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Two Parties, One Goal: Democrats, Republicans and the Illusion of Difference

Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a con game in which each party expresses horror at the other’s supposed undermining of “American values.” The resulting fear and anger generated by these performances of opposition are meant to divert attention from the single, shared philosophy which underlies both parties. 

Democratic and Republican politicians believe that the wealthy and the powerful – the corporations, the CEOs, the banks and Wall Street, and the politicians themselves – are America. The rest of us are viewed as replaceable cogs. This delusion of aristocracy (rule of the “better”) obscures the brutal reality of oligarchy (rule of the wealthy) which structures both parties.

The Republicans and the Democrats will never change the political and economic structures which have resulted in economic inequality. They have, together, assiduously built those structures over the years, disguising their complicity with simulations of difference and performances of disagreement.

The 1% controls the 99% not through force or oppression, but by creating a falsity of choice. This requires that significant political change must always appear to be within the grasp of voters even though nothing ever fundamentally changes.

It is optimistic to think that the political parties are corrupted by the wealthy. Claims of corruption give the illusion that the politicians and the wealthy are actually separate entities, with money being the tie that binds. But politicians aren’t corrupted by the 1%, they are part of it. The parties function as the political arm of the powerful. Even if politicians are not part of the 1% in terms of wealth, they share the same devotion to wealth accumulation and a patronizing disdain for the non-wealthy.

Voters have been constructed to believe there are differing fundamental principles distinguishing the two parties. But the dissimilarities are merely political strategies designed to give the appearance of difference and the illusion of choice. Principles are fundamental and enduring; strategies are malleable and contextual.The conflicting strategies are not goals in themselves but function to obscure the singular, shared principle of economic inequality. 

The wealthy and powerful don’t want resolutions to social and cultural battles; they use the differing strategies to promote, continue, and often exacerbate, these fights as elements of distraction. They don’t care which side of the duopoly is in power. Both parties serve the same function – continuing to drain the 99% of wealth for the continued benefit of the few.

Neither of the parties actually cares about the horrors from which they are pretending to protect their constituents, nor do they believe that these horrors would ever take place. By protecting their followers from non-existent threats, each party can then claim to have saved this country from something that was never going to happen. 

The border wall was never a substantive policy; it was a diversion useful to both parties. The political Right could claim they were protecting the country from the lowly hordes and the Left could cry out against the degradation of these people. In actuality, Biden has continued many of Trump’s immigration policies and the wall can be climbed in six seconds. 

But the wall was a useful strategy – it reinforced the pretense of differentiation through the trope of horror/protection while distracting voters from bipartisan policies supporting greater wealth accumulation and continued economic inequality.

The Republicans cried out that the Democrats were going to defund the police and the Democrats countered that only they would save people of color from police brutality. A great deal of energy and anger was generated, as was a large amount of fund-raising, as each party exhorted their faithful to support the different sides of this crucial battle. Then the Democrats took a photo of their elders kneeling, draped in Kente cloth, and that was pretty much it.

Democrats exhort their followers around the issue of voting rights, claiming they are saving democracy from the tyrannical Republicans. But Democrats have tried to kick third party candidates off ballots, they’ve promoted a bill which makes it more difficult for third party presidential candidates to obtain funding, and they have gone to court to win the right for party leaders to ignore the results of their own primaries. The goal is to promote a seeming opposition to Republicans through a disagreement over voting access while simultaneously limiting voters’ available choices to the status quo favored by both parties.

If both parties explicitly declared they were going to limit future presidential choices to only the two existing parties, and that party leaders could ultimately choose the nominees, there would be an outcry from those on the Left. Instead, both parties benefit from the illusion that the Democrats are truly fighting for the rights and freedoms of all voters regardless of their political affiliations or viewpoints. Political energy on behalf of giving more power to the people is diverted into the con game and a strengthened oligarchical duopoly is disguised as a battle for democracy.

