By Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Chief@ComeOnSense.com
www.ComeOnSense.com
As someone who came of age during the activism of the 60s, I have watched with amazement the rather successful attempts at domestication of the American electorate over the last four decades. Citizens have either withdrawn from engagement in the management and control of their government or found themselves with insufficient bandwidth to do so. Either way, the results are the same – a government which has become a force in and of itself – a citizenry which is often more subject to its government than the other way around – and an America which wanders further and further from the vision of the founding fathers.
In this current election cycle the talking heads have coined a new phrase – ‘knowledge light voters’. This phrase is used to identify voters who make their decisions based on party affiliation or because some talking head or media mouth said this or that. In other words, voters who don’t think for themselves and need to be told what to think and when to think it – and do not bridle under the whip. This description will resonate with those of you who have read George Orwell’s 1984. Most political theorists with a Machiavellian bent will also see the benefits of this development – ‘if you would control a population, first turn them in to compliant sheep.’ Big Brother is among us.
And it is sheep that the many American voters have become. Red and blue states are testaments to the fact that citizens are no longer capable of judging either candidates or issues on their merits. The party apparatus on both sides spews out their daily talking points – they hand the lists to the legions of ‘shoe salesmen’ who dutifully make the rounds of the talk shows – there they confront talk show hosts parading as ‘journalists’ – fielding softball questions (sometimes as along as twenty paragraphs) and getting the gruel out to the ‘knowledge light voters’ – who then rest easy because they now know what to think and when.
The very useful thing about ‘knowledge light voters’ is that the power centers can dispose of the need to even remotely reflect the truth of any matter. Instead ‘plastic truth’ or ‘manufactured truth’ becomes the coin of the realm. “It doesn’t make any difference if it is true – what matters is that they believe it to be true.” That’s the way one political operative recently put it to me. In other words, lets wag the dog. So the shoe salesmen go out with their daily wares. Their job is simple – the underlying message never changes – everything about the opponent is wrong and everything about our guy is right. The sell this load of crap and the talking heads – acting as combination eunuchs and pimps – facilitate the delivery.
The last eight years has seen a truly historic development. By many measures, we are now back to the situation which initially caused the American Revolution. It is ironic that the new King George would also bear the same name. And, although the current George may not be able to continue his reign, the damage that his administration has done to American possibilities may be sufficient to render that detail irrelevant.
It seems to me that the current administration entered office with two principal objectives. The first was to re-establish and perfect the imperial presidency that Richard Nixon advocated. In Nixon’s view, the federal executive was the senior of the three branches. The new ‘compassionate conservatives’ were determined to establish that model for all time – to fundamentally change the balance of power within the federal government. Given their successes – including almost totally neutering the Democratic opposition – they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Their second objective was to bust the budget deals – overcome Clinton’s balanced budget mandate – and begin aggressively re-distributing wealth from the middle class to the upper class. Here again they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Trillions of dollars have been looted from the public coffers and transferred to the allies and supporters of the new conservatives.
George Bush may be considered by historians a failed president but, in the minds of the people who matter, he has been one of the most successful in American history. He has lead an effort which has almost totally vanquished opposition to the two main objectives of his administration. The victory is one of the most stunning in American political history. But how did the administration do it?
In order to accomplish these objectives, they needed a group of what Lenin used to call ‘useful idiots’. They found two groups. The first was the neo-cons. These were useful because they advocated the establishment of an ‘American empire’ through the process ‘democratic imperialism’ – described by some as liberty under the business end of a gun. Following the idea that the most propitious way to effect major change is during a crisis, they used these ‘useful idiots’ as front-men in the successful effort to start a war. In the end, the Iraq was not about oil or bringing democracy to the Middle East – it was about creating the dynamics which would allow the establishment of an imperial presidency. And this ploy worked far better than the new conservatives could have hoped. The opposition was so weak and cowed, that effort after effort to increase the prerogatives of the executive went virtually unopposed. The American people now face a government which is far closer to that of King George II than that of George Washington – and America is in danger of becoming precisely what the colonists fled in order to seek a better life.
The second group of ‘useful idiots’ was the religious right. The deal which they made with the administration can only be called a deal with the devil. In exchange for their unyielding support they got almost no advances on issues which are important to them. They also got a bigger and more pervasive government, huge mountains of debt, their sons and daughters dying in a senseless war and the isolation of their country internationally as a bully. This group of serious and committed Americans learned the hard way that the president of the United States needs to be the Commander in Chief not the Pastor in Chief. Arguably, the very people who have supported the current administration most ardently have suffered the greatest under its policies.
American society is now at a crossroads and the decisions that we will make in the upcoming election will, more than most, determine what kind of country this will be during the first half of the 21st century. We now live under a government where loyalty oaths to the candidate have been required before entrance to a political rally will be granted, where protesters who are bearing signs with inconvenient messages are arrested and charged with trespassing (so much for freedom of speech), where the Justice Department is now so highly politicized that top ranking graduates from major law schools have been denied jobs because they might be a Democrat – or sympathetic to Democratic causes, where basic rights like habeas corpus are removed by the stroke of a pen, where both parties successfully conspire in an assault on the fourth amendment to the Bill of Rights and where the population studiously does its sheep imitation. All of this happens without any attempt to set things right or punish the people who systematically and intentionally violate the most basic laws of our society – in other words, they get away with it because we and our elected representatives allow them to.
Thomas Jefferson once observed that all societies – and particularly the American one – need to go through regular revolutions. It seems to me that Jefferson’s prescription is being put to the test during this election cycle. The question isn’t ‘is a revolution necessary’ – it is ‘do Americans have it in them anymore’? Ben Franklin observed that we have been given a republic if we can keep it. Nothing less is at stake during this election cycle.
For my part, I see dark clouds on the horizon. The disconnectedness and powerlessness that seems to have infected the American psyche is a major concern. The ambivalence to hope is another. Americans seem to have become decidedly un-American. When cynicism overbears hope, the tragic end of the American experiment cannot be far off. In the past, Americans have chosen hope over continuing along the old road – particularly one that has proven unwise, costly and dangerous. The candidacies of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan come to mind. But Americans now – at this critical time – seem to lack that ability to grasp onto hope and move forward on a new and upward path.
So the question before us is ‘have Americans become so domesticated that their taste of revolution is gone?” As Robert Frost observed in his poem The Road Not Taken,
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Our future, the world and future generations of Americans are awaiting the verdict. No matter which road is taken they will be ‘telling this with a sigh’. The only question remaining is whether they will also be telling it with pride or remorse.
Dr. Smith is a political and social theorist who lives in
Georgetown, Washington, DC
Entries (RSS)