Meditation on the Rhetoric of Political Language

If the 1960s (actually, most of the 60s happened in the early 70s) was the decade in which genuine mass dissent and suspicion of the large, overdetermining, and powerful institutions ordering American lives surged forth, then the 1980s was certainly the decade when those institutions absorbed these ideologies into their own vocabularies in order to further their goals.
John Lennon might roll over in his grave were he to witness the Beatles’ “Revolution” deployed to sell Nike shoes: a pivotal moment in this trend in the mid-80s. Indeed, in subsequent decades, Americans have seen “cool” become a commodity; civil disobedience has become a product from which profits can be abstracted. Sprite, for example, capitalized during the mid-90s on the emerging hip-hop scene, associating through its commercials its lemon-lime soft drink with a particular way of life.
The 1980s also gave birth to the use of dissident language in the political sphere when Ronald Reagan announced in his 1981 inaugural address, “in the present crisis,” referring to the economic woes of the Carter years, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Here, we have a newly elected president, the head of the government, indicting the very institution of which he is the symbol. This move bears out some important implications for how we can understand the current political divisiveness in our nation in 2010.
Foremost, this move forces us to reconsider how we relate to the state. Democracy, even in its republican form, depends on an educated and involved citizenry. To state that the government IS our problem, implies that we are not a part of its machinery, but, rather, stand in opposition to “it.” Of course, this idea is not new, as it can easily be linked to our mythic past when the colonies revolted against the policies of the British Parliament. Still, we are placed in an adversarial relation to the national government, which objectifies it into something other than we are, something “foreign” and threatening to me. Ultimately, this leads to a lack of civic involvement in politics, unless it is about curbing the abuses of the “nanny state.” In essence, we move from becoming “citizens” whom produce our government through our work to becoming “consumers” of the government’s initiatives. And, clearly, if we are consumers, then only those who can afford the product (pay their taxes, etc.) should be eligible to purchase. Thus, any programs that extend benefits normally found in the private sector (money, shelter, medical care, even education) to those who cannot meet the price should be eliminated as somehow “un-American.”
This ideology is most clearly exemplified in the goals of the current tea-party movement, which aims to “keep intrusive government out of our lives.” But, rhetoric such as this serves the same ends as when companies like Nike market their products as objects of dissent. Whom does it serve, after all, if we choose to wear merchandise that extols such messages as “Just Do It” or “Carpe Diem”? We simply are paying retailers to advertise their products for them, at no cost to them. Similarly, when we line up behind the talking heads in the media, accusing anyone attempting to solve social problems through the government as supporting “big government” or even worse, of being “socialists,” we are doing two things. First, we alienate people from the democratic institutions meant to represent them, and, consequently, this allows multi-national corporations to continue unfettered in their pursuit of profit, because these are really who benefits from a “hands off” approach to politics. Perhaps, if we began to encourage an alternative rhetoric, than maybe we gain a fresh perspective. If we are “citizens” and not “consumers” we might understand government not as an oppressive force intruding on our liberties, but rather as the highest forum in which our national conversation about our goals takes place.

