my answer to this question lies in something i typed up a few months back.
to try and personalize it tho and show some form of consciousness here, i would say that a lot of these points seem to me to be superficial - at least for the US (i have spent considerable time in both countries, but am a yank).
i think that modern politics needs a serious lesson in buddhism. the way of things suggest that our Aristotle-based logic traps us in a game of brinksmanship based on spoken truths which rarely resonate with any truth among people, especially people outside of the public obligation of the politican or their various henchmen.
anyway, brits might get a kick out of this, as well as psycological insight for (some) americans...
Foundational Dissonance
It's hard to look positively at the world around us. So many areas of concern have been brought to their knees by the momentum of modern pressures just following the turn of the Millennium.
As someone right on the cusp of generation X, I've been trained by my parental generation to think in terms of "generations", no matter how unhealthy I might think this principle is. Like most in the Gen X category, I can't help but deal with my parent's generation who keeps wanting to analyze people by the millions, instead of analyzing people as people.
It would be inhuman however to not recognize the concern that drives this fascination in the Baby Boom generation, and now her children. In the same way anyone might gaze in a mirror, or a mother duck might look back frequently as she crosses the pond with her brood in tow, this is simply a matter of people genuinely wanting to know how things are. How are we doing? What are we doing wrong?
Gen Xers too often interpret this to be a form of self-interested intellectual masturbation, and to a certain extent they are correct. So much of this activity is based on an obvious desire to paint one's own generation in a positive light, and too often boomers are guilty of doing such in either subjective terms that immediately reveal their self-interest (e.g., which generation is more likely to speak in a slower more deliberate tempo), or in ways that outright insult the subject matter, because of the skewed perspective of the study itself.
I don't think boomers ever stop to realize that many gen Xers are identical to baby boomers, and if anything the subdivisions boomers seek to create with their intensive study of generations are just extensions of trends the boomers themselves are responsible for, as time enables these trends to flush out through larger groups of younger participants, eg the progression of "rock & roll" (a deceptively inane description of a much larger beast).
If anything, modern times reflect this, as political pressure has put many Americans into the practice of drawing an "Us and Them" mentality in the face of terror threats, and while the perception of sweeping political upheaval persists in the media. Americans of all ages, not just in generations.
There are however, always going to be certain realities which do in fact separate the generations, e.g. actually being alive and relatively conscious when something like 9/11 or JFK's assassination or Pearl Harbor occurs. These kinds of events have major impacts on generations' tendencies and perceptions within the bounds of time.
From my own perspective, people of my generation break down into many categories, certainly more than the boomers, and thus fill all of the categories established previously by the boomers. There are just as many passionate democrats, or compassionate conservatives in my generation as there are in the boomer's, while in contrast, the boomer's might lack as many avid video gamers. what my generation lacks are any legacy movements which have died in between the generations for whatever reason, but even then, there are usually some people in my generation who study it passionately and are probably responsible for maintaining some kind of public record of such a thing.
There are some issues which relate directly to the perspective of our generation, regarding what we were taught in school, and taught to believe generally via the media, or other forms of public education (which sadly, the media really is in the US). These issues cause intense cognitive dissonance in many people from my generation. I know they do for some in the baby boom generation as well, these issues have been around and in question for hundreds of years in some cases.
However, it is each generation's choice and/or opportunity and/or ignorance to embrace existing ideals in whatever fashion that makes the most sense to them, and value those ideals accordingly.
Transitioning out of a time of perceptible prosperity in the American middle class, not yet victimized or disenfranchised from American mainstream society, life was incredibly positive and seemed to be exponentially getting better everywhere you looked.
The coming recession and subsequent terror attacks soon wiped away the facade of market success as something everyone was benefiting from, as opposed to just global captains of industry (something many people of my generation are not really aware of as they did not reach a political awareness until well into this prosperity and never had the need to look carefully at it).
Within a matter of months the entire globe was reeling from almost depression-driven volatility in the marketplace, and the political controversy following the 2000 elections created enormous uncertainty. The successful terror attacks on the WTO in 2001 was the final straw and all of the formerly open floodgates of public opinion shut down almost overnight everywhere, except the internet.
Even on the internet however, opinion quickly divided formerly friendly interactive audiences, and political lines drawn in the sand around us all made for particularly unsettling divisiveness.
All the while, the national media and politicians were broadcasting reports of unheralded bipartisanship and a new found sense of unity among Americans.
While I have little doubt some Americans felt this sense of unity, e.g. at the golf club, or the gun range, I know from simply looking and listening that many Americans felt the opposite. A genuine fear and despair, and an almost irrational desire to avoid some Americans at all costs. And it didn't matter what "side" you were on, God 1 or God 2 or humanity or war or cash or whatever, everyone had their opposites to avoid and demonize in their own unique way.
