[Peace-discuss] The Presidential Election Did Not Take Place (comments welcome)

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

The reason's not far to seek.  As the late Australian social scientist Alex
Carey wrote, "The 20th century was characterized by three developments of
great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate
power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting
corporate power against democracy."  A trillion dollars spent every year on
marketing in the US -- where political candidates are sold like cars or
coffee -- has some effect.



If I were Carey, I guess I would change his assertion a little and would
suggest that "the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting
corporate power against democracy" actually should be "the growth of
corporate propaganda as a means of controlling democracy in support of
corporate power."

 

>The issues were important, and for that very reason could not be submitted
to the voters for their consideration.  The dirtiest secret of American
>politics -- or at least the most important one -- may not be the
government's torture policy, filthy as that is, but rather the contradiction
between the >interests of the tiny elite of possessors (perhaps less than 1%
of the US population) and those of the large majority of the population.  

 

In general I agree with this statement; but I really often wonder if the
real contradiction is between corporate organizations as fictional
artificial people versus real breathing skin and bones people.  After all,
the 1% that is referred to while accumulating most of the wealth and
benefits available to the human beings population typically are themselves
merely well paid cogs in the corporate machinery.  The fact that they have
those benefits and the wealth is coincidental to their holding positions as
employees and investors in the corporate world; but those positions are not
totally certain since the corporations can and will abandon them in a
heartbeat if it is to the organizations interest.  It is true that their
positions often allow them to design benefit packages and golden parachutes
to cover their asses should the corporations abandon them; but in the end
they are like the remaining 99% of the human being population in that they
as unique individual people are irrelevant to the interests of the
corporations.

 

Aside from the concrete details, examples, and instances discussed and used
to illustrate points, the analysis sound very similar to that of Joseph
Schumpeter's analysis pertaining to the circulation of elites in democracies
where the elites set the agendas and the public have little choices of any
consequence except to select which set of elites will hold positions of
official authority, where the elites and intellectuals control the masses
via controlling information and creating distractions through spin, and
where the main priority is the economy and not the polity. Of course,
Parateo and Mosca  have presented similar theories concerning the
circulation of elites.  They all focused on and concerned themselves with
societies which were not corporation dominated.  Schumpeter did view
capitalism as eventually being replaced by corporate socialism of
"corporatism" in his terms - Fascism in others words.  In today's world, one
has to wonder if it is not the case that the corporate entities control the
agenda and the circulation of elites from the establishment are not the
distraction which is promoted to the masses by the intellectuals and
agencies of corporate propaganda.

 

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 10:19 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

               "The people can vote for whoever they want.
                       I control the nominations."
               --Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, ca. 1870


The presidential election campaign was primarily a distraction.  There were
serious issues presumably at stake, notably the war and the economy, and the
campaign not only ignored them but purposely obscured them.

The reason's not far to seek.  As the late Australian social scientist Alex
Carey wrote, "The 20th century was characterized by three developments of
great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate
power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting
corporate power against democracy."  A trillion dollars spent every year on
marketing in the US -- where political candidates are sold like cars or
coffee -- has some effect.

The issues were important, and for that very reason could not be submitted
to the voters for their consideration.  The dirtiest secret of American
politics -- or at least the most important one -- may not be the
government's torture policy, filthy as that is, but rather the contradiction
between the interests of the tiny elite of possessors (perhaps less than 1%
of the US population) and those of the large majority of the population.
But of course it's not *very* secret: as Noam Chomsky points out,

  "This is a business-run society: you market commodities, you market
candidates. The public are the victims and they know it, and that's why 80%
think, more or less accurately, that the country is run by a few big
interests looking after themselves. So people are not deluded, they just
don't really see any choices..."

--and, as a result, many ignore the distraction thrown up for them by the
advertising/propaganda industry, the "campaign" (particularly protracted in
a year when the two major parties are noticeably promoting unpopular
policies on the war and the economy: there's a lot of distraction to be
done).  About half of the electorate doesn't vote, in part because they
think not unreasonably that the outcome of the election will make little
difference to them and polices won't change much.  Even in the most recent
presidential election "landslides" -- 1972 and 1984 -- three out of four of
the eligible voters did *not* vote for the winning candidate (Nixon and
Reagan, respectively).

Most of the media propaganda that passes for politics in the US is directed
to what Gore Vidal calls the "chattering classes" -- about a quarter of the
total US population that makes up what some have called the "tertiary
bourgeoisie" (cf. "*secondary* school"), i.e., most of those with a
traditional college education.  Given that the actual ruling class in
America is that 1% (perhaps a million people), that leaves three quarters of
the US population generally ignored in the "manufacture of consent" -- and
they return the favor, as they are meant to.

