Watching this presidential election unfold is close to convincing me that democracy, at least as it is practiced in the United States of America, is untenable. Most of the people in the US are opposed to the war, to Obama's drone war, (and to having drones flying overhead "protecting" us), are not overtly racist or sexist, think that women should be paid commensurate with men for the same job, shudder at the idea of child labor, don't care if gay people get married, and believe that freedom of religion does, in fact, include freedom from religion. (Even though most cling to some god belief and would not actually vote for an atheist.) Yet somehow, in a supposed democracy, none of this is reflected much in American political circles.
It may be that what we like to call "democracy" in the US is nothing of the kind. The SCOTUS, institutionalizing what has been a long trend in American politics, sanctioned bribery and political corruption as having been written into the Constitution. I think an argument can be made (and should be made somewhere by someone that matters) that Citizens United was an act of treason; betraying the people of the United States by openly selling the political system to the highest bidder. The result is that only candidates vetted by the richest of the rich make it onto the ballot. When it comes to Presidents the voter is left with a choice between an Ivy-league trained, corporate sanctioned, very wealthy Republican; or an Ivy-league trained, corporate sanctioned, very wealthy Democrat. That same money, that same vetting, flows all the way down to State Houses and Governor's mansions.
Admittedly that is not much of a choice and we are left with a kind of sham democracy; depressingly reminiscent of elections held in places like the old Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. One could vote, but the voting did not mean anything. On the other hand one might suggest that, as a voting group, us Americans are simply not very bright. Corrupt as the system has become, as unresponsive as it is to the actual desires of the majority, we keep voting for the same basic crew; Nixon (Ford) - R8, Carter - D4, Regan - R8, Bush I - R4, Clinton - D8, Bush II - R8, Obama - D4. Why?
Maybe it is us voters. We decry dependence on foreign oil, then buy SUVs and get all puffed up with indignity at idea that the evil government should set mileage standards. We struggle under the weight of our health care costs then smoke, drink, and get fatter every year. We can barely afford our housing costs yet, for many of us, most of the rooms in our homes go unused much of the time. We work harder and harder every year, (its called "being efficient"), bitch as our share of the economic pie shrinks and then vote in "business leaders" who eviscerate unions and cut any regulations that impinge on corporate profits; be they worker safety and compensation laws, or environmental protection laws. We have, all of us, drunk deeply of the cool-aid that "The business of America is Business" while apparently forgetting that whole, "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" thing. We actually believe that unrelenting exponential growth, on a planet with fixed and limited resources, is somehow a sustainable economic model that is necessary for us to buy happiness.
We constantly vote against our own economic, political, and social interests. Working folks vote in corporate lackeys. Religious people vote for people who follow a different religion and who would restrict religious freedom if they could. (I don't understand why the Protestant will vote in the militant Catholic thinking that, somehow, the Catholic will protect the right to reject the Pope's teachings. Meanwhile, the agnostic or atheist humanist who insists of the freedom of all religion, is somehow the threat.) People who embrace the institution of marriage in a society rapidly abandoning marriage as a necessity for either happiness or love, vote in those who seek to restrict the types of people who can get married. Women overwhelmingly vote for men who would restrict the rights of women. Men overwhelmingly vote for other men who are sure to send their sons and daughters off to yet another completely ludicrous (and if recent history is any guide) un-winable war.
It may be that we are collectively stupid. But I like to remember that we are also, still, a race of children; a country of children; and we watch a lot of TV. And lets be honest; TV is not entertainment. It is relentless social, political, and economic propaganda. We should constantly remind ourselves of this one, universal, unrelenting fact - whenever we look at a TV screen the odds are overwhelming that someone is lying to us. They have an agenda and our well being is not included, or even considered. What we see is ugly, hate, prejudice, endless violence, simplistic resolutions to contrived conflicts, pure political bullshit, human beings held up as "normal" who don't look or act anything like the human beings we see in real life, and the most manipulative enticements to consumerism that unlimited money can produce and project.
Think of this rather silly deception that fills our TV screens; no matter how many beauty products we buy, no matter how many exercise machines we order, no matter what kind of food we eat - we will never look like the people in the ads. Hell, even the people in the ads don't look like the people in the ads. We can be healthy, we can be happy, we can be beautiful and attractive as real human beings, but we are never going to look like that.
But the TV has convinced many of us that; 1) We might look like that if we buy what they suggest and, 2) if we do we will be happy. So we continue to watch the TV, buy the stuff they suggest, and wait to be happy. Maybe it is time to turn this thing around?
If we turn off the TVs, or at least watched them with an unrelenting skeptical eye, we would do a lot to move away from being children. We would cut off the most direct route of political corruption enshrined by the Supreme Court, that of TV advertising. Political machines cannot buy our vote if we are not watching their TV ads. Thirty second political ads are propaganda so pure they would have embarrassed Hitler; served up straight from the witch's brew of Citizens United, Madison Ave, and Hollywood. They should, each and every one of them, be an insult to our intelligence (even limited as that may be). We should be offended. We should be so insulted that we just turn it off. If the cost of watching "Dancing With the Stars" is being subject to the latest Republican and Democratic political vitriol, the return on investment is way to low. The rest of the advertisements are not much better.
Go a step further, take a moment and imagine a world without commercial TV. It is a magical place. Children play outside, use their imaginations for toys and games and explorations of the real world, interact with real human beings. Adults who want to know something about something go look it up. By that process alone much of the bullshit would be winnowed away. Instead of a 30 second helping of nonsense people would read parts of, or maybe the whole, of a candidate's latest campaign speech. (You can look it up on the Internet or get a U-tube feed of the actual event.) Direct, him to us, without some talking head getting in the middle to explain what the candidate really said. What? I heard what he fucking said, who asked you?
Where would a normal person go to learn about evolution? Maybe read a little by someone who has studied biology? Who would give much of a care about what a basically uneducated TV preacher says about biology and earth history? A political leader who claims to be an Young Earth Creationists should be as unelectable as one who insists that the earth is flat and that the sun orbits around us. (And please tell me the flat earth guy is unelectable or all is truly lost.)
We don't live in that imaginary world. Instead we live in a world where barely educated, TV zombied, propaganda mesmerized blocks of voters put sorry excuses for human beings in charge. We do that. Our democracy does that. And we need to do better.
We need a better vision than the one provided by mass media. One of the TV programs I have watched once in a while (over the Internet where I don't have to suffer commercials) is a "reality" program called "The Deadliest Catch." A wanna-be live aboard sailor, anything that has much to do with boats and big open water will catch my eye for a little while anyway. But you know what? Most of my reaction to the show is, "How can these Captains be such utterly incompetent leaders?" I don't see hard men doing a hard job in the face of Mother Nature. I see arrogant little pricks, often utterly irresponsible, lording over their freezing deck hands from cozy, warm, wheelhouses. Surly we can come up with better heroes, better examples of leaders and adventures, than these. My assumption is that these guys aren't really like this - it is TV after all. I mean, would you put up with such shit or just toss the jackass overboard and drive the boat home?
Maybe that's the vision we need for our democracy. Toss the jackass(s) overboard. Drive the boat home.
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