The Problem of the Independent Voter

Today in the United States, more often than not, we hear our friends and colleagues assert something like the following: “I vote independent;” or perhaps, “Since both parties are corrupt, I cast my vote for each individual candidate, not for a party;” or even worse, “I don’t ever vote, that way, I don’t ever have to share any of the blame for the failure of the system.” While voter registration has traditionally always been low in this country, party affiliation since the 1950s has experienced a marked decline among those that do register. On one hand, advocates of this trend claim that this forces parties to work harder on explaining their positions and solutions to the public. On the other hand, critics often cite that the rise of disaffiliated voters leads to a “run to the middle” of the political spectrum where both parties eventually seem virtually indistinguishable. In some sense, both these views are intuitive, but I want to argue an alternative perspective. The independent voter, rather than undercutting the power of the political party, actually increases its influence, and ultimately marginalizes the electorate from meaningful political action. In fact, I contend that the many of the problems we blame on the bipartisan system in Washington (polarization and gridlock, corporate and lobbyist influence, alienation of the constituencies, etc.) stem from the refusal for this large group of Americans to affiliate some political party.
For those independents out there, I imagine you’re saying right now, “There isn’t a party out there that accurately reflects my beliefs, so why would I commit myself to some organization that doesn’t share my political and social goals?” I intend not to dispute this claim, because I share your view completely. However, the modern political party, as it emerged in the 1830s in the United States, was never intended to be an ideologically driven group. This would be what some of the founding fathers referred to as a faction. Instead, we might better understand political parties as a loose coalition of vested interests, networked together in order to attain the requisite power to direct policy and legislation. Of course, broadly, a party would be linked through some basic political philosophy, but one in which there should be a good deal of diversity.
With this new picture in mind, we are motivated to change how we engage and use our rights as voters. We, in effect, become political actors. For too many decades have we encountered our politicians as we do any other commodity, as consumers, waiting to see who will sway us in their favor, who can convince us that they have the best product to sell. As participants, we not only vote in the general election, but we also exercise our choice in primaries, something that even most affiliated voters fail to accomplish. After all, if we only vote in the general election, are we really exercising our suffrage, or merely putting our stamp of approval on one of a few candidates deemed acceptable by the party leaders?
Moreover, if we understand parties as coalitions, then we also might be encouraged to work within the party to change its culture, beliefs, and goals. Of course, we have to allow for some disagreement, but our involvement would reclaim these parties for the people on the ground. Currently, the lack of popular investment in the party system is precisely why these organizations tend to behave more like factions, and less like coalitions. The party must sell itself like a brand, it must present a coherent and strict ideology to the voters, while hiding its coalitional behavior from the public. Politics in a republic of 300 million citizens cannot be as simple as ideology; it is, in the end, about give and take, about compromise, and if voter can understand that the political party is the most effective means to achieving certain ends in our system, then perhaps we can all begin to more effectively harness their potential for the greater good. Until we do, parties will continue to misdirect the electorate, remain polarized between extreme competing ideologies, and respond only to pressures external to the parties (i.e. corporate interests, and other moneyed groups). So, I beseech of you to join a party, even if it’s a third party, get involved at the local level, and work to build back the civic-consciousness that has withered…

IT's Not a Culture War, Silly

I came across an opinion column on the FOX news website today entitled “It’s the Culture, Stupid,” which discussed how the conservatives in the United States will never be able to bring their goals to fruition as long as they don’t understand one thing: America will never become conservative as long as the culture in this nation remains driven by its “default” liberal culture. It this “battle for the culture” that I wish to address today.

According to the article, the left “rules the trifecta of cultural influence: the media, academia, and entertainment.” Fighting merely the issues, such as healthcare, climate change, and taxes, is not enough, because the liberal power structure actually determines the parameters of these debates. The article continues with a look back on a golden age of the post-WWII period when private cultural institutions such as churches provided Americans with meaning and some sense of unified purpose. The solution to this vacuous and narcissistic society in which we live lies in setting a more long-term agenda through a robust and reinvigorated private realm. Think tanks, conservative research institutes, film studios, publishers, and even museums would do much to cure the decadent woes of our social ills.

Now that I’ve offered a brief summary of this article, I would like to point out for the author that she has done a thorough job of describing precisely how the conservative movement functions today. Conservatives rule daytime radio talk shows, are aptly represented by think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation; I will only mention FOX news itself, which, despite its logo of “fair and balanced” clearly represents the source with which more conservatives identify. These and many other institutions which seek conservative solutions to our issues have been the backbone of the GOP since the Reagan years, and in the subsequent decades have only increased their legitimacy among the people. In fact, the term “culture war” is a well-established and favored concept to describe the conservative ordering of our society.

