Britney, Conservatism, and the Cost of a Servile Electorate

How did the movement of "Small Government^TM", "Strong Military^TM", and "Family Values^TM", produce a culture of ignorance, bigotry, and corruption?

The answer to these questions is both simple and terrifying; and it brings us to the edge of an abyss of a future and the most critical question facing America today. 

Can our nation redeem itself after succumbing to a generation of servility?

[Warning:  big diary with lots of pics.]
It was September 2003.  The Iraq War was done, and the occupation was newly underway.  In the midst of his skyrocketing approval ratings, America's nymphet superstar, Britney Spears, pledged her unconditional devotion to the President who made it all happen:

Tucker Carlson on CNN from Wednesday, September 3, 2003:

  CARLSON: A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?

  SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.

  CARLSON: Do you trust this president?

  SPEARS: Yes, I do.

  CARLSON: Excellent.

That moment crystallized the reality of a nationally servile electorate.  When the most famous icon in pop culture stepped forward with words like, "we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes", it etched in stone for a generation of impressionable youth the allure and power of ignorance, submission, and mindlessness.

Since she gave that interview, both Britney Spears and the conservative movement have crashed into madness.  It's a striking parallel, and anyone who watched the President, the Republicans, or Britney over the last few years can only stand aghast at what a disaster they have all become.

What cost conservatism, and why is it antithetical to America?

In his masterful essay, Philip Agre asks and answers the question What is Conservatism and What is Wrong with it? His answer is crystal clear and a lesson Progressives must learn.

the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.

Let's see how this core principle plays itself out in the central tenents, or rather, the centrally marketed products of the Conservative message mill.  As Jerome and Markos elegantly describe in Crashing the States, a body of think tanks, media outlets, and elected indoctrinators spend over $300 million each year to sell the product of aristocratic superiority.  Regardless of whether they claim to be Democrats, Republicans, Independents, or politically disinterested, whenever anyone buys into these packaged concepts, they either become abused submissives or dominating abusers. 

Conservatism replaces freedom with servility.  Conservatism empowers only the dominant.  The cost of a servile electorate is the death of the American Dream. 

How Servility turns "Small Government^TM" into a Culture of Corruption.

When conservatives talk about "Small Government", they are really packaging an assault on fairness for mass consumption.  The only institution in the world strong enough to curtail the unbridled power of America's rising corporate oligarchy is the Government of the United States of America at the Federal, State and Local level.  Thus, aristocrats, whose only motive is to remain aristocrats at all costs, must control government.  In order to do this, the rising American aristocracy must convince the public to fear and hate the government, and must strive to control it by supporting the election of the indoctrinate and spreading cynicism against government among the majority.

Agre:

Conservatism promotes (and so does liberalism, misguidedly) the idea that liberalism is about activist government where conservatism is not. This is absurd. It is unrelated to the history of conservative government. Conservatism promotes activist government that acts in the interests of the aristocracy. This has been true for thousands of years. What is distinctive about liberalism is not that it promotes activist government but that it promotes government that acts in the interests of the majority.

When conservatives convince Americans to despise progressive taxation, craft the inheritance tax as the "death tax", argue that free markets solve all problems, or tell government to "get off the backs" of regular people, they are really working a powerful assault on reason. 

"Civilization requires a substantial number and variety of public services, which in turn require moderate and reasonable amounts of taxes. Despite decades of conservative rhetoric, a majority of Americans are perfectly happy to pay their taxes." 

Progressives need to stand up and tell people not only what they are losing by giving in to the rhetoric of the right, but also what they gain through the collective power of a government that acts in the best interests of the majority.

The destruction of New Orleans in the face of massive tax breaks for the rich was a victory of Conservatism, stealing from the people to give to the aristocrats.  The bridge collapse in Minneapolis is only an example of our crumbling infrastructure which results from declining municipal expenditures on necessary resources forced by declining tax revenues.  This year Virginia's conservative controlled legislature forced a "Transportation Monstrosity" which forswore sustainable revenue in favor of $3500 speeding tickets.  Nonetheless, it still threatened to bankrupt the Commonwealth.  All this, after Governor Kaine abolished the estate tax. 

The worst example of this massive conservative fraud is the Occupation of Iraq, which now has cost nearly half a Trillion dollars and will likely cost three times that before it's done.  At the same time conservatives reap the benefits of limitless corporate welfare, no-bid contracts, and endless pork forced through congress by corporate schill K-street lobbyists like Fred Thompson, who cow Democrats to support their greed for fear of appearing weak.

