What has become of democracy?
October 29th, 2007 by I.C.
What has become of democracy? Such nobility in human ideas is rare, and it would be a splendid thing to live in a democracy. But that is not what we have in America.
Democracy has become a spectacle to be an observed, no longer an act of participation. Every four years we proceed with a charade where we pretend to pick the most qualified individual to hold the office of executive of the republic, when we end up selecting the person best packaged and sold. This cannot be a controversial idea anymore. Is anyone in America currently happy with the current President? Yet around 50% of voters picked this man in two different elections. His intelligence, charisma, prose, and demeanor were no secret from anybody. Almost certainly, there were smarter people running. Without a doubt there were smarter people who were not.
Now, we do this again for the next four years. We have an African American, a Woman American, and a Mormon American, all top contenders, all representing repackaged policies that benefit only the privileged. You can sum these candidates up in three words: deficits and empire.
Democrat or Republican? Coke or Pepsi? Nike or Reebok? Can anyone really tell the difference? A schoolmate once told me he liked Pepsi better than Coke because Mike Tyson was the spokesperson for Pepsi. Anything Mike Tyson drank, he wanted to drink. This is really the basic principle behind modern elections as well. Marketing equals electoral governance — and instead of rejecting this notion as the puerile conformist claptrap it represents, we embrace it and celebrate it as a value worth spreading to others.
Democracy has become synonymous with total management. Instead of taking care of ourselves, we look for other people to manage us, to baby us, to protect us from all that might hurt us so that we can continue our lives dedicated to shopping and TV. Every aspect of your life — from how you get to work, to planning for your retirement — is dictated to you by corporate or governmental forces. You have one place to get food: your corporate grocery store, powered by Mexican immigrant slave labor. You have one choice of fuel — oil — to power your car and to manufacture your consumer products, all of which are made with plastic, a derivative of oil. And you have one place to stick your money for retirement, your 401(k) account, dependent on the stock market remaining a viable place to invest (an increasingly shaky assumption).
So, everything is managed and brought to you so that you can dedicate yourself to tactile stimulation. Wonderful thing, this democracy, no? Now suppose oil prices increase for some reason — war or resource depletion, two very likely prospects. How are you going to get to work? How are consumer goods going to be manufactured? How will your food get to your grocery store and then to your house? Great questions, none of which you can answer because the powers that be haven’t thought these things out, which, in this totally managed society, means you haven’t thought about it either.
What are you going to do when you get old? You are probably giving a good deal of money to complete strangers — through tax dollars or in a 401(k) investment plan — to handle your savings and retirement. Will those strangers be there for you when you’re choosing between the nursing home and your estranged daughter’s basement at 85? Because your private health insurance won’t cover anything better than that. By the time you’re 85, it won’t cover much of anything. Democracy means getting old and worthless, and living your last years in abject pain and suffering, a burden on those you love. That is the best this democracy can offer you, but you’ll take it because that’s the life your managers have offered you.
Total management gives to Americans a false peace of mind. For we are not really safe, or free. How does invading other countries make us safer? Attacking other people in the interest of peace is an interesting concept, but it is one that most rational 8 year olds would reject. Today, it is embraced. Is this what we mean by security? Is the well intentioned but hopelessly lost high school graduate who screens your luggage at the airport the best democracy can give us?
We are coddled infants who would prefer the benign paternalism of military-industrial America, brought to you by Kodak/GE/Ford, then the tough task of freedom. Yes, it is inconvenient to take care of yourself — but that’s what it means to be a truly free person. Self-reliance is the linchpin of democracy, yet it is nowhere to be found.
Democracy has become surveillance instead of privacy. In order to be managed, you have to give up your personal boundaries so that your superiors can know how to take care of you, since they (naturally) know what is in your best interest. So, in America, we have entered the Age of Total Surveillance, and there is rejoicing in the streets. The government sifts through your phone records, email and Internet history, working hand-in-hand with phone companies to ensure order throughout society. “What do the innocent have to worry about?” — the old adage of the ignorant. For there are no innocents in a surveillance society, only the small divide between those already targeted and those who have yet to be. You remain safe so long as you can hide within the masses; but become targeted (as any of the completely innocent people on the no-fly list or in the hells of Guantanamo can tell you) and there is no escape.
Apple/Google/IBM wants your personal data, and you’ll hand it over, because you want the iPhone/iMac/iLife they are presenting to you. You’ll gladly sign up for a discount card because you want the 10 cents off — in exchange, the supermarket/pharmacy gets to know exactly what it is you’re buying. You’ll charge everything on your credit or debit card, leaving a nice paper trail for any snoop to discover what exactly it is you spend your money on (the anonymity of paper currency and gold is a thing of the past). You’ll blog about what you ate today and what color the lint was you removed from your toenails because putting your personal information on the Internet is no longer a big deal. And, you’ll celebrate all of this by watching a handful of nobodies get paid to act like trained animals on every television network for their Fifteen Minutes, because anonymity and privacy just don’t cut it anymore. That is the state of your democracy. Welcome.
Democracy has become the rule of the powerful, instead of the rule of the people. This is more accurately called oligarchy instead of democracy: rule of a small faction at the expense of the many.
But unlike past times, these oligarchs do not need to coerce the people into accepting their rule. The people clamor for it. Take care of me, pamper me, shield me from reality, medicate me, help me ignore the toxic social, natural, and psychological environment I wake up in every morning. Tell me what to think and what to like and who my social betters are. Make me feel small, mediocre, insignificant, and only worthy if people gossip about me and know my scandals, my weaknesses. Take away my dignity.
We live in a society that brings out the worst in people instead of the best. This is not what is meant by democracy. It cannot be what is meant by this word.
What, then, has become of democracy? I’ll tell you what has become of democracy.
Democracy has vanished.