It is not possible to bring about actual change, or any significant alteration of economic hierarchies, by supporting either party in the con game. The oppositional duality is an illusion; there is only one side – the philosophy of wealth. The appearance of opposition is a strategic performance which structures the game and choosing sides within it simply allows the game to continue. As the supercomputer in the film WarGames finally figured out, “the only winning move is not to play.”

–RWG–

Richard W Goldin; Lecturer in Political Science; California State University; thegoldinrule@gmail.com

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Labeling Politics

The U.S. court system is government funded. Each citizen, whether or not they are ever party to a judicial proceeding, contributes to the financial sustenance of the system. Through constitutional interpretations, every citizen is entitled to a basic level of legal representation in all criminal cases, free of charge. 

These are very much the same principles embodied in most proposals for Universal Health Care. Yet it is only Universal Health Care which is framed in our politics as a kind of Trotskyite Trojan Horse intent on destroying the moral fibers of the American social fabric.

Why is Universal Health Care constructed as the spearpoint of a leftist insurgency, while the court system, for all its problems, has not been the focus of a similar “let corporations run everything” approach? Why haven’t Democratic and Republican politicians banded together to decry our court system as a Socialist menace and extolled the virtues of efficiency and innovation that would emerge from a corporate-run system of justice? Just as they’ve done with Universal Health Care.

Why aren’t there insurrectionists draped in Trump flags and moose antlers storming the Supreme Court demanding that the courts be run by Anheuser-Busch? (“One sip of our new limeade cooler and you’ll yearn for the death penalty.”) 

The political differences between the court and health care systems are not based on substance; they’re strategic. The Constitutional creation of our court system, unlike the current proposals for Universal Health Care, was not whipsawed through, and torn apart, by the contemporary political fun-house of meaningless labels and empty categories. 

When the Founding Fathers constructed this country, the role of the courts, and the crucial importance of a fair and impartial system of justice, was foremost in their minds. The interference of the British government in the workings of colonial juries was a strong impetus for the American Revolution.

However, despite evidence of the British government’s malfeasance in colonial courts, the colonists didn’t turn away from a government-established court system.  Instead, they gave Congress the power in Article III of the Constitution to establish the Supreme Court and any lower federal courts deemed necessary. The founding fathers were drawn from the wealthiest class in America, yet they didn’t construct the federal courts as a profit-making enterprise.  

A government-run hierarchy of courts was put into place because it represented the most rational, reasonable way to develop an impartial judicial system; amplified by the Constitutional protections afforded by the Bill of Rights to those accused of crimes.  

The greater fairness of a government-run, rather than private-enterprise maintained, court system seems clear.  If someone you know is falsely accused of a crime and their attorney indicates they need three days to present an adequate defense, you don’t want the judge responding “Sorry, Pepsi only allows for one-day trials.” The Miranda Warning stating “if you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for you” is not followed by an asterisk declaring “your lawyer is only free after you pay for the first 4 hours of their time and twenty-minutes of every hour thereafter.”

As a nation, we don’t want profit-making entities such as Pepsi structuring our courts system and dictating whether or not we will be physically free. Yet, this is exactly what we do in terms of our health care system where our physical well-being and very existence is at stake.

All developed nations other than the U.S. have some form of Universal Health Care. This unanimity isn’t the effect of ideological trench warfare but, rather, a recognition across the political spectrum that government-run insurance is the most efficient means of providing health care. 

But American politics is not about efficiency because it isn’t based on substance – the pre-requisite for any reasoned debate. Instead, every proposal, every program, is dragged through the chopper-blade of contemporary politics in which it is given a label and then twisted and contorted to fit into a constructed political category.

In our politics, terms such as “left,” “right,” “center,” “Socialist,” “liberal”  are fervently embraced by adherents and hurled as invectives against opponents. But even as the labels fly across social media they have been emptied of any substance. They are strategic placeholders, pointing to nothing other than a vague emotional attraction to the words themselves. 