It has not escaped the attention of our rulers in general that people who
work long hours and are anxious about their circumstances can spend less
time finding out how those circumstances are determined, talking to other
people about it, and doing something about it -- i.e., practicing democracy.
The US anti-war movement of the 1960s arose in part from the greater
prosperity and relative economic equality of that decade in comparison with
this one. Americans had the leisure to do politics, as the Trilateral
Commission described in dismay in "The Crisis of Democracy: On the
Governability of Democracies" (1976). The crisis was that there was too much
democracy: that had to be stopped, by the counter-policies of neoliberalism.
American politics in the last thirty years shows that it was.

Of course that 25% of the population who are the especial concern of the
propaganda system show the effects as well.  It is a surprising fact that,
throughout the Vietnam War, support for the US government's position was
directly (not inversely) proportional to years of formal education; that is,
in spite of the myth that the anti-war movement of those days was confined
to the colleges, in fact the  college-educated were more likely to support
administration policy than those without a bachelor's degree.  The
ideological institutions -- the universities and the media -- were doing
their job, even though by the end of the 1960s, 70% of Americans came to say
that the Vietnam War was "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake,"
according to longitudinal studies by the Chicago Council of Foreign
Relations.

It is quite remarkable that, prescinding from the enthusiasms of the moment
(Obama v. McCain et al.), polls show that Americans hold political opinions
of a general social-democratic/New Deal sort -- opinions, it need hardly be
said, that they do not hear in the media or from Obama, McCain et al.  The
result is that the two business parties, for all their struggle at
product-differentiation, like Coke and Pepsi, support largely similar
policies that are generally to the Right of those favored by a majority of
the population.  Medical care is just the most obvious example, and is has
been for decades.

In an important article ("If Obama Loses," August 18, 2008), Paul Street
writes about "Thomas Frank's widely mentioned but commonly misunderstood
book on why so many white working class Americans vote for regressive
Republicans instead of following their supposed natural 'pocketbook'
interests by backing Democrats. Released just before Bush defeated Kerry
with no small help from working class whites, Frank's 'What's the Matter
With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America' (New York: 2004)
has generally been taken to have argued that the GOP distracts stupid
'heartland' (white working-class) voters away from their real economic
interests with diversionary issues like abortion, guns, and gay rights.
Insofar as Democrats bear responsibility for the loss of their former
working class constituency, Frank is often said to have argued that this was
due to their excessive liberalism on these and other 'cultural issues'.

"But Frank's argument was more complex or perhaps more simple. At the end of
his book, in a passage that very few leading commentators seem to have read
(a shining exception is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman), Frank
clearly and (in my opinion) correctly blamed the long corporatist shift of
the Democratic Party to the business-friendly right and away from honest
discussion of -- and opposition to -- economic and class inequality for much
of whatever success the GOP achieved in winning over working-class whites."

Street quotes Larry M. Bartels, director of the Center for the Study of
Democratic Politics at Princeton: "Frank exaggerated white working-class
voters' susceptibility to cultural diversion: 'In recent presidential
elections,' [Bartels] notes, 'affluent voters, who tend to be liberal on
cultural matters, are about twice as likely as middle-class and poor voters
to make their decisions on the basis of their cultural concerns.' In other
words, working class white voters don't especially privilege 'cultural
issues' (God, guns, gays, gender, and abortion) over pocketbook concerns and
actually do that less than wealthier voters."

Bartels summarizes an effect of the propaganda system. "Small-town people of
modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues.
Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs
who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American
politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites."  It's the tertiary
bourgeoisie who are (taught to be) distracted by these issues.

Like the presidential election in which they figure, these issues are meant
to be a distraction -- and they are safe issues from our rulers' point of
view, because decisions on them do not much affect central governmental
responsibilities like war and the economy. In our America, policy is
well-insulated from politics: we have at best a simulacrum of democracy.
Passionately preferring a candidate who's within the allowable limits of
debate is a recipe for irrelevance, as it's meant to be.  The show must go
on; ignore the little man (many men, actually) behind the curtain.