The litany of conservative degradation under the massive lie of "Small Government^TM" is endless, and is truly a culture of corruption siphoning power from the majority and giving it to the aristocrats. 

The cost here is opportunity for all Americans.  Lagging education, failing healthcare, the victory of large corporate interests over small businesses, global warming, and massive price distorting subsidies which directly contribute to worldwide poverty.  The world is impoverished by the cult of "free" markets.  We don't need government off our backs, we need government to stand up to the culture of corruption.  As Lincoln said: we need government to do for the majority what each of us cannot do for ourselves.

Of course conservatives care about their children, but your children are expendable and only useful insofar as they serve to foster the aristocrats' ability to be aristocrats.  That's the truth about "Small Government^TM".

How Servility turns "Strong Military^TM" into a Culture of Ignorance

George W. Bush is a coward, but he is a coward in the mold of a universal cowardice endemic to the conservative movement.  In the run up to the Iraq War, the President dispatched the most acclaimed military name alive, Colin Powell to sell the war to the United Nations.  He didn't go himself, he packaged the war in Powell's credibility in order to make the sale.

While not everyone bought it, there was enough willing deference to allow the neocon Bush to take the actions he was determined to take regardless of the will of the world.

Packaging intent with credentials is a regular game played by conservatism, and it is repeated throughout the history of the movement and not only on military matters.  George Tenent famously recanted his role in the pre-war intelligence fiasco.  Colin Powell later regretted doing the president's dirty work.  Recently, Alan Greenspan tried to distance himself from the economic disaster he sold the country in the form of massive tax cuts.  Energy industry schills are put in positions of power at EPA and the Energy department in order to roll back critical legislation, just as union busters are promoted through the labor department to destroy labor protections.  Bush hid behind Alberto Gonzales for fear of expanded subpoenas from Congress for as long as possible, and the conservative movement continues to hide behind the accrued power of of its working Supreme Court majority.

Over and over, the vestiges of power are used to undermine the interests of the majority, as the aristocrats benefit.

Under it all, reason, science, and the public discourse are curtailed, and opposition silenced.

democracy needs the citizenry to be educated, and the skills of reason are the foundation of democratic education. Democracy cannot be established in any other way. Aristocratic rule is not reinforced by the use of reason. The situation is quite the reverse: in order to fight off democratic values, conservatism must simulate reason, and pretend that conservative deception is itself reason when it is not. Many conservative pundits, George Will and Thomas Sowell for example, make their living saying illogical things in a reasonable tone of voice. Democracy will be impossible until the great majority of citizens can identify in reasonable detail just how this trick works.

It is precisely ignorance and the dampening of reason that is packaged by conservatism as "Strong Military^TM". 

General Petraeus' dog and pony show before Congress last week  was only the most recent example.  General Petraeus is a field officer.  He is at the command of the President.  He made his report to the President and the White House repackaged it.  The purpose of this year's escalation in Iraq was to create enough physical stability to allow central political power to accrue in Baghdad.  There was absolutely no advance in security as a result of "The Surge^TM". Anbar's prince was murdered, and the security gains there were set in motion before the current escalation.  The pentagon tonight released a report that completely undermined every rosy datum within the "Petraeus Report^TM".  Much more importantly, the purpose of "The Surge^TM" was to create political stability, and in that it has completely failed.

Nonetheless, America is still in the process of digesting the latest set of lies from the conservative movement, and as a result the greatest disaster in American history is likely to be further greenlighted by Congress.

The central result here, is that the concept of a "Strong Military^TM", is used to package the interests of the aristocracy in credentials.  Be they, medals, degrees, positions, titles, or any other signs of credibility, the symbols of authenticity are used to sell lies as truth, and again Democrats cower before the massive threat of being called weak.

The servility here is shared both by electeds and the electorate.  We and our elected leaders abdicate our responsibility for rational thought when presented with a chest full of medals, or a fancy title, and the cost in treasure, lives, opportunity, the commons, and our constitutional freedom is unlimited.  Worst, the critical faculty of reason is destroyed by the onslaught of the big lie.

This is the truth of the conservative product known as "Strong Military^TM": internally reinforced deferment to those who supposedly know.

How Servility turns "Family Values^TM" into a Culture of Bigotry

We get caught up in the hypocrisy of the "Family Values^TM" message.  It's easy to do, because its omnipresence within the conservative movement is maddening.

In addition to the marquee names du jour, Foley, Haggard, Craig, Vitter, here's a list of about a hundred more, and there's bound to be some overlap with this list of republican pedophiles.  But we need to see beyond the dizzying haze of hypocrisy, and go to the core of bigotry packaged at the heart of the "Family Values^TM" lie.