Given the types of messaging being broadcast around the country, that's not hard to understand. Respected pundits were eschewing thoughts like "hanging" liberals, on the basis that liberals were somehow responsible for all that is wrong with America, and likewise, conservatives were being accused directly of treason and mass murder by folks who had no idea how to distinguish fact from theory.
Both sets of partisan extremists were advocating the other to be intrinsically evil and guilty of crime punishable by death and advocating as much without the need for trial.
America was and remains divided more than ever before, and nervous in a way she's perhaps never been.
For decades I've joined the millions of Americans who view certain inconsistencies in American ideological foundations as the true problem. The importance of these observations and perceptions is to understand two things: that America is suffering for reasons other than what we think (misdiagnosis); and, that America can look forward to much worse, if we do not begin to address these foundations seriously.
These are concerns in relation to what I term 'foundations' of our society, and by that I mean the ideological foundations on which most of us go on to build legitimate lives around, in this country. The important thing to understand here is that if you build a life based on an ideological foundation and then find decades later that these foundations are not what they pretended to be, you have a very serious psychological problem on your hands.
America, because of her modern circumstances, already has a serious psychological problem. Among 9/11, we have experienced a series of traumas that have put many in the nation in a deceiving frame of mind where we pretend we have not suffered any trauma and are above it as individuals. We're conscious of the events and the weight of it, but unconscious of the effect of that psycological trauma, and how to deal with it, both individually in many cases, and most certainly as a whole group.
My hope is that by looking at the following specifics which point toward foundational inconsistencies, we can begin to understand how we need to be looking much deeper at these problems, instead of addressing superficially the mere effects of these suggested causes.
Finally, for people who might find what follows hard to believe, I would recommend analyzing the youth culture of America for the last 50 years and study carefully the concepts and concerns of these youth and sub-cultures which related to most of America's domestic problems, e.g. contraban, gangs, violence, crime, emotional/physical/drug abuse.
If you lay down all previous notions of cause and effect in relation to the problem of America's Youth (since at least the 1950s) for just a moment, and instead look at these foundational concerns - the effects of these movements and their seemingly horrific impact on American society begin to make a lot more sense. Especially if you are an American who's lived and worked through solid examples of these issues.
Even if you fail to agree, you may have an opportunity to see into the mind of some Americans who don't make a lot of sense to you right now.
1. Foundation of Democracy
The US was started by business leaders revolting against a parliamentary democracy. It was widely held throughout the democracy that the US 'business leaders' were attempting to stave off the obvious mounting pressure in parliament and the commonwealth to prohibit slavery - the very basis of the majority of American wealth, most obvious of which are the founding fathers themselves.
American colonists were paying less taxes than even subjects of the crown on Britain's own shores, yet required the largest relative military expenditure in history to protect and thus, enable the colonist's existence and commerce.
Looking at it from the perspective of non-royalist, parliament-oriented subjects of the commonwealth (e.g., through the newspapers of the time), the slogans such as "no taxation without representation" were thought of as political positioning/propaganda which exploited a loop-hole in the system of Britain’s parliament, as American colonists were receiving better treatment than the rest of the commonwealth (along the lines of their chief concerns, namely taxes and freedom for the exploitation of slavery in the form of agribusiness).
Yet, to this day, Americans are taught in US History classes that American colonists were rebelling against a Despotic Monarchy, shown pictures of valiant guerrillas picking off rows of feathery shakos, or bravely attacking on Christmas Eve, and leave the implication that a bunch of blue collar folks got together and made a government.
This is institutionalized social hypocrisy of the highest order. The cognitive dissonance this places on the consciousness capable of perception is often unbearable.
2. Foundation of Equality of all Human Beings
While issues such as race, gender and age, among many other divisive prejudices in society, have been seemingly brought out into the open and either dealt with in some meaningful way, or is in the process of evolution - we still have no ability in America to discuss perhaps the most divisive segregation of them all... class.
America has certain psychological foundations, and one of them is the notion that "anyone can be president". And yet anyone who's studied the presidents of America now has close to 250 years of evidence to suggest the opposite.
With the possible exception of one individual, all of our presidents have not only been consistent in their age/race/gender/et al, but have also occupied the very top echelon of the American aristocratic class.
While America continues to be divided along social class lines, the word remains entirely taboo in our educational, political and public debate, save the most ivory of towers where the issue is almost irrelevant to the common American citizen.
3. Foundation of Freedom
Much of the country's most controversial legislation is recent, or legislation that was passed in the 20th century. Yet, so many debates over these issues are based on the notion these laws were set out by the Founding Fathers.
