Predatory Government and Democracy

As a child in the 1950s I traveled with my family extensively throughout the US. We drove and camped nearly everywhere a highway or dirt road could take us. We read avidly of accounts of motorized gypsies who traveled in their trucks and station wagons in Mexico, Central America and Canada. Exotic adventure was but a short drive away in the family station wagon. The simple act of crossing the Ohio River deposited me and my family in a culture radically different from the one we spent the non-traveling days of the year within. Moving from state to state in the pre-Holiday Inn as the Nation’s Innkeeper era entailed an ability to keep quiet, observe and go with the flow of strange and wonderful ways to cope with the realities of day to day life. Sometimes, the differences were so slight as to escape notice in the short time spent visiting the natural and artificial wonders of a visited area. Other times, practices so alien to our daily way of life were encountered that we learned at an early age that even questions arising from innocent ignorance could lead to catastrophic relations with locals and, sometimes, local law enforcement authorities.

All that began to change in the late 60s, as the US became increasingly homogenized with the meteoric expansion of corporate retail franchises such as McDonald’s, Holiday Inn and Winn-Dixie across the nation. Today, we live in a cultural and social environment so homogeneous that if we were to be blindfolded, flown in circles for a few hours and dropped in the center of nearly any American, suburbanized city we would have to rely on the questioning of those we encountered on the street to figure out WHAT city we had landed in. In almost any spot in almost any US city the chances would be better than even that the person who provided us with the requested information was either a temporary visitor or a short term resident. Though each region in the US celebrates some cultural practice considered idiosyncratic to that area, the truth is that true cultural differences within the US survive only as private practices shared with family members rather than public practices shared with fellow residents and citizens. The concept of federalism, at least as it once pertained to securing specific regional practices and differences, has become an administrative abstraction rather than a political adaptation to differences in social and cultural practices among a diverse citizenry.

The economic and cultural homogenization of America has resulted in an ethnic cleansing of sorts. If Americans maintain their ethnic identities as celebrated differences, they are more likely to be excluded from the economic promise that once was the hallmark of “The American Dream.” A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage are the bribes “free market” capitalism offers to every individual wondering how they will manage to survive in a post-agricultural world. But, bribes work on a tit- for-tat, quid pro quo method of exchange that demands far more of the parties involved than an even exchange of labor for goods. In order to maximize profits “free market” manufacturers must streamline product lines in order to cut labor and material costs, which entails potential customer education in the benefits of the “one true way.” Simple, physical survival in an industrialized (and a so-called post-industrial) world requires a streamlining of social and cultural practices to accommodate the pressures of surviving within a society in which the tools for survival are increasingly placed in fewer and fewer hands. The wealthy become wealthier and the poor become poorer while the middle class, wherever it may exist, becomes smaller and less distinguishable from upper class capitalists in all ways but in the amount of ready cash to be found in their bank accounts or bed springs.

As the fictions of “globalization” and “free market enterprise” serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, governments around the world become increasingly predatory in their drive to formalize “sweetheart” relationships with large, multinational corporations, a pattern first observed in the US during the corporate expansions of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. State, county and city governments in the US during those years fell all over themselves to offer large corporations property tax breaks, to enact union breaking legislation, and to establish education programs designed to serve the labor needs of the moment rather than the discretionary intellectual habits a citizen of a democracy needs for an effective, empowered and abundant life. Corporate interests and government interests became more and more intertwined until a kind of “common law” marriage between government and business became the norm in America. The perpetuation of that marriage at all costs has become the paramount objective of nearly ALL US political party ideologues.

