… only the echoes of my mind," as the theme song of Midnight Cowboy declared. Such may well be the status of contemporary political discourse and for good reason. Witness the flakey demagoguery of the three musketeers of mediatized mindlessness: Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. If I were to add a fourth it would be, hands down, Michael Steele. On any given night one or another of the major media outlets will feature some inanity from at least one of these headline catchers. They may well, frighteningly enough, believe that what they say is valid and true. More frightening is that far too few will question the il-logic, assumptions, purposes and motivations behind their polemics.
Explaining such irrationality-- that is, of the sophistic manipulativeness of these would-be national leaders and our susceptibility to their polemics-- need not be too perplexing. The atomization of individuality in our “mass democracy,” precludes our realizing any effective, intelligent, critical involvement in an authentically self-determining political life. We are are reduced to "participation" via the passive gaze. Whether hypnotically conforming with nods of approval or disapproving with rants of vile abuse or simply indifferently enjoying the show, in effect our "involvement" is nothing more potent than a mere gaze. We are unable to fulfill that necessary integral role of supplying the crucial criticism of determinative judgments and decisions which provide essential feedback constituting the internal control mechanism required by any sustainable, self-correcting society.
Locked out of democratic participation in economic planning, investment and production, sequestered behind the invisible walls of contemporary class structure, the post-modern “individual” is relegated to carrying out the functions of consumer and client of the mass culture industry. From the far side of the invisible social class wall, profit and power guide, though unsuccessfully, the choices and actions of the denizens of globalized economy and cultural hegemony.
In the storm of opinion-mongering and pseudo-participation enabled by the global mass media, everyone can play a part yet none are really heard. Everyone gets their turn at the endless political carnival throwing the ball at the “clown” perched above the vat of water, hoping to knock him down such that we can laugh at his foolishness.
So the ditsy discourse drones on. We laugh at or cheer at the protagonists, such as the aforementioned ‘musketeers of mindlessness.’ Meanwhile they prepare their next round of obscurantist distractions and manipulations, advancing their masters' bid for power and a monopoly on wealth. However, no one is really talking in such discourse because no one politically empowered is really listening to the pleas to deal with the crises and move beyond the stock answers or solutions. There is no efficacity of truth or justice. Yet the hordes of our ‘mass democracy’ are once again being herded together, steering huge blocks of votes toward whatever candidate serves the masters of capital, social control and mass cultural imperialism.
The "musketeers" are deployed to appear as if they truly and sincerely know our hearts and minds and we buy into the operative assumption that therefore no critical discussion is really necessary. They are marketed to appear as if they know our minds and what is in our interest. They become our minds and the echoes of our minds. If what they say doesn’t make sense nor provide any new, let alone convincing, solutions to the myriad crises of our Liberal Democracy, we pay no mind. They are us and we are them. All the serious and responsible speaking that needs to be done and heard we still have faith will be taken care of by the professional elites who “represent” us and their experts who assure us that all will be taken care of in the end. Somehow faith in progress still holds water despite all the holes in the rusty bucket of modernist ideology.
The present-day citizen-- unable to make a difference politically as an individual, essentially locked out of the party machines, lacking revolutionary possibilities and, most importantly, ignorant of the power and potential of populist or communitarian alternatives-- falls ever more deeply into the anesthetized, apolitical nihilism of the collectivized and politically contained "individual." The only seemingly empowering choice appears to be the average ordinary everydayness of bare existence. Purposeless life marks time amidst the well-trained herd while we wait for happy hour or the latest exciting cultural fix to take away our anxious meaninglessness and helplessness.
In short, in the face of such powerlessness we may as well hear only the echoes of our own minds, if in fact these are our own echoes. Making sense of today's discourse for most is impossible and what sense can be made will not rationally mediate new directions in politics. The irrationality serves its own purpose: namely, to prevent the people from having their own autonomously determined purpose.
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