Who cares about politics?

Last month, the New York Times published an article on the presidential candidates' clothing – not what they're wearing (although that's been analyzed too) but what they're selling. Mostly, candidates sell themselves, but they're also selling T-shirts, hats, bumper stickers and buttons. Conversely, they're buying ad space: all over American's bumpers and bodies. The Times article was specifically about whose cars and chests they're targeting: Obama's pink baseball tees are a clear pitch to young women, while the target audience of Clinton's "Wellesley Women for Hillary" lapel pins is obvious (what's not so obvious to me is who's wearing lapels at a women's college.) I'm all for catering to outside-the-mainstream constituencies if it will make our government more representative. But what's missing here is any substantive appeal to these voters, implying that their allegiance can be bought by pink baby doll tees. Where are the articles on how Clinton's health care policy will affect young women or Obama's plans to improve education?

It doesn't matter if the President of The United States of America has good taste or good hair. It doesn't matter if the president is black or white or a woman. What matters is whether, by the next election, America will be stronger, wealthier, more respected, safer, healthier and happier. The candidates all know this, the people at the New York Times certainly know this, and I think most of America, if they bothered to ask themselves, would realize they know this too. But it doesn't make for great reading, and you can't run photos of pink T-shirts alongside it. It's more fun to criticize a candidate for yesterday's slip of the tongue. Comparing candidates' war chests is like a game. Analyzing the colors of their ties and suits makes for aesthetically appealing news reports. Taking 7-second sound bytes out of context provides instant gratification. It's all a lot sexier than reading and listening carefully to their plans and positions.

And so voters wind up reading and watching coverage of politics instead of government until they can't distinguish between the two anymore. And then we end up with articles like this one in the Times, reporting on what amounts to meta-politics that in the end really shouldn't matter at all.

But in the short-run, and perhaps to the detriment of our country, it does matter. The candidates, all of whom probably genuinely believe that they would be the best president for America, are willing to pander to voters' shallow sides in order to get elected. They know it's not really about the merchandise, but they also know that it won't matter if they campaigned "ethically" if they don't get elected. Isn't it better to sell out first and change the world later than do neither?

That's a question for another time. For now try this experiment: visit your favorite candidate's website and try and determine where he or she stands on "the issues." For an added challenge, try and find a position on issues that aren't high-profile partisan ones (a.k.a. gay marriage, Iraq, immigration, etc.) Try and find a vision for the future of America. If I could find one candidate who gave me that information before asking for my (monetary) support, he or she might actually stand a chance of earning my vote. As it stands, I remain "undecided."

Love thy Neighbor

On the front page of Monday’s New York Times was an article on an abomination of a law strengthening the government’s eavesdropping abilities. Whatever your opinion on FISA and secret surveillance, there’s one part of the article that should infuriate everyone reading it. It should, but I’m sure it doesn’t; in fact, it’s even presented (by the very liberal Times) as a justification for the new legislation:

But he stressed that the objective of the new law is to give the government greater flexibility in focusing on foreign suspects overseas, not to go after Americans.
“It’s foreign, that’s the point,” Mr. Fratto said. “What you want to make sure is that you are getting the foreign target.”

Or, in the law’s own words, the National Security Agency no longer needs a warrant to perform electronic “surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto and the press are reassuring us with the information that it’s not us, it’s them. They’re trying to convince you that you have nothing to worry about, because you’re not the target of the wiretapping. Well I have news for you: if you’re not worried, you should be. Forget that the target only has to be “reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States,” (reasonable belief means many things to many people.) Forget that this is just another step expanding a surveillance net that will inevitably include you if it gets much bigger. Those are both great reasons to be worried – basically, the law does have the potential to hurt you and your fellow Americans. But if that’s why you’re worried, you’re missing my point. Like I said, you should also be very, very worried about the “it’s ok, it’s directed at foreigners” comment.

Or attitude, rather. America has been swept by a wave of patriotic xenophobia. Maybe it started after 9/11, with messages like “you’re either with us or against us” and propaganda like the USA PATRIOT Act. It progressed, and after a time it became acceptable to declare not-Americans enemy combatants and lock them up indefinitely. And now we think it’s ok to eavesdrop on anyone outside our sanctimonious borders.

We’re becoming ever more self-centered, selfish and intolerant. And we justify it by convincing ourselves that the rest of the world is full of evildoers out to get us. We have to look out for ourselves, because we’re in grave danger. (That’s what the terrorism alert level is there to remind us of.) Our fear of foreigners turns into hatred of foreigners, and with that we justify increasingly selfish actions.

The so-called “intelligence” legislation provides us with yet another example of this trend. The offending bill was passed on a Saturday by a house of representatives scrambling to get it signed into law before the August recess. Why? Not because everyone agreed it’s a great law and we need it. As a matter of fact, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had every ability to put off the vote until the fall or just let the bill die, said the legislation “does violence to the Constitution of the United States.” And yet she, and the other democrats opposed to the measure, allowed it to pass anyway. The general (and horribly logical) consensus on why this happened is that the Democrats were afraid of appearing weak on national security. I’ve never seen American fear and selfishness play out more clearly. The representatives are selfish – they want to be re-elected. So they pass this god-awful legislation to appease Americans who are scared and selfish (they want to protect themselves at the expense of the rest of the world.)