The recent controversy over the Pledge of Allegiance would be an excellent example, where the controversial issue over the juxtaposition of Church and State, as a mandated ceremony for children, was argued as a natural extension of the Founding Fathers obvious intent for freedom of religion to mean it's perfectly acceptable for all children to be forced to swear allegiance to a monotheist deity every morning with their hand over their heart. And for that right to extend into the psychological implications of any desire to believe otherwise, including the notion one could be thought of as unpatriotic for not agreeing to or seeing fault in such public worship of something they don't believe in.
"Freedom of religion" is just one example.
This is institutionalized social hypocrisy of the highest order. The cognitive dissonance this places on the consciousness capable of perception is often unbearable.
4. Foundation of Competitive Evolution
For decades, and very much recently, we've heard auto manufacturers and the energy industry talk about how only they should be charged with the responsibility for our collective environment, and that they alone should and will make the changes voluntarily as needed to protect our world from ecological disaster now perceptable and generally agreed scientifically to be imminent. These industries also suggest that it is equally important they not be held accountable in any meaningful way should things not turn out as expected.
Conversely, 'the people' have mandated the US government on several occasions to take steps to "incentivize" these industries to do so over that time. Most of which has been avoided, subverted or legally tied up in court, while advertising agencies have seized the public relations opportunities to fill the airwaves with 30-60 second spots which glorify a polluting company's efforts to not pollute.
Yet to this day, our trends have gone exponentially in the other direction, with pollution skyrocketing out of control, and now with the undeniable geo-political effects incurred - namely global conflict between the victims of this reality (nations run by leaders we've supported who’ve terrorized their own populations and liquefied their own national resources for personal gain to ecstatic global corporations seeking anything that's cheaper), and those who seem to benefit from it and are seen most frequently on television getting very upset at a nickel raise in the price of gasoline.
It has gone so far in the other direction, with the simple fact so many large fossil fuel vehicles exist - that today, a common argument heard is that it's now necessary to build even more of them to protect ourselves from the dangers of colliding with the original set of large vehicles.
There's no competitive evolution going on here. This is exactly how most of our major industries - charged with awesome social responsibilities thanks to careful lobbying worth billions of dollars which could have been spent on solving the actual problems - are all functioning right now.
This is institutionalized social hypocrisy of the highest order. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the trend here.
5. Foundation of Benevolence
America has the highest poverty rate today it's ever had. More children in poverty than ever before, and our size puts us at the top of many international studies on poverty.
Even more importantly, America's fascination with overcoming the Great Depression - the cause I think most can recognize as what put our national focus for so long sharply on the concern of "standard of living" - has such an overwhelming momentum, we often forget to stop and think about how we achieve such miracles.
Our middle classes enjoy the highest standard of living known to any large group of human beings in history, and yet are often completely unaware of the underclass’s which make that reality so. They buy several pounds of grenade-sized strawberries for a couple of bucks, but fail to understand that if that price were based on their own efforts (instead of the massive illegal immigrant population they rely on), the cost for those same strawberries would be in the tens of dollars.
Americans have an amazingly disproportionate amount of wealth in relation to the rest of the globe so if we all gave one penny to charity a year, we'd beat out many other nations even if their entire populations were forking over a year's salary. So it's not difficult to come up with figures that suggest we give huge amounts of money acting on a presumed benevolence inherent to the American/Christian character.
And yet again, while we see much in the textbooks and media to suggest this is true, including extremely expensive memorials to people and groups who would occupy such stations in society - we are woefully beaten on a per capita-basis in terms of benevolence by most other first-world nations.
This is institutionalized social hypocrisy of the highest order.
6. Foundation of Ideological Absolutes
The GOP is fiscally liberal and socially conservative. The DNP is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. In practical terms, neither really represent anything other than a threat to the other and are merciless in their pursuit of such simplistic ideals that our political structure has been completely subverted by the now more important task of ousting the other party at any cost.
Legislation now seems to get passed just so party leaders can enjoy a cigar over their ability to trick the other party into error.
The mythological ethos of American society is still largely based on the Smith vs. Marx notion of a political spectrum, while the majority of Americans seem to candidly demonstrate the characteristics of the more commonly accepted Authoritarian/Anarchic/Conservative/Libertarian matrix.
The height of absurdity of this dynamic was when the GOP engaged in a year-long strategic play that suggested a "liberal bias" when they meant DNP bias, which spawned much confusion among all sides, even the disinterested.
Those not formerly even considering bias suddenly saw an excuse for apparent discord they didn't previously have an explanation for ("a-ha! that's how Clinton won twice!"), however the real coup lay in the elimination of any true "left" or liberal/anarchic space in modern political debate in the process.