That bigotry results from a vicious war against conscience waged from the right.

It is true that movements of conscience have piled demands onto people faster than the culture can absorb them. That is an unfortunate side-effect of social progress. Conservatism, however, twists language to make the inconvenience of conscience sound like a kind of oppression. The campaign against political correctness is thus a search-and-destroy campaign against all vestiges of conscience in society. The flamboyant nastiness of rhetors such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter represents the destruction of conscience as a type of liberation. They are like cultists, continually egging on their audiences to destroy their own minds by punching through one layer after another of their consciences.

They begin selling "Family Values^TM" early.  The Dobson school of child rearing is a no-holds barred lesson in  "spare the rod" domination.  It posits unrestrained power in the male head of household to be meekly supported by a chaste subservient wife and servile children.

From this follows Bill O'Reilly's "white, male power structure" which gives dominion over a broad range of  inferior genders, races, nations, and perspectives which must be subjugated because of their "fallen" nature. 

Concepts like equality, compassion, or conscience are dismissed under the heading of "do-gooder" foolishness and thus the poor are to be reviled, and laws must be created to protect the power structure from the empowerment of the dissimilar. 

Therefore, America imprisons more of its population per capita than any other nation.  Voters are driven to the polls through fear of gays, immigrants, and trumped up assaults on the power of a constitutionally prohibited "Christian Nation^TM". 

In the absence of conscience, wealth, power and opportunity accrue to wealthy, white, male, Dominionists, and woe to any other who will not submit.

Through the "Family Values^TM" product, conservatism sells America the justification to commit any crime in defense of a mythological family structure.  The profound irony, is that the economics of aristocracy, in undermining the opportunity and financial stability for the middle class, in reality, actually make stable family life harder to attain for more and more Americans.

Which returns us to the real hypocrisy of "Family Values^TM", which is economic rather than sexual.

The Pathway Back to America

It's tempting to say that servility turns this:

into this:

In reality, when I say "How servility turns X into Y", I really mean, "how conservatism sells Y as X".  Conservatism merely packages, bigotry, ignorance, corruption and madness as strength, freedom, values, and desire.

Just as Britney's madness is a mate universally paired to practicing servility, conservative corruption was already there, conservative ignorance is endemic to the movement, and conservative bigotry is a foundation of the world view.

It is only reason, conscience, and empowerment that allows us to see the truth behind the advertising. When Americans abdicate the responsibility of judgment as Britney Spears did when she said "we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes", America dies, but there is a pathway back.

Again Agre:

Conservatism is almost gone. People no longer worship the pharaohs. If the gentry were among us today we would have no notion of what they were talking about. For thousands of years, countless people have worked for the values of democracy in ways large and small. The industrialized vituperations of conservative propaganda measure their success. To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is and what is wrong with it. This is easy enough.

The gathering reality of conservatism's massive failures have forced it's former proponents to recant.  From Colin Powell, to George Tenent, to Alan Greenspan and beyond, the champions of yesterday's conservatism are abandoning the sinking ship.  A stunning example is Matthew Dowd, the strategist who along with Karl Rove masterminded the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush.  Mr. Dowd famously broke with the President in 2005, disillusioned to the point of moral crisis. He has now backed away from partisan politics entirely, and is pursuing a spiritual journey and trying to save Africa. 

If you don't happen to have the money necessary to travel to exotic climes to meditate with yogis, there's still something you can do. 

You may not be able to save Brittany, and conservatism may never reconcile its internal conflicts, but you can familiarize yourself with Agre's recommendations:

* Rebut conservative arguments
* Benchmark the Wall Street Journal
* Build a better pundit
* Say something new
* Teach logic
* Conservatism is the problem
* Critically analyze leftover conservative theories
* Ditch Marx
* Talk American
* Stop surrendering powerful words
* Tipper Gore is right
* Assess the sixties
* Teach nonviolence
* Tell the taxpayers what they are getting for their money
* Make government work better for small business
* Clone George Soros
* Build the Democratic Party

Read through the details here,  and familiarize yourself with the destruction and inherent anti-Americanism of conservatism.  The way back begins with you.  When you debunk conservative marketing products, and stand up for the core principles of progressive protection and empowerment you become a part of a movement that is deeply, profoundly, and powerfully American, holding the only real hope for an American renaissance of opportunity, integrity, and hope.

If you remember only one thing, remember this:  Conservatism = Aristocracy, and there's a lot in America worth fighting for.

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