OpEdNews - Article: The Implosion Of The American Political Consciousness

OpEdNews - Article: The Implosion Of The American Political Consciousness
...
In fact, the health of this country is tenuous, and that's on a real good day. All the obvious and tangible manifestations are there: massive unemployment, polarized wealth suitable for any banana republic, broken government and political system, environmental catastrophe and more. It's almost as if our goal is to commit national suicide in order to keep a whole next generation of Jared Diamonds employed or something.

These are huge problems, they are nigh on intractable, and they are destructive in the extreme. Indeed, so grim is our situation that the only real hope looking forward is for a resurgence of common sense and mutual sacrifice allowing for at least the possibility of finding the national will to address these crises.

But I'm afraid that's where things really start to get grim.

If you're under the age of forty, you might not realize that things weren't ever thus in American politics. The current ugly nature of our political discourse is perhaps simultaneously the greatest "victory' and greatest tragedy of the regressive revolution in America these last thirty years. Not only has the state itself been captured for purposes of thorough looting by oligarchs, but the very political consciousness of the nation has been diluted and polluted all while our faux patriotism is saluted beyond recognition.

Government is bad. Government always screws up. Corporations are heroic. Greed is good. Conservatism is about protecting freedom. Personal sacrifice for national improvement is for fools. Personal destruction is an appropriate form of politics. Hypocrisy is even more acceptable. There is one set of rules for elites, another for the rest of us.

All these form the fabric of our national ethos today, woven deeply into our political consciousness.

Regressives understand in ways that progressives tend to be clueless about, the simple idea that, who narrates governs. The explanation for the right's visceral appreciation of this wisdom is likely rooted in the survival instinct at the core of the human creature's very DNA. When you're peddling an absolutely absurd and destructive pile of bullshit, even dressing it up in pretty pink ribbons isn't going to be enough. If you hope to have any prayer of making the sale, you gotta teach people from their earliest days that turds are really, really valuable. Get yours now!

This was one of Orwell's most powerful perceptions in 1984, a book loaded with crucial insights about society, politics, government and human nature. The state could expend endless resources battling for the supremacy of a certain type of politics. That's one option. Or, far more cleverly, it could just remove the possibility of imagining alternatives from the public's consciousness. Much easier. Much cheaper. This is why Orwell concentrated so much on language in his novel. He understood that action requires desire, desire requires imagination, and imagination requires language.

American politics and political culture have descended into a grim visage from what they once were, to something taking a form today of which Big Brother could be proud. ...
...
What could be more basic than removing gushing profits and massive bureaucratic waste from a country's healthcare system, especially one that is groaning so clangorously under the burdens of runaway costs? What could be easier to figure out than nationalized healthcare, when every other developed country in the world already does it? And yet such ideas were nowhere remotely near consideration throughout these long months of tortuous negotiations over "reform' of what actually amounts to the care of corporate health in America. And yet even the most pathetic feints in the direction of real solutions a public option or the extension of Medicare benefits were immediately dispatched with, so that the profiteers' victory could be unequivocally complete.

Military spending is another excellent example. This country drops twice as much on "defense' as what is spent by every other country in the world combined, and we do that despite having not a single state enemy (you know, the kind you could actually use such a military against) anywhere on the horizon....
...
Our problem isn't that the Obama administration is socialist, but rather that it is a captive of the worst elements of capitalism.

Our problem isn't that our politicians make awful decisions that have nothing to do with advancing our interests, but rather that we keep tolerating politicians who do that.

Our problem isn't that we chose the wrong ideological alternative, but rather that we have so little to choose from.

Indeed, our deepest problem is that we can't even imagine anymore that there could be real choice. ...