So, we have here an article that is attempting to offer a fresh solution to what’s wrong with “liberal” society and to reorient conservatives towards a strategy that will work better, and yet, this isn’t new at all; it’s business as usual. Still, I do think that the article brings to light a few important points about the great level of miscommunication that currently persists in American political discourse. First, although we perceive a unprecedented divisiveness in twenty-first century politics, people actually persist on a spectrum of beliefs, and a messy one at that. The author of the article, although a self-identified conservative, remains disenchanted with many of the tactics of conservative politics. She feels that the conservative agenda actually strengthens the slide towards materialistic self-indulgence that is destroying the social fabric. Consumerism is clearly not her vision of a healthy America; it must be undergirded with solid values and vibrant community life on the local level. Otherwise, the government will continue to oppressively encroach upon our lives.

Even though she exposes conservative beliefs, however, the author, Andrea Tantaros, paints liberals or progressives as completely uniform, almost monolithic. From the article, the reader would consider all those on the left support a big “welfare state,” follow the “mainstream liberal media” unwaveringly, seek to encourage a free-fall into materialistic self-absorption, and approve wholeheartedly of the ethics of mass entertainment (aka Hollywood). Also, you might have noticed that I left out any reference to academics; there’s a good reason for this: I am a member of academia, a financially-challenged student currently working on my PhD after leaving the corporate world for a vocation more geared towards public service. I am a progressive, and I feel that it’s important that I state how I, and many others in the progressive movement do NOT conform so easily to the picture often ascribed to us.

Now that I have “outed” myself as an academic, I must beckon you, the conservative reader, to not shut down immediately and categorize me as some elitist in an ivory tower, peering down snobbishly at the common folk. Give me a chance to state my case, because this is, after all, what democracy is all about: honest conversation about our problems. I come from a rather blue-collar background, was educated in an urban public school system, flunked out of college my first time, and spent my twenties working in retail management before returning to graduate school. Further, most of us academics do not earn large salaries. In fact, I’m probably the poorest among my lifelong friends. As for my politics, I can state unequivocally that I am not in favor of the government managing our lives from the cradle to the grave; I do not feel that any mainstream media outlet does a good job of informing citizens about issues and encouraging involvement in our democracy; and I agree that most of what Hollywood, television, and advertisers produce is poisonous to healthy civic consciousness; I also believe that Americans have become rather self-centered and disengaged from their obligations from one another. On these things, I think that Ms. Tantaros and I would agree.

I do, however, recognize a few items that she has failed to mention that cause me to feel differently about how to solve the nation’s woes. The golden age of 50 years ago to which she refers is also a time when the government was involved in social and economic planning on a large scale. Most large corporations were heavily regulated, banks were restricted to limited scope, the mentally ill (aka most of the would-be homeless) were cared in government-run and government-subsidized institutions, and strong (though admittedly corrupt) organized labor offered protection for many middle-class workers from exploitation by corporate greed. Thus, while our private institutions might have been functioning, so was our public bureaucracy. Moreover, while I support the efforts of private institutions, studies do demonstrate that in comparison with the effectiveness of large-scale public initiatives, their impact has always been marginal at best.

My point is that despite our different perspectives, we do see many of the same problems: poverty, joblessness, out-of-control multinational corporations which lobby for government influence, a self-indulgent populous of “consumers” who have forgotten that they are also “citizens.” However, as long as we paint those on the other side of the fence as “the enemy,” we will never actually bring back into civic participation those who have shrunk into their consumerist lifestyles, and thus, the lynchpin of our democracy, the civic-minded individual, will continue to erode. So, instead of painting our current struggle as a culture war, we might want to realize that most of us who are invested in serving our democracy are actually trying to attack the same difficulties. Then, we might remember that in order to protect our individual liberty, we need citizens who care about each other (yes, even the occasional freeloader) and not just our own little universes.