the [Marine] Corps,” in which Ellsberg served three years, including nine months at Quantico.

This immediately struck a chord with me, since one of the more noteworthy findings of Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics by Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler was that Obama voters during the primary were considerable more non-authoritarian than Clinton voters. (Greenwald himself called this “a certain-to-be-controversial chapter” in the book.)

To understand what’s going on here, I think one other factor that Hetherington and Weiler draw attention to needs to be considered, concerning what is most salient about authoritarianism. Quoting from a passage in the book that I quoted in my own comments as part of the TPMCafe discussion of the book:

Our treatment places a need for order at the center. Much emerging work in cognitive science depicts a struggle in all humans to achieve clarity in the face of confusion. To use terms more often used by social scientists, people hope to impose order on ambiguous situations….

Thinking about authoritarianism in terms of order rather than authority itself also helps explain why those scoring high are more inclined to simplify the world into black and white categories while those scoring lower in authoritarianism feel more comfortable with shades of gray. Black and white categories provide order. So, too, does a propensity to submit to authorities, but only to those who promise a black and white understanding of the world. Authoritarians do not view Barack Obama as the same type of authority as, say, George W. Bush. Hence it is not so much the submission that is important but rather a preference for concreteness that is important.

Bush’s language was the very essence of concreteness, as well as dividing the world strakly into black and white. Obama’s language was quite the opposite. And yet, as soon as Obama took power, his actions began paralleling Bush’s actions, rather than his own rhetoric. The reason for this can be seen as quite pedestrian, tracing back to an underlying consistency: Even from the beginnings of Obama’s campaign, he was very concerned about controlling the message and maintianing the discipline of his campaign–arguably even obsessively so. He even managed to convince major donors and outside organizations to silence themselves and allow his campaign virtually exclusive message control over everything coming from the Democratic side.

Thus, even as the campaign encouraged vigorous discussion and “bottom-up input” in its online fora, this had virtually no role in the broader campaign. It could even be seen as a way of allowing supports to ‘let off steam’ so as not to get in the way of the “grownups”. Indeed, within weeks of taking power, Obama completely dispensed with taking any notice of such input, first rejecting calls for holding Bush/Cheney war criminals accountable, then mocking his own supporters for calling for the decriminalization of marijuana.

It’s often been noted that Obama seems to care more about process than end results, and so it’s completely consistent for his own authoritarian bent to emerge almost effortlessly out of his organizational penchant for a smoothly-running machine. For him, much more than Bush or Cheney, it’s the order side of things that drives his authoritarianism, even though the black-and-white categories he ends up embracing are not rooted in anything deeper than the backroom political battles inside his own administration.

Most of his liberal supporters still have yet to catch on precisely because Obama’s authoritarianism comes out of left field for them–not just from a purported “liberal” who even now uses more sophisticated language most of the time, but from someone motivated more by a bureaucrtic need for control in line with battles waged behind closed doors along lines that are often being fluidly redrawn according to criteria that are difficult for non-partipant to follow. Of course, participants and active critics see things quite differently. The numerous parallels between Bush and Obama that Greenwald draws attention to are anything but obscure to active, engaged critics. But decades of research tell us quite clearly that the mass public doesn’t read politics based on this sort of information. Obama’s manner–as well as his most prominent critics–continus to reinforce his appearance as a non-authoritarian, carefully considering and balancing a wide range of factors.

The big picture take-away here is that authoritarianism has gained such a pervasive foothold among the American ruling class that it is no longer even possible for a substantively non-authoritarian political position, actor, organization or movement to be recognized as such. Non- (or even anti-)authoritarian spoofs, set-pieces and fantasies by authoritarian actors of one stripe or another have completely taken over the roles of their authentically anti-authoritarian counterparts, and this is every bit as true of Obama as it is of the Tea Party, however much they may differ from one another in any number of other ways.

When a genuinely non-authoritarian movement arises–such as the mass opposition to Walkers’ Wisconsin coup–the political elites are completely flummoxed by it, and aside from falling back on hackneyed authoritarian-projection stereotypes of “union thugs” and “union bosses” they have literally nothing to say, and consequently simply decide not to cover what they cannot understand.

This, then, is the deeper sense in which the Manning/Crowly Affair reveals the fact that truth is not an option in American political life today.

