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This post first appeared at Truthout.
In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy. (As I continually point out, America is not a democracy, it is a representative republic. And as you will discover later, the author's complaint is not about capitalism.)
Perhaps one can argue that there is still hope for democracy, the kind of faint pulse that an experienced paramedic detects when others have declared a person found lying in the street dead. Perhaps there is the chance that defibrillation or emergency surgery can yet resurrect an actual robust democracy and not just the appearance of one. In short, the last rites haven’t yet been given to democracy in the US, but the priest is hovering near the body.
Lebowitz’s quotation suggests the fundamentally overarching reality that a global oligarchical system has, at an accelerated pace, been steering democracies to achieve plutocratic goals. (Well, no. The statement was about capitalism, not plutocracy.)
They are an unaccountable force deciding the future of the world’s economy – and within that framework – its political direction. Plutocrats, the likes of those whom meet at Davos every year and those whom the World Bank and IMF represents, are the new superseding political force in the world. The plethora of trade agreements give corporations, for example, sovereign powers over certain areas. More significantly, economic issues favoring the ultra-wealthy and corporations are the key focus of governmental entities such as the G-8 and G-20. (This nearly impenetrable paragraph, which characterizes the entire article, drips with marxist doctrine. Marxists are all about the rise of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.)
Democracy still exists in nations such as the United States from a technical standpoint. However, it plays out in a context of what has been called “manufactured consent” (Actually, Noam Chomsky called it "manufacturing consent" in his book with the same title. Chomsky is a hero to the Left, with some pretty extreme views. I find it interesting that the author's article is permeated with Chomsky's ideas, but he never mentions him. Why?)
that is crafted by those with vast fortunes to influence election outcomes. (This is true, but why? Why is it that moneyed interests want to influence elections? Perhaps because government controls trillions in money that it can direct to cronies and influencers? So then isn't the solution to diminish government's power to spend?)
George Orwell’s emphasis in his classic novel 1984 was on the pervasive presence of image generators that would basically embed a subservient world view in the minds of the general population. (Oddly, the author completely misses the fact that on the other side of that T.V. screen was government, not plutocrats.)
That is not hard to see today in the omnipresence of plasma television screens in our homes, restaurants, airports and even taxis, which blare out a 24-hour cycle of headlines constructed to provoke fear and hatred or to distract the viewers with sensationalized celebrity news.
News, such as it is determined by the corporate mass media, is primarily embedded in us as emotional reactions to headlines and stories that cause us to react viscerally instead of cerebrally. (Because apparently we are so stupid, so easily manipulated, and so sheep-like, that we simply cannot make valid judgments about these things. Thus, we need rescuers, and the author and his ideological compatriots are applying for the job.)
As BuzzFlash at Truthout has noted before, choosing the frame of what is considered news in a journalistic world where advertising determines profitability is largely dependent upon engaging the viewer emotionally. This is also true of political advertising, faux think tank studies from the right, (But of course, never from the Left.) talking point memes from the likes of Frank Luntz, etc.
In short, much of what constitutes a debate within democracy about public policy is largely restricted to the confines of issues that evoke an emotional reaction in us, not thoughtful reflection. (Which is a technique that is certainly true about much of the Left. Whether a parade of children, or people in wheelchairs, or polar bears stranded on a sliver of ice, the Left is quick to employ emotional ploys and rhetorical guilt trips in the pursuit of their agenda.)
In a public where a large segment of the population is misinformed (Translation: Those who disagree with big government Leftists) or only aware of the world through the images transmitted through visual media such as television, this allows the wealthy corporate forces behind television – and the political advertising and third-party “issue” ads that TV heavily profits from – to shape the contours of a democracy that exists in a very narrow fast-paced highway of “manufactured consent.”
The limited width of that highway of “news” that benefits the wealthy and the ruling elite leads to pre-determined policies, such as happened with the manipulation of the public leading up to the Iraq War (Then the plethora of Leftists like John Kerry and Hilary Clinton, privy to details about the Iraqi threat, nevertheless must have been duped as well, for they as governmental leaders [not "the public"] made numerous emphatic statements about the Iraq situation.)
or the feverish rounds of tax cuts over decades. ("Feverish?" Government receipts have exploded over the last 30 years.
(Can you see any reduction in revenues anywhere since 1980 except during the 2000 recession and the great recession?)
Those who benefit the most from capitalism – the 1 percent and the government that safeguards the wealth of the oligarchy – channel us like cattle into confined pens of “conventional wisdom.” (More obfuscating rhetoric. The 1%, "those who benefit most" is a tautology.)
This, in large part, is the triumph of capitalism over democracy, as Lebowitz calls it. (Actually, it is due to the inexorable progression of Leftist ideals in our economic and social structures. We don't have pure capitalism in America, if we ever did. Never before in our country have we had such domination of government. Government is the largest it has ever been at about 20% of GDP.
The situation we have is not due to capitalism, it is due to people like the author, who have insinuated themselves into positions of power and influence and then begin pointing at the other side shouting, "unfair, unfair!" It is classic misdirection, implemented by people who have an agenda to take down the traditional institutions our country is founded upon.)
Through the corporate mass media – particularly television news (and particularly cable TV news) – the “masters of the universe” capitalists embed a world view in enough voters to create the semblance of a democracy. In reality the real decisions are being made upstairs, where the money is counted and continues to pile up to the rafters.
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