Back to Basics -- Part 2
Last time, we started a kind of conceptual reset, a recapitulation of the general points of this whole blog. Basically, we got through these two bullet points.
So if the Conservative Story and the Liberal Story are both fatally flawed, what really has been going on? How did we get into our multiple messes? Well, the broad brush strokes are these:
- Things are a mess. We're facing a series of interconnected, nested catastrophes, from the grand ecological scale down to the innermost emotions of individuals whose futures are evaporating in front of their eyes.
- The main two political approaches to these crises, the conservative and liberal stories, are unhelpful and cripplingly fragmented.
So far, so good. Before continuing on to a fuller understanding of our current position, a replacement of the major parties' narratives, it might be useful to recall why our politics has proven so impotent. As we discussed in a previous post ("Finally," 11/3/2008), our political landscape has been critically hampered by its own internal mechanics. Our winner-take-all Congressional districting creates a two-party duopoly, squashing out any attempts to inject new ideas via third parties. We thus end up with gerrymandered districts, the incumbent racket, and general public disinterest in local and Congressional races. The ridiculous Electoral College system, with its winner-take-all awarding of delegates (Maine and Nebraska excepted), make our national Presidential elections a harsh mockery, where the swing-state shuffle is pounded out to the same nauseating beat every four years. In our efforts to preserve our illusory free speech traditions, money is allowed to flow freely into our political campaigns, with the unsurprising result that those with more money to donate get their interests represented, while the rest of us are hung out to dry. The lack of large-scale public financing of elections and strong restrictions on political advertising, features of virtually every other advanced democracy, make the American political system into an unbelievably corrupt and shamelessly prepaid endeavor. Add to that the relentless conservative assault on the evils of big government (save the gigantic military establishment, which is magically immune from centralized, bloated inefficiencies and nefarious purpose), and you have the full recipe for popular American disgust with politicians and their "special interest" partners in crime.
Because of the fatal flaws mentioned above (check out a fuller list in the "Finally" post), our political system has been reduced to an electoral racket. As opposed to organs for serving the public interest, our two major parties have simply become money gathering and disbursing devices, with their primary goals being winning elections and rewarding those who contribute to elections with the appropriate budgetary carrots. A recent Frontline documentary on Lee Atwater laid out the naked electoral tunnel vision which has come to full fruition in today's Democrats and Republicans. In all the clips of Atwater, his friends, and his enemies, almost nothing was said about elected officials' sacred public trust, about their larger obligations to the truth and the general welfare of citizens. If lying helps win elections, do it. If a shady, quasi-treasonous activity will bring large sums of cash swirling into campaign coffers, let it rip.
This conversion of our main political parties into electoral uber-gadgets has seeped over into the mainstream media and political discourse in general. Everything is about the horse race, the angle to the next election. With the media, their obsession with elections is simple: (a) networks generate big money from political advertising, and (b) it's just easier to do. Media outlets can make huge bucks off elections, obviously. So the longer the campaign season is, the more revenue. It is in the media's interest, no matter what the outlet or political persuasion, to keep horse race motifs alive year round. Also, elections are easy to cover. It's hard to do in-depth investigative reporting or complex policy analysis set in an historical context. By contrast, it's easy to just call up a bunch of airtime-hungry pundits and have them spout off on candidates' wardrobes and what they think about what pols are thinking. I suggest www.dailyhowler.com, Bob Somerby's superlative site, to anyone who wants the full gory details of the lazy, millionaire, unaccountable mainstream media.
So we've got this money-drenched politics and a horse race-obsessed media. These twin pillars create the fake Conservative-Liberal polarity that leaches into our culture. The involved parties can make more money and generate more attention by stirring up conflict and division, especially in a world of anxious, fearful, powerless citizens looking for some explanation for their predicament. Conflict sells on TV and radio. No one wants to tune into nuanced exchanges of ideas, with respectful consideration of other points of view. Bigger ratings and larger contributions come from denouncing and demonizing your opponents as fascists, communists, traitors, socialists, or baby-killers. We come to believe that our country is a fevered battleground of Red vs. Blue, Real vs. Fake Americans. We increasingly come to get our news from partisan outlets, so that we never have to hear other voices. More and more folks are in cultural straitjackets and echo chambers, hearing only one of the two main narratives spooned out to us. This is the cardinal limitation of the Conservative and Liberal Stories: they have evolved only to win elections by exploiting people's anxieties, while the reality in the background continues its relentless march towards multi-faceted disaster. This is why things have gotten steadily worse over the last 35 years or so, through administrations and Congresses of both parties. While our Democrats and Republicans spun their tales and collected their cash, the real story was unfolding in gruesome detail.
So if the Conservative Story and the Liberal Story are both fatally flawed, what really has been going on? How did we get into our multiple messes? Well, the broad brush strokes are these:
- Since the mid-70s, impressive growth has essentially tripled the overall American economy
- During that same time, while absolute household income has gone up largely due to additional breadwinners, families have essentially gotten worse off, due to stagnant wages and huge increases in housing, health, and educational costs
- The American economy has transitioned from farming and manufacturing to softer "New Economy" jobs, such as retail, insurance, and marketing.
- A huge proportion of the economic growth from the last 35 years has come from building, connecting, and maintaining suburbia itself
- The entire American Algorithm project was made possible by large inputs of cheap oil: for transportation, heating/cooling, agriculture, and manufacturing
- Since the mid-70s, wealth and income has funneled relentlessly upwards, reaching 1920s levels of inequality
- Every major natural system has done into decline
So this is really our current situation. We have spent the last few decades creating a society and economy that has no real future, as presently configured. The American Algorithm has not worked economically, as families have become heavily indebted and alarmingly unsecure. It has not worked psychologically for individuals, as rising levels of mood-altering drug use, depression, and anxiety indicate. And it has certainly not worked ecologically, as our battered planet reels from overconsumption. We have put ourselves in a position where "getting the economy back on track," as Obama and everyone else seems to support, is both our only option and our downfall at the same time. Why would we want to return to a system that was steadily eroding the value and dignity of work, that was wiping out every last vestige of involved citizenship, that was spewing out vast swaths of cultural trash, and that was destroying the very biotic conditions that gave rise to our species in the first place? Why would we think that getting that all back on track would result in something different next time around? Why? Because there is no other vision of what a radically different future might look like. Voices in favor of reduced consumption, economic downsizing, relocalization, and community living are simply not heard. We need to start hearing those voices, in a hurry.
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