THE WAR WAS NOT A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE

With two-thirds of Americans saying since the beginning of the campaign that
the war in Iraq was a mistake, one might ask why it was removed as an issue.
Why didn't one candidate put himself in opposition to the war and promise a
real withdrawal from Iraq (which Obama didn't promise)?  That one could even
have been McCain, once Obama's scenery-chewing over Afghanistan and Pakistan
("AfPak," in DC-speak) made it clear to all (except those liberals who
assumed that he would change in office) that he was not an anti-war
candidate.  McCain could have protected himself from the charge of
flip-flopping by off-loading the responsibility to the "commanders on the
ground' (as they both did anyway) and claim that conditions had changed
(either for the better or the worse -- it wouldn't matter).

The answer reveals the nature of the presidential candidacy.  Far from being
driven by the polls, presidential candidates are auditioning for a role
essentially in the gift of the elite. (The media, owned almost entirely by
the largest corporations -- there are brave exceptions like *CommonSense* --
are the necessary enforcers.) When the contrast between the views of the
elite and those of the majority becomes clear, the candidates know to take
up those of the elite.  (In 1992 Clinton was barely elected with a vague
promise of providing health care as all other industrialized states do.  But
when it became clear that Americans favored that plan -- "single-payer
health care" -- when it was explained to them -- the Clinton administration
replied that it "was not politically possible": i.e., the elite did not
support it.)

Obama was never for the ending of the war and the withdrawal of the U.S.
from Iraq.  He was never opposed to the war in principle, just tactically:
it was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.  But
"removing the troops now," he said three years ago, "would result in a
massive bloodbath for both countries," and so couldn't be done.  He
criticized the hash the Bush administration had made of the war, and
well-funded Democratic party front groups like MoveOn and Americans Against
Escalation in Iraq [sic] worked to co-opt the antiwar movement for he
Democratic party, but Obama could not adopt a principled opposition to the
war.

The reason was that, for all the effort to use the war against the
Republicans, the Democrats like the Republicans support the general US
government policy of which the war in Iraq is a part.  With Israel as its
"local cop on the beat," as the Nixon administration put it, the US has
conducted a generation-long war for the control of energy resources in a
1500-mile radius around the Persian Gulf -- from the Mediterranean to the
Indus valley, from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia. That war will
continue in the coming administration.  And not because the US is dependent
on Middle East oil: less than 10% of the oil the US imports for domestic
consumption comes for the Middle East.

Rather, the US goal in every administration for half a century has been to
secure by means of the control of Middle East oil and gas what Obama foreign
policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski calls "indirect but politically critical
leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on
energy exports from the region." Those economies in Europe and northeast
Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are the real rivals to US economic
hegemony, and the control of energy resources gives the US the whip-hand.
We will not give it up in the new administration, so the war was not an
issue.

And it should by now be clear that, whether we call them al-Qaida, Taliban,
insurgents, terrorists or militants, the people whom we're trying to kill in
the Middle East are those who want us out of their countries and off of
their resources.  In order to convince Americans to kill and die and suffer
in this cause, the Bush administration has repeatedly lied about the
situation, from trumpeting the non-existent weapons of mass destruction to,
apparently, forging incriminating letters.  But the new administration will
continue with the biggest lie, that the US is fighting a "war on terror" --
as they expand the war to Pakistan, which the Realists believe is the center
of armed opposition to US control of he Middle East.

There are in fact presidential candidates who -- unlike McCain and Obama --
have serious things to say about the US government's war policy.  The
following is from a statement presented to the media on September 10 by Rep.
Ron Paul, former Republican presidential candidate, joined by Cynthia
McKinney, Green Party presidential candidate, Chuck Baldwin, Constitution
Party presidential candidate, and Ralph Nader, independent presidential
candidate; former Rep. Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential
candidate, said he also agreed with the statement:

  "The Iraq War must end as quickly as possible with removal of all our
soldiers from the region. We must initiate the return of our soldiers from
around the world, including Korea, Japan, Europe and the entire Middle East.
We must cease the war propaganda, threats of a blockade and plans for
attacks on Iran, nor should we reignite the cold war with Russia over
Georgia. We must be willing to talk to all countries and offer friendship
and trade and travel to all who are willing. We must take off the table the
threat of a nuclear first strike against all nations.

  "We must protect the privacy and civil liberties of all persons under US
jurisdiction. We must repeal or radically change the Patriot Act, the
Military Commissions Act, and the FISA legislation. We must reject the
notion and practice of torture, eliminations of habeas corpus, secret
tribunals, and secret prisons. We must deny immunity for corporations that
spy willingly on the people for the benefit of the government. We must
reject the unitary presidency, the illegal use of signing statements and
excessive use of executive orders."


