The Year Democracy Died in America

"The twentieth century has been 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.”

–Alex Carey, “Taking the Risk out of Democracy:  Propaganda in the U.S. and Australia”

The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will go down in history as the decision which killed the possibility of real democracy in the United States.  Assuming, of course, that at some future date, it is still possible to write history books, rather than tomes of propaganda supporting the corporatist-statist idolatry which will be left, should a cultural and social revolt fail to materialize, and soon.

Basically, the Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that electioneering communications may be paid for by corporate entities without any oversight whatsoever.  Conservatives claim that this is an evenhanded application of existing law, and that labor unions are also allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal, of course, is that a) corporate entities – including labor unions – are not people, and ought not be granted personal rights, such as free speech; b) corporate entities are uniquely capable of cooption by unknown and unknowable economic and social forces, including forces outside this country, and with ill-intent for our Constitution and its associated freedoms,  and c) unlimited access to electioneering media means that only the very rich will be able to afford to influence election outcomes.

“That’s just class warfare!” cry the conservatives, conveniently sidestepping the first two objections through a sleight-of-hand whose demogoguery is just a harbinger of things to come.

Hmmm…..  One class cleanly and neatly defines itself into permanent political power… and its opponents are guilty of class warfare?

Let there be no delusions of corporatist “good intentions”.  The entirety of the political debate, under Citizens United, will now be framed by institutions with no motivation whatsoever other than corporate profits.  What does this mean?

• Weakened enforcement of the Clean Air Act.  Smog, air pollution, sudden infant death syndrome, and lung cancer?  Deal with it – government intervention to prevent air pollution “Creates deficits and costs American jobs!”  That’s the new conventional wisdom, as bought and paid for by the Coal Powered Electrical Plants of America.
• Weakened enforcement of the Clean Water Act.  Infertility, diabetes, metabolic disorder, liver diseases and hepatic disorders?  Deal with it – government enforcement of limitations on pesticide and herbicide runoff “Creates deficits and costs American jobs!”  That’s the new conventional wisdom, as bought and paid for by Archer-Daniels-Midland, Monsanto, and Dow Chemical.
• No action whatsoever on climate change.  Famine, water shortages, third world hunger, disease?  Deal with it – “Global warming is a myth.”  That’s the new conventional wisdom, as bought and paid for by Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Sonic Automotive, and a host of others.
• Infant mortality?  Inner city crime?  Lower standard of living – especially for marginal populations such as migrant workers, children of single mothers or from broken homes, or from historically impoverished communities?  The solution to all these problems is tax cuts for the wealthy.  That’s the new conventional wisdom as bought and paid for by AIG, CitiCorp, Goldman Sachs, and a host of others.

The ability to manipulate public opinion on the part of a small corporatocracy – less than one tenth of 1% of the American public is part of the influential decision-making class responsible for the management of publicly held corporations – ought not to be underestimated.  As Noam Chomsky pointed out in “Manufacturing Consent:  The Political Economy of the Mass Media”, the filter of corporate ownership of the media is virtually impossible to overcome.

ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN really are biased, just as the right-wing zealots of Fox News would have you believe.  But they are not biased in favor of Liberalism.  They are biased in favor of Disney, General Electric, and God-only-knows what other corporate entities.  They are biased in favor of profits and in favor of stable advertising revenue.  They are no more interested in genuine investigative journalism than they are in taking vows of celibacy and poverty.  They are not “news” organizations, they are “sales” organizations.

Even “oppositional” media is typically vulnerable to cooption by corporate sponsorship.  One of our personal favorite bloggers is Nate Silver, whose fivethirtyeight.com often comprises a lonely objective outlet of political reporting; however, Mr. Silver’s pet project has been subsumed by the New York Times in the past few months; thus far, there have been no obvious or evident changes in the way the site operates… but the very nature of corporate sponsorship means it is inevitable that eventually some form of substantive lack will appear in fivethirtyeight.com (or rather, not appear), which will be a direct result of being a subset of corporate culture.

There are some limited reasons for optimism, in spite of the overwhelming strength of the forces arrayed for self-interested exploitation of everything and everyone.  There is very little reason to believe that anything will be accomplished in the federal government for the foreseeable future, of course.  Democrats had fairly overwhelming control of the legislative and executive branches for the past two years, and only managed to worsen the corporate stranglehold on government.  Republicans are about to wrest at least one house of the legislature from the Democrats, and not only do Republicans not have a solution to this problem, they actively seek to make the problem worse.  Tea Party slogans about “taking back our country” are rife with Orwellian irony, as the “typical American” who purportedly comprises the Tea Party will have less, not more, power in a Tea Party political universe.

Nevertheless, there are means to lessen the stranglehold of corporatism, and those means lay squarely in the provence of creative individuals – corporations may emulate, but may never fully coopt the creativity of human beings.  Keeping truth alive in the public conversation, even when it may not be heard by everyone over the din of propaganda, will eventually lead to acceptance – too late, in some cases, to be sure, but it will eventually be heard.  In the case of global warming, for example, the State of Texas will have to accept, in spite of the oil industry’s opposition, that in 2035, with higher temperatures and not enough water for businesses or residences, let alone agricultural users, maybe, just maybe, there was something to all those scientists’ warnings way back when…

Corporate ownership of media ought not be confused with the notion of corporate control of media – the pervasiveness of internet usage, as an example, means that even where corporations coopt outlets which were once free, such as youtube.com, or nominally independent sites, such as drudgereport.com (on the right) or dailykos.com (on the left), there will be someone somewhere who catches them in the middle of their shenanigans, and the truth will out. 

The number of times FoxNews.com has posted an embarrassingly revelatory bit of propaganda, only to have it taken down minutes later, and yet have the damage done by some clever blogger somewhere with MWSnap and a free minute or two to post the evidence, is now beyond count.  Pervasiveness of a medium may overwhelm the perverseness of that medium.  There is just too much interactive media out there for even the most diligent censor to excise it all.

The danger is that it is fairly easy to drown out a single voice.  It doesn’t take a secret police force to silence a voice of reason – another of Chomsky’s favorite sayings is that “propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”  The ability of corporatist media to generate a mob slobbering and salivating with the bloviations of a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh can only be countered by the creation of an equal and opposite mob of bespectacled intellectuals, dripping with witticisms and understanding, and maybe the sweat of their brows, particularly if they have been gardening, and harvesting, and gossiping with their fellow farmers’ market attendees.

We would much prefer to be members of a community whose convictions are formed over tea, or barbecue, or mutual fence repairs.  That may not be the vision of Justices Roberts, and Scalia, and Thomas, but we can’t help but feel contempt for them as being modern day incarnations of Justice Taney.  Only, instead of sending Dred Scott back to slavery, Roberts et al. have opted to have their judicial robes sized for corporate logos.

One logo they will not be wearing is that of Big Myrtle’s Tea Shoppe and Egg Emporium.

Happy farming!