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.