THE ECONOMY WAS NOT A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ISSUE

Similarly, the other great issue of the day, represented in the Wall Street
bailout, saw no real difference between the candidates.  On the economy, as
on the war, McCain could have employed a rhetorical flanking maneuver and
taken the popular position in opposition to the bailout, along with the
House Republicans, painting Obama as a tool of Wall Street (which he clearly
was: the Obama campaign even received more contributions from Wall Street
than McCain's did). It would however have taken more guts than McCain had to
attack Obama on the bailout, as on the war.  More importantly, the elite
position favored the bailout, despite the fact that constituents' calls to
congressional representatives were overwhelmingly in opposition.

The joint statement of the third-party candidates did however depart form
elite demands on economic issues:

  "We believe that there should be no increase in the national debt. The
burden of debt placed on the next generation is unjust and already
threatening our economy and the value of our dollar. We must pay our bills
as we go along and not unfairly place this burden on a future generation.

  "We seek a thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal
Reserve System and its cozy relationships with the banking, corporate, and
other financial institutions. The arbitrary power to create money and credit
out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests
must be ended. There should be no taxpayer bailouts of corporations and no
corporate subsidies. Corporations should be aggressively prosecuted for
their crimes and frauds."


POLICY IS INSULATED FROM POLITICS

In the last days of the lesser Bush, it seems that US government policy is
being made almost entirely within the executive branch, in the clash of two
factions -- the Neocons, who gained control after the 9/11/01 attacks and
produced the invasion of Iraq, and the "Realists" (for lack of a better
name), the foreign-policy establishment that continues as administrations
come and go. There's no real opposition to the policies that issue from
their rivalry.  Both the legislative and judicial branches are irrelevant.
Congress has resigned to the administration its authority to make war, to
make appropriations (in the bailout of Wall Street) -- and even to make
criminal law (in the PATRIOT Act, FISA, and MCA); the Supreme Court has made
decisions on torture and false imprisonment, but ineffectually: the torture
regime and the secret prisons still exist, and the courts have not released
prisoners from Guantanamo, originally and openly designed designed to be
outside the scope of the US courts.

Nothing characterizes the last year of the Bush administration more than the
break with the Neocon dominance and the reassertion of control by the
Realists.  The result of incapacity? (Was Bush in fact publicly drunk at the
Olympics, as rumored on the net?)  Or pique? (The split between the White
House and the Neocons in the office of the Vice-President may already be in
place at the time of the Libby affair.)

In any case, Cheney's easy use of Bush as an instrument (seen in the
investigation the Washington Post had done but wouldn't publish before the
2006 election) is no more. That means that the US government is largely back
in the hands of a foreign policy establishment that brought us wars from
Kennedy to Clinton.  And their drive for "full spectrum dominance" --
hegemony, not survival -- may finally make them more dangerous than the
murderous Neocons. What some psychologists call splitting should be avoided
("Since the Neocons are bad, the foreign policy establishment must be good")
-- noticeable as it may be in the presidential campaign...

There seems to have been a debate within the Bush administration on how best
to construct the enemy that justifies the continuing US military presence in
the Middle East: the Neocons wanted to make a bete noire out of a pacific
and indeed helpful (to US regional interests) Iran, while the Realists
wanted to do the same with terrorists in Pakistan -- and they seem to have
the upper hand in both the old and new administration.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was perhaps the senior member of the
foreign policy establishment in the Bush administration, and it seemed clear
that his people would have charge of the ongoing Middle East War, regardless
of who the new president was.  Obama even suggested that he would like Gates
to remain at the Pentagon (and Paulson at the Treasury).  In 2004, Gates
co-chaired, along with Obama advisor Brzezinski, a Council on Foreign
Relations task force report entitled, "Iran: Time for a New Approach," the
main point of which was to advocate a policy of "limited or selective
engagement with the current Iranian government."

Military action against Pakistan -- which Obama called for more urgently
than McCain -- was already underway, and Obama's intention was to improve
upon the "baby steps" (as his adviser said) already taken by the Realists in
the Bush administration in killing Pakistanis (many of them apparently
Pushtun babies who would take no more steps).  But it was also clear that
McCain in office would give way to the Realist consensus in the Pentagon and
State Department. (Both McCain and Obama said that they will be guided by
the "commanders on the ground"). The Neocons -- holed up in the OVP and
concentrating on avoiding prosecution (that's what the Military Commissions
Act was about) -- have been largely brushed aside.

If one means the consideration of possible policy changes, the presidential
election did not take place, and the new administration will present a
strategic continuity with the old, both domestically and in the matter of
killing foreigners.  God help us.

       ###

 

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