This was a brilliant series of executions that did effectively tear the DNP apart, and may even banish the party into ultimate obscurity, however seemingly unlikely today. But the reality remains, it was all intentionally fallacious, strategic logic that people can easily contrast to the last time this happened the other way around with Clinton in the early 90s, or the time before that with Reagan in the early 80s. Many other countries have examples as well, e.g. Margaret Thatcher, who was promoted by working hand in hand with the same folks who crafted the media image of Ronald Reagan, as well as his political consulting team.
Institutionalized hypocrisy that effectively signals to everyone outside of the top economic classes that they are both stupid and to be manipulated - the Cause of Disenfranchisement.
Each new decade seems to bring a fresh steaming pile of it. A common conversation today is how to participate in that ridiculous context, e.g. "vote against the GOP/demos, not for the Greens you idiot".
Partisans and Politicians need to understand why America is disenfranchised. It's not because we are stupid. It's because we are quite conscious of our reality, and can see through the bullshit.
Those who are willing to engage in the bullshit themselves are generally "winning", but at the cost of ignoring a self-conscious that is either dying or died long ago. No matter how well they may insulate themselves from that reality, the fact remains - and it's one most humans have a much tougher time with.
It's a terrible line to walk, I know from experience. From both perspectives, it's clear to me what we should do. But a lifetime of human experience tells me that any human beings lodged as deeply into the contingent hypocrisies involved - as we are - are not coming out of it anytime soon. Too much face to lose, too many ideological absolutes that need to be crashed.
There is one hope left for me however, and it is suggested over and over in the history of the country. Every time America has swung too far to an extreme, it's corrected itself in the other direction, and generally learned and taught the world a thing or two in the process, however ugly.
The challenges the country faces today to me seem far greater than they've ever been before, far riskier and far more dangerous, and while I see the enormous pay off for a few select individuals in America, I don't see any benefit to it's constituents (quite the opposite), and a lot of nightmare for huge segments of the rest of the world (namely the ones who are going to continue to make real that economic miracle of cheap gas and strawberries).
It angers me to hear politicians question the philosophical depth of other politicians or especially of the public. Politicians have spent the better part of the last century mastering the art of public and legal manipulation (which is why they are all lawyers and PR specialists), and the end result is a disdain for their constituents, and a patronization process, that has become so rich with dishonesty and lies that I don't think politicians understand that no one believes them anymore - at a fundamental level. I know the media doesn't believe them - but they still fashion and read the cue cards the same way every day, cause that's what gets all the profit left in this country on the advertising rate cards.
All these tax breaks for the rich, go back into the advertising process for the same group who in turn promote their poltical platform from which to profit. Deep down, we all know it. And while many of us simply choose a side in that reality and get on with it, the rest of us (which is the majority right now), simply disengage. Period.
Politicians and political scientists alike love to quip that the founding fathers of the US were well aware of most of the dynamics I list above, and the quandary democracy faces with these issues.
While I certainly understand where the notion was derived, given the constraints of the analog world - in the digital world, I think the mistake they make is to assume the reason for these quandaries will be the people's ignorance. Rather, the people's ignorance is currently led by the politicians and power mongers desire to propagate the lack of need to seek any meaningful comprehension of things.
As a marketer of some 15+ years, I understand why that is - it's too easy to market around. However as an American, I can also see how disrespectful and disenfranchising that is for anyone who isn't already essentially part of the American upper class, or working hard to join it. As someone who has had to face some responsibility in life, I can see how irresponsible this dynamic is, while perhaps the most awesome competition ever beheld.
We have to start talking about these psychologically complicated things in the open and for real - before we have a nation that doesn't believe in itself anymore.
Hypocrisy is a common word in youth culture and sub-cultures all over the planet. It's usage intensifies with every passing moment. There is a reason for it, and I can't help but notice that when you get people cornered into a candid conversation about it they'll agree and admit to it.
But as soon as they hit Crossfire or even CSPAN, the thinking stops and the PR takes over and the MBA/Marketing/Techno/Political Jargon paints another steaming pile of it, voter turnout shrinks more, genuine honest feedback comes much harder, if at all, and deceiving market research leads people to believe in really absurd things.
Like, "Let's back the Republican's War for now, the American people will support us if we do that and say 'economy' every third word", while other idiots say, "A-ha! The GOP has trounced the DNP in what is clearly a mandate from the people to reverse everything the DNP has ever done, as well as reveals the wrongness of their position!".
The biggest voting block in this country is the block that doesn't vote. If you're a politician and you want a real political idea/agenda to pursue, go re-read those foundational concerns again. |