The labels and categories are not based on reason or rationality and shouldn’t be engaged as though they are. They are like paintings in a museum; we are aesthetically attracted to some labels and not to others. If someone invokes a label as though it has some real meaning – “I could never support Universal Health Care. It’s too leftist and Socialist for this country” the response should be ”I like Starry Night. It’s very blue.”

We are like the prisoners in Plato’s Cave; unknowingly chained to the ground, staring at, and arguing over, the shadows on a wall. We fight over terms and labels which are meaningless. Behind us, are the politicians, projecting the shadows, diverting our attention with hollowed-out ideological categories and a vacuous topography of left, right, and center.

In Plato’s allegory of the cave, one of the prisoner’s breaks free and ultimately leaves the cave and the world of shadows. But most stay; the shadows are comforting and familiar. Presumably, they continue to argue and wage political warfare over nothing until the cave is completely enveloped in flames.

–RWG–

Image: William Brown / Op-Art

Richard W Goldin; Lecturer in Political Science; California State University; thegoldinrule@gmail.com

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The Perils of Moderation

Moderation offers a seemingly attractive, common-sense approach to the political that inevitably disappoints when roused into (in)action. It’s the Ford Edsel of American politics.

Moderation contains no specific ideas or vision of its own, nor does it provide a process for balancing competing claims. Moderation is more a matter of faith; a kind of religious experience. 

Moderation is the character in a horror movie who stays fearfully inside the cabin while others are outside fighting evil. And is immediately devoured by the demons.

Moderation functions within political contexts it neither guides nor shapes. It is a dot on a pendulum it does not control; each wild swing producing a new center. Yet its main selling point is “stability.”

Moderation perverts the polarities of change. The perfect isn’t the enemy of the good; one only achieves the good by aiming for the perfect.

Moderation is a passenger trying to stop a runaway political train by moving everyone to the center car.

Moderation is a malleable sliver of metal seduced by the magnetism of the extremes. Expanding private health insurance only appears centrist in the face of forces which aim to take away any form of health care from all who are struggling economically. To include the latter in a calculus of “centrality” is to confuse mathematics with morality. 

Moderation is a strategy in which a thirst for the “center” replaces the parched materiality of people’s lives.

Moderation dims the aspirational shimmer of Progressives with the gloom of lowered expectations offered by Democrats.

Moderation is both Conservative and Leninist. As in Conservatism, it seeks only incremental change and exhibits a general disdain for progressive movements. It is the politics of “no.” Like Lenin, moderates view themselves as members of an elite Vanguard  – a small group of people who have risen above the false-consciousness of Progressives and will lead us all to the promised land of “let’s not do anything.”

Moderation is a place where people drive Edsels, worship the deity of the “center,” and, in the most dire of times, seek shelter in a rickety cabin of moderation while political monsters draw ever closer.

–RWG–

Richard W Goldin, Lecturer in Political Science; California State University;   thegoldinrule@gmail.com
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The Politics of Simulation

Just outside of Los Angeles is a movie set known as Paramount Ranch. The ranch is a well-used filming location; its buildings appear so often in western-themed movies and TV shows their familiarity can become an annoying distraction. 

When the set isn’t being used for filming, it’s open to the general public. You can roam the same streets traversed by The Dukes of Hazzard, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and the robots of Westworld.

As you wander through the set (it takes about four minutes, if you walk slowly) it becomes obvious that the “buildings” have no solidity; they are mere facades. As one-dimensional as some of the films shot there. (No offense to The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.)

Paramount Ranch is useful because its facades can be made to simulate any aspect of our shared imagery of the west. These images don’t necessarily represent any actual frontier town; it is their iconic familiarity that makes the  fictionalized appear authentically western to us. 

The general sense we have of the underlying simulative aspects of films and advertising can distract us from the pervasiveness of imagery in our own lives. A simulation is a sleight of hand; a misdirection into the realm of imagery and representation. It is a world in which nothing is as it seems.