You may never heard of a radiological dispersal device (RDD). That’s because it’s more often referred to as a dirty bomb. Come to think of it, many don’t even know it by that name, however provocative. (Think of it recited by the English woman in the Orbit gum commercial: Duh-ty Bomb.)

A dirty bomb, though, bears no resemblance whatsoever to a sex bomb. “Dirty” means it’s contaminated with radiation. Which is why you may not be familiar with it. Because it’s not a true nuclear weapon, the RDD is not accorded the level of attention it deserves as a threat comparable to terrorists detonating a nuclear bombs in a U.S. city. But, as long as it’s obscured by the threat of a nuclear explosion, its construction and transport, already much less challenging than with a nuclear weapon, can be expedited.

The fatalities caused by detonation of an RDD likely wouldn’t exceed those caused by a moderate-sized conventional bomb. But clean-up would cost billions and, as for psychological terror sowed by the incident, the “value-added” for the protagonists would be off the charts.

The reason an RDD is easier to create, of course, is because it doesn’t require highly enriched uranium like a nuclear weapon, which has become next to impossible to procure since the nuclear black market was crippled in the wake of Pakistan’s nuclear godfather, A.Q. Khan’s, bust for selling nuclear knowhow and technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Materials that are simply radioactive, on the other hand, can be obtained from radioactive sources used for industrial, medical or research purposes.

Another reason that the RDD threat isn’t taken seriously may be because the creation of one has never been verified. The closest any group has come was in 1995 when Chechen rebels deposited a container of cesium-137 in a Moscow park. They chose not to open it and disperse the radioactive material, content instead to simply demonstrate what they were capable of.

In a recent Nonproliferation Review (subscription only) article titled “Preventing Dirty Bombs: Addressing the Threat at the ‘Source’,” Charles Streeper, an international coordinator at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, addresses the RDD threat.

Despite the high consequences of an RDD attack, scant attention has been paid to the dangers posed by the large number of poorly regulated sources that can now be found in nearly every country. The problem has stagnated for decades; news media have reported only selectively on the topic, focusing mainly on serious contamination incidents, and the subject has been excluded from most articles on global security and nonproliferation policy.

But, as a kind of starter weapon of mass destruction, isn’t it beneath, say, al Qaeda? Not necessarily, writes Streeper.

. . . a terrorist group would prefer a nuclear weapon, but an eventual inability by a group to steal or create and use a nuclear weapon might make radiological sources an attractive alternative. . . . there are references to Al Qaeda seeking a radiological weapon. In fact, the group has already resorted to and shown a preference for smaller-scale weaponry and attacks.

It’s hard enough making sure enriched uranium is locked down and accounted for, especially in the former Soviet Union states. But, to give you an idea of the magnitude of the task of tracking radioactive material, Steeper reports that within the United States alone two million licensed sources of radioactive material exist. Further complications arise because

. . . the beneficial applications of sources in the medical, industrial, and agricultural fields should not be impeded. Measures simply have to be put in place to ensure that those beneficial uses are fairly balanced by proper management of dangerous sources throughout their entire life cycle.

That’s easier said than done. Streeper explains.

The international community can depend neither on commercial mechanisms nor the inconsistent implementation of individual states’ regulatory systems to control the life cycles of sources worldwide.

Though the industry doesn’t sufficiently regulate itself (bet you’ve heard that one before), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) formulated a code and, Streeper writes, “its guidelines are positive steps toward a framework for cradle-to-grave management for the life cycle. [But] the drawback is that the Code lacks the legal weight of the NPT [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].” The solution? “A new, legally binding treaty negotiated at an international convention, modeled using key aspect of the [aforementioned IAEA] Code.”

Another treaty? Especially at a time when New START barely squeaked through the Senate ratification process, despite how watered down it was and compromised by giveaways to the nuclear-weapons industry? And when the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty seem to be going nowhere fast?

But since it doesn’t address nuclear weapons themselves, tied up as they are with a state’s notion of national security — and with some states, their very identities — a treaty might find easier going. Besides, the NPT, despite being violated and ignored at times, has, arguably, been as integral as deterrence to the prevention of states from attacking each other with nuclear weapons. A treaty on radioactive sources might create just enough of an obstacle to keep non-state actors or criminals from securing them.