Is the System Broken?

But many voters seem to feel it has done no good--- nothing has changed, the new in-house rascal Democrats are simply doing business as usual. Democrats did not even use their new Congressional leadership position to present a convincing case for re-framing the debate on their terms. Truth to tell, looking at Congress, the average voter can see no difference in ethics, in reining in an arrogant president, in controlling an out-of-control budget deficit, and definitely no change in foreign wars, i.e., Iraq. Since we clearly changed nothing by voting, we will leave these current clown-candidates to continue their jittering on to a meaningless nomination and a meaningless election without our caring about them. "It's just politics," many feel; nothing we do will make any difference, no matter how breathlessly the mass media touts scorecards or chatters on about trivia.

Political parties are not mentioned in our Constitution; there is nothing therein about primaries, caucuses, or financing of political party campaigns. Actually, our Founding Fathers warned against ?factions,? their term for political parties, but the system just grew into what we have today, an extra-curricular, extra-legal Rube Goldberg construction which is unbelievably expensive and is not delivering to voters real choices in national leadership. It is not even bringing sensible debate about those choices, nor about what path America should follow. Somehow the common voter has lost control, knows it, and feels his participation in the process has no more effect than had that of a common voter in, say, Stalin?s Soviet Russia. What a dangerous failure in these parlous times!

UNINVOLVED BUT WORRIED

The Americans are well-known for their exceptional optimism: we usually see the glass as half-full, and if there is a perceived problem we automatically set about ?fixing it.? On the other hand, one poll after another says that almost three-quarters of Americans say the country is on the ?wrong track.? Richard Doak, in the heartland Des Moines ?Register? no less, says, ?It is not just that people have lost confidence in Bush. It?s that our national leadership has mis-diagnosed the challenges of the 21st century.? (http://www.desmoines....)
According to Mr. Doak, pursuing terrorists is not The Challenge of the 21st century; it is dealing with the rise of China and India, a challenge which (so far) is not military in its nature.

Mis-diagnosed, indeed. I would go even farther than Mr. Doak, but first let me describe part of what I believe to be the political landscape we live in today:

The Constitution de-constructed, gone are ?checks and balance,? trivializing Congress in favor of a ?unitary executive? who cannot be reined in by a Congress controlled by his own party, nor even by a Congress where the opposite party has only tenuous control--- Slow but steady loss of precious basic civil and political rights under guise of protecting us from ?terrorists?? Lousy health care delivery compared to any other major developed nation, aggrieved patients finding it more and more difficult to get good care, not to mention protection from improper or inadequate care, plus a growing number who can afford no care at all? An economic system which does not share many benefits of globalization with the workers but only with an outrageously over-compensated executive class, with endemic labor arbitrage? A leadership elite that cares only for profit, often through graft, indulging in war for profit, sending the ?lower classes? to fight but not their own offspring (?rich man?s war, poor man?s fight?)? Anti-science know-nothingness at the highest levels, with the elite using junk science to protect the profits of Big Business rather than protecting the environment, even when it harms the health or safety of workers? Self-righteous busy body government interference in the private lives of the underclass, including a disguised misogyny, as well as imposing specific religious beliefs on public programs? and so on, with no effective recourse in any situation for the non-elite.

Why is there no outrage? No revolt, even when there is a sort of sub rosa acknowledgment?

BREAD AND CIRCUSES

According to Joel S. Hirschhorn, the indifference of the American voter to his situation is because the governing elite has cleverly distracted that voter with ?affordable materialism,? entertainment, sports, gambling, and other friviolities (http://www.political....). I would add that the elite has simultaneously encouraged an obligatory banal patriotism and in some cases a virulently self-righteous religion to nail down the distraction. In other words, we have here a modern form of the Roman bread and circuses used by the patricians to stifle plebean dissent in classical Rome.

Americans today refuse to be inconvenienced, and viciously defend their comforts (witness the instant pro-SUV ads railing against legislation imposing higher emission requirements on auto manufacturers). So long as the American voter is not disturbed in his enjoyments, and not threatened with any requirement personally to defend his lifestyle, he will continue to vote for the elites who promise him no sacrifice will be demandeded of him (?invade Iraq for oil, but don?t send me to fight,? or ?bomb Iran if they won?t knuckle under, do it before they bomb us?). Neither party to this transaction shows a shred of enlightened self-interest.

IS THERE BROADER SYSTEMIC FAILURE?

Change (?Evolution? if you will) is inevitable, and cultural change is accelerating its pace among the human species. Like it or not, we are in a period of historical change as one world system morphs into another. The merchant capitalism which evolved from feudalism in Europe is becoming something else, and has in any case matured into another type of enterprise entirely. As it modifies, it is taking every institution and social meme developed along with it. This cusp of change is actually recognized, perhaps unconsciously, by dozens of philosophies jostling to co-opt it: islamist, christianist, corporatist, neo-fascist, secularist, socialist, progressives, conservatives, and so on. History suggests that the future will not look precisely like any of the jostling philosophies. Indeed, it may wipe out politics and/or religion entirely, given the ugly results so far achieved by both religion and politics.

My question is: despite current apathy, do we want to be helpless victims of the change, or do we want to attempt to have some influence over what we will become?

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