Simulations hinder our ability to differentiate between truth and reality, allowing the powerful to engage in stagecraft which comforts us, but conceals intentions and objectives. Our current politics has become a realm of symbolism and metaphor with little substance.

Though the political has historically functioned as a territory of sorcery and enchantment, our current vortex of illusion emerged fairly recently. In the 1980 presidential election millions of Americans were convinced that “trickle-down” economics represented a spirit of “free enterprise” which would financially benefit all. 

However, the ocean of wealth that flowed to the few drizzled barely a drop down to the many. Those in power realized they could separate the metaphor of “free enterprise” from the actuality of its outcomes, and that even those most harmed would yield to a symbolic American freedom authenticated through economic inequality.  

‘Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved – commitment to a scenario.’                                                                       Jean Baudrillard

The resultant division between the 1% and everyone else has been maintained not through overt repression but through simulations of openness and inclusion in the political process. The forces of hierarchy persist behind the pageantry of democracy. 

Every town hall meeting conducted by a reluctant politician relies on the symbolic. Familiar elements are deployed which, in some way, represent “open discussion” to those attending – a public forum, time for questions, and so forth.

The extent to which a member of Congress actually thinks about what is being said by their constituents is dubious at best. Politicians at these meetings often have the pained expression of someone who’s been given number 88 at the DMV and just heard the loudspeaker announce “3.” 

It doesn’t matter. Politicians and constituents aren’t engaged in deliberation; they’re performing a ritual. Everyone plays their role. Those in attendance dutifully ask specific questions and politicians flee along a circuitous route avoiding any meaningful responses. The process repeats: pointed question followed by rhetorical sidestep. This is the familiar script. Constituents leave the meetings believing they’ve engaged in deliberation, but they were really part of a theater-in-the-round production touring the country.

Town hall meetings are simulations; they are phantoms of an ideal of civic engagement that exists only in the symbolic. The meetings are artful veneers; the familiarity of their iconography provides the illusion of speaking to power. The ritual replaces the real.

Presidential debates are the pinnacle of contrivance. As in town hall meetings, the theatrical overwhelms the substantive.

Watching debates, we are seduced by the ceremonial. Candidates hover behind phallic lecterns of power; journalists sit passively at tables earnestly lobbing questions which inevitably disappear into labyrinths of pointless phrases and hollow rhetoric. Myriad rules on speaking time and the structure of responses fabricate a phantasm of substance. As we watch the debates, we are aware of the emptiness of the liturgy but remain captivated by its incantations. 

In the 2016 presidential debates we were absorbed into a clash of the unreal. One candidate was so formularized everything she did seemed like an ironic parody of how a simulated politician acts. She lost to the hate-child of George Wallace and Huey Long – a tiny-handed flimflam who brayed the familiar libretto of the demagogue. Our “democratic election” was a contest between wizards of Oz; two illusory floating heads distracting us from the void behind the curtain.

Donald Trump is the most virulent political creature to emerge from our Orwellian lagoon. He has embraced politics as art(ifice). Democracy becomes a musical where the plot and dialogue don’t matter as long as the songs are catchy.  

Trump is angered when people refuse to hum his incendiary tunes and instead focus on the actual lyrics. For the president, the meeting in Helsinki with Putin was a dazzling success; it may have been a political disaster but it had all the markings of a Tony award winning production.

Trump believes that, in politics, the spectacle is sufficient. He may be right. 

Simulations maintain inequality by mollifying the public. We willingly acquiesce to a democracy in which inequality is fueled by a symbolic freedom and perpetuated through the pageantry of participation. But we are not merely spectators, we are also the actors. We have the potential to end these simulations by refusing to participate in them.  

The powerful maintain their position by turning all the world into a stage. We can no longer be merely players.

–RWG–

Richard W Goldin, Lecturer in Political Science; California State University;  thegoldinrule@gmail.com