"We are not only culturally confused, our confusion makes it difficult for us to even imagine our confusion." -- Introduction, The Populist Moment, Lawrence Goodwyn
I've been re-reading Lawrence Goodwyn's The Populist Moment at the suggestion of the brilliant George Goehl from National People's Action, though it seems lots of people I talk to are reading it right now, and for good reason. I'll write more soon about the general lessons I've taken from the book for mass mobilization in today's environment, but in the meantime, I'm thinking about the recent elections in Iraq and the recent turmoil between Obama and the Democrats and the left. Goodwyn describes how once-agrarian and revolution-prone nations like the United States sought through industrialization to centralize power and covertly quash any democratic impulses. The tool of such subtle domination is culture--"the creation of mass modes of thought that literally make the need for major additional social changes difficult for the mass of the population to imagine." Today, despite stolen presidential elections, Supreme Court rulings handing more political buying power to big business, and health care reform legislation that is fundamentally a good idea but repeatedly sunk by the greedy insurance industry, that we the people continue to buy into the modern myth of democracy simply allows oligarchy to persist unchallenged. As a populace, we are complicit in our silence.
The progress from the industrial age to the information age didn't change Goodwyn's thesis. In fact, it solidified it. Now we have supposed "digital democracy"--a democracy so strong and far-reaching that we can vote for America's next Idol and crowd source our news instead of relying on stodgy, fact-based reporting. In the era of the Populist movement and the industrial revolution, democracy was a dazzling distraction in the wake of hard-won enfranchisement for women and people of color and landless white men as well as new immigrants, and with rapid urbanization leading to a shared sense of public and investment in political participation never before realized. But we have turned the naïve illusion of real democracy into outright farce. Virtual democracy. Our votes count in Second Life so what does real life really matter?
Do the Iraqis really think that--in a political context where their country was destroyed by outside national and corporate interests and its greatest resources (like oil) sold to the control of major multinationals--picking between candidates of one tribe or another who are all in the corrupt pockets of the corporations means democracy is blossoming in Mesopotamia? While it was heartening to see millions of long-disenchanted Americans renew their spirit in electoral politics to rally around the candidacy of Barack Obama, is our general disappointment a year into his presidency any surprise--not as a reflection on the President himself but of the fundamentally elite, anti-democratic, pro-big business nature of our nation?
The result of the political consolidation of power, says Goodwyn, is the "gradual erosion of democratic aspirations among whole populations." Translation: We don't think much can change because we've lost faith that we the people can change things, we got our hopes up that Obama could ride into town and that he could change things, but we're in the middle of a rude awakening. Amidst an economic crisis that is causing double digit employment, record foreclosures, employers cutting benefits, Congress argues about whether to extend the most basic of unemployment benefits while handing out billions to the big banks. It's critical that we see this moment not as a unique snapshot in one new presidency amidst an economic downturn but rather a moment of truth bared in a too-long history of elite interests playing puppet with our government and deceiving us all that democracy is the rule.
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Money can't be kept out of politics. Money is the language of politics, and its lifeblood. For decades, too much money has flowed to the top of every economic hierarchy here, faster and faster, more and more. Now the oligarchy buys whatever it wants: elections, pols, governments, courts. But if the wealth generated here through work were distributed in the same proportions to management, stockholders and labor as it was in the conservative movement's favorite decade, the 1950's, there would be more money int he hands of the presently disenfranchised, and that money might be made to speak volumes in media and at election time. But of course, that's an argument few Americans will get a chance to hear.
Great leaders have been men and women of their time. They connected with the people. They rallied a cause.
We don't have that today.
That's part of the disappointment with Obama. He seems like the guy to be able to do that. But all he could do was rally support for himself. He lacked the vision and courage and sense of conviction. He never really had any ideas or a plan of action. That's clear now.
And so, we wait.
Until the money is removed, members of Congress will continue to spend most of their time passing out deposit slips to their checking accounts to readily willing corporations and special interests to effect legislation specific to their industry and continue the plundering of the American public.
Good article.
The world did not end then -- and won't now.
All these brains write books when our problems boil down to one word "CORRUPTION"
"We The People" are supposed to be in power, but we have let it be stolen from us like Jefferson, Eisenhower and many, many others warned.
t is the fault of lying politicians, our media, and most of all our ignorant, stupid citizens whose line of thought is no longer than a bumper sticker.
Blaming this and that politician does no good. The blame lies ultimately on American citizens. The only way to save our country is through campaign reform.
Corruption is not a problem in our government--it has become our system. Any politician HAS to play ball because "We the People" have let our democracy be stolen from us.
Until EVERYONE starts talking and blogging and marching for Campaign Reform we are just spinning our wheels discussing anything that might challenge the special interests.
Sally Kohn is full of crap. How dare she try to blame us for getting railroaded?
I've made plenty of noise in my time; how loud do we have to be? Shall we start killing bankers in the streets, kidnapping their children, raping their wives? That would be one way to get our voice heard. But there's this concept of "civilization" I'd prefer to heed.
Now what? The old answers--violent revolution, labor organization, mass protests in the streets--are obsolete and unworkable in the context of the Surveillance/Security/Propaganda State. No opposition can gain traction and there is no agreement on how to respond to the tacit assault on the Constitution and our system of governance--even those sworn to uphold it as their first responsibility have no understanding of it nor the inclination or courage to do so--they are the beneficiaries of the corruption and will never allow a threat to their hegemony. The worst among us have rigged the system to their complete advantage, transferred most of the wealth to themselves, corrupted the Congress and now even the Supreme Court is essentially sociopathic.
What now?
I feel a planetary brain is being born, and the kids (and those of us geezers capable of identifying with what they will try to do) are learning to function as brain ganglions. I hope Gaia will be appeased, because, quite frankly, right now I think she"s mightyly pissed off. . . I mean, five major earthquakes this year already?