In defense of the little people, the behavior of our congressional representatives may be more selfish than the average American’s. That doesn’t mean they’re not serving for the good of their country, though. Allow me to explain: it takes a lot of effort to earn a position of power like a congressional seat. It also takes a lot of self-confidence. You have to convince a lot of people that they should vote for you. You have to convince them you’re the best. Self-centeredness is even embedded in the altruistic goal of serving for the good of the country. Only someone who believes they can do the job best will believe that. So yes, I think our representatives are significantly more self-centered than the average American.

So our representatives are working in their own self-interest and we’re selfishly sacrificing the rest of the world to protect ourselves. But at least we’re communally selfish, worried about our interests as a country, right? Wrong. Even ordinary Americans are individually selfish. For example: a bridge collapsed in Minnesota. It was a horrible tragedy. And now we are all very concerned that the bridges we drive over every day are going to collapse too. Basically, we’re worried it’s going to happen to us. It happened to some other innocent Americans who didn’t do anything wrong. And we all think, it could have been me…

But we’re not so worried about the people dying in flooding in India or famines in Africa, or, to get back on topic, about the Iranian and British civilians being secretly eavesdropped on. Because it isn’t happening to us.

Here’s a news flash, to everyone who thinks it’s ok, because it’s targeted against foreigners: it’s not us and them. It’s one world, to quote the Olympic slogan. And it’s a small world after all, to quote Disney. Technology is shrinking the world even more every day, and it’s becoming ever more dangerous for us to consider all non-Americans enemies. They’re not – they’re our neighbors.

Indulge my idealistic notions for a moment. Forget that America, as the number one superpower, should care about the rest of the world. Forget that our government of the people and for the people should care about those people, rather than its own political future. Even if you forget that, don’t you think you should care about your neighbor?

You Tube You Can’t: The Failure of a Medium

You Tube is democracy on the cheap, with all its anti-elitist pretensions. The world’s intellectual elite took one look at it, and probably had an apoplectic fit. But so did the politicians – initially suspicious by its all-too-democratic overtones. Dross and drivel mark its promotions, but perhaps that’s the point. Keep the public happy, a chattering channel that enables this amorphous creature to vent opinion and bile.

Then came along CNN, that Centre for Neutered News. It has happily taken a medium that was theoretically for the public, to promote its name. Politicians have hopped on board. Here was a chance for collaboration: a ‘debate’ by U.S. presidential candidates might be jointly had. Members of the public would film clips and post them to a panel to be forwarded to the aspirants. Evidently, the public is not allowed to run the show with its own amusements. That would be akin to allowing the spillage of Onan’s seed, with all the self-pleasuring that supposes, before an ever watchful priest.

The Democrats came first, courting You Tube and CNN at the Citadel in Charleston, S.C. on July 23. MSNBC called it a ‘provocative, video-driven debate’. One wonders what they were looking at. The same sad themes were hammered home with all the custom-made drudgery that modern politics spouts. Suddenly, You Tube was not simply about idiotic dogs dazzled by hoses or sizzling rip-offs from pay-television networks. We just had to let the politicians in on the game.

We could gauge that the most interesting videos were mere fizzle to the censors of the neutered news brigade. A video, featuring a bespectacled individual, asks the candidates what they can do about a voting public (at least in California) where 88 percent believe its governor Arnold Schwarzeneger to be a cyborg. Such is the state of ‘reality’ in the CNN sieve that such a statistic, far from being a worry, was just ‘fact’. Supposedly in a state once run by a man Gore Vidal considered a ‘triumph of the embalmer’s art’ (Reagan), one might understand.

As for the video, it could not be put to the candidates, for all its merry reflections. All is serious and monochromatic in the get-real world of CNN and Capitol Hill.

The questions got dimmer as the You Tube sessions heated up – or rather petered out, a bland rehashing of mantra and Democratic neuroses. Obama had to justify whether he was ‘black’ enough, at least for those voters who probably still think he is either Osama or white. Given that CNN has spelling difficulties with the name Obama, this might have provided the viewer with some comic relief.

Hillary Clinton had to justify why she was not simply some other de-sexualised woman with the erogenous zones of a mannequin. ‘I am woman enough,’ and all that that entails. Senator John Edwards refused to accept the vote of anybody who would otherwise not vote for either a black man or a woman (sexual or de-sexualised), then rallied behind a more sophisticated façade to steal his own march. To paraphrase his efforts of the deep thinker tormented by the age’s moral messages, he was wrestling with the idea of a civil partnership. Predictably, two men in the sack struck him as irksome, though is wife apparently does not object.

Technology cuts both ways: the radio, George Orwell reminds us, did nothing to help democracy and everything to build the bunkers of totalitarian states. There is a fine line between a medium that emancipates and the Ministry of Truth. The point here is that You Tube, now in the lecherous arms of the political elite, will see battle again done for the ‘grass roots’ with political tofts and populists.

Once such media becomes the standard practice of viewers, it is inevitable that private and public interests will muscle in. Politicians, and Ted Turner, have now worked out that they must do battle through another medium rich with propaganda. The Republicans are following suit. You Tube is simply becoming another idiot box, and one that is no longer ours.

This piece was first published in Counterpunch, July 24, 2007.