The overriding objective of political party ideologues is always first and foremost the preservation and enhancement of an existing structure of power, which invariably leads to predatory government practices. Invariably, citizens not promoting or working to preserve the existing power structure will find themselves penalized or punished for opposing the structure, often without even realizing they are opposing anything. Country after country the world over enact laws designed to force large segments of a nation’s population into altering generations of cultural patterns that the political and social elite see as antagonistic to a carefully engineered one way flow of wealth. The US is not an exception. Large ethnic, but politically minor, populations around the world are being coerced into serving the interests of predatory governmental structures that have camouflaged themselves as “democratic” by operating as democracies. The disparate realities inherent in the grammatical function of a noun and an adjective have never been more apparent. Thousands of intellectuals around the world are beginning to understand that citizens voting for political candidates who share similar social and economic backgrounds may qualify a government using a voting process as a democracy but the lack of socioeconomic diversity in the candidates standing for office sabotages the standing of the resulting government as democratic. At the moment, theocratic democracies are the most obvious practitioners of predatory democracy, but “free market” capitalist ideologues presently have a political death grip on nearly every Western democracy, including the US. A truly democratic democracy functions to better the life situation of ALL citizens and residents living within its jurisdiction, without exception.

Can we truly say that a truly democratic society is the objective of our present government? Can we say that a truly democratic society has ever been the objective of any government anywhere in the world?

Cordovan Shoes

I have toyed with the idea for a number of years of writing an apologia, an explanation as to why I have chosen not to vote since 1984. To set the record straight from the beginning: I am not apathetic. In fact, I follow national, international and local politics fairly closely. I must admit, however, that the task of keeping tabs on the political scene in the US has become increasingly difficult in the last few years as public media becomes increasingly corporatized. Our fourth estate watchdogs have become ideological partners with US ideologues who, in my opinion, are responsible for the malaise of US politics. Consequently, the political issues tracked in commercial media are those of concern to corporate America. With the exception of local tragedies that reinforce the growing culture of fear, substantial reporting of issues affecting US citizens is generally superficial or ignored. The reporting of overseas news is generally restrained to events and issues that reflect current US foreign policy. Those citizens who propose solutions to local or international problems that ignore or are intellectually or morally antagonistic to the capitalistic objectives of contemporary political elites have an increasingly smaller forum and likelihood of being heard and responded to.

Consequently, candidates for political offices with national status or exposure are consistently cut from the same cultural cloth. The social conventions of corporate society are extremely conformist, and to be successful in a corporate environment an individual must conform in even the smallest, seemingly inconsequential ways. Who can imagine a presidential candidate campaigning daily without wearing a tie? A Spongebob Squarepants tie, perhaps? Or, high top sneakers and a sport coat? Such apparel may be acceptable in extremely private moments in the corporate world but never when someone other than immediate family may be encountered, unless, of course, for a photo opportunity designed to demonstrate what a “regular Joe” our corporate candidate is in “informal” situations. They dress the same. They cut their hair using the same military template. Their social backgrounds are so similar as to be of little relevance to developing an understanding of their political positioning.

The lock on national and international politics held by former employees and business associates of corporate capitalism should be alarmingly distressing to every free thinking individual in the world. Such people are not people who can provide truly visionary solutions to never before encountered problems. For them, thinking outside of the box is something anyone who is not homeless can do. All such individuals can provide is a canned response presented in a clever way. Why would we expect these people to perform in ways that are advantageous to all?

In fact, the position of political candidates on any given issue of importance, on what even counts as an issue, is incredibly predictable and predetermined by corporate ideology. Whether Democrat, Republican or Libertarian their ideologies are founded in corporate cultural objectives. Too often in the important issues the differences between candidates are not ideological but procedural. For example, the current trend of the privatization of health care is a foregone objective of ALL political parties and candidates. The only area of disagreement among historically established political parties is the extent and manner of privatization. Whether or not privatization is the BEST way to assure quality health care to the citizens of the US is not even debated. Whether or not alternatives to either the nationalization or privatization of universal health care are possible has not even entered the debate.

I really hoped for change in the 2008 election. Unfortunately, I hear little of substance coming from either presidential candidate that entices me to rethink my principled abstention. Over the next few months I’ll offer some general thoughts on the political situation in the US and, perhaps, some commentary on specific issues and incidents that seem to invite discussion of positive political value.