STUPID OR UNEDUCATED: Ignorance in America

The real social contradiction, tension and opposition in America is not between Left/Right, Liberal/Conservative, Republican/Democrat, white/black, patriots/traitors, the intelligent/the stupid, etc., etc., etc. Such discourses inevitably end up being moronic because they are between false social realities, false social groupings.

The real contradiction and social opposition is the potentially explosive tension between, on the one hand, the New Class of bureaucrats, lawyers, professors and technocrats that maintain the status quo in the interests of a globalized ‘supercapital,’ and on the other hand, any politics that would reconstitute “the people’s” opposition such that a potential, real, de-centered, local federation of possible social identities (communities) and interests would become conscious and could be intelligently discussed and organized around, economically, culturally and politically.

But it is not as if the predominant mass of alienated individuals should try to create a mass class identity and oppose the New Class and their Masters in the manner of a Marxist inspired revolutionary force. Such a populism of new communities is not Marxism nor Socialism. Nor is it merely a 'communitarianism.'

The disenfranchised mass’s only choice, from the standpoint of de-centered loci of autonomous communities and regions, is to dismantle the monolithic mass identity created by the media and manipulated by the politicians to appear as if there were really a “We the People” that spoke for itself. But there is no such really existing mass identity which is self-consciously autonomous and self-determining.

The mass media relates to ‘the people’ as if they are a homogeneous herd and they respond in kind. A Neo-populist politics should be able to imagine the possibility of a re-federalization of communities and regions in which genuinely self-inaugurated identities, a sense of neighborly belonging and local/regional purposefulness could dismantle the monolithic, manipulative discourse of the New Class.

Then to be an American would be to have a real local identity rather than the hysterical, mythic identity so easily whipped into totalized fanatical frenzies over terrorists and led into Orwellian wars like the one presently in Afghanistan.

Short of massive media manipulation politically, culturally and educationally, the “America” of the supercapitalists doesn’t exist. It’s “The Truman Show” writ large. “We,” be it as it may be, need to find a way to stop paying tribute and obeisance to the 'wizards' of Washington.

Yet, the new populist politics is not about the people taking power in Washington. It is about taking hyper-centralized power and social control away from Washington and its pseudo-federalist bureaucratic nightmare. It is about disseminating power, wealth and autonomy to social entities whose purpose is to sustain an abundant life whose daily experience is fulfilling as such. It is not about the empty and false promise of a perpetually postponed fulfillment in a corporate-marketed dream realized only once the bills are paid, retirement arrives, the Lotto is won or you manage to create some fantastic shit that makes you a fortune like the hoola hoop or maybe pet rocks.

Their heavenly secular eternity lay in the promised progress that never comes. The dumbing down is a symptom of a discourse which is mere sublimation, distraction and obfuscation. It disillusions and demoralizes leading to ever more irrational, extremist and fanatical manifestations of democracy distorted and pathologized. Its untruth lay in its capacy to disempower the intelligence of the people and their will to self-determination and autonomy.