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derwood's right---i've been arguing versions of the same point for a long time, here and in 3-d: american political culture is entirely top-down--these days, it's also entirely passive. we're a dominated, docile bunch who are simultaneously terrified of the state and expect it to save us. we do not organize, we do not protest--hell we don't even think too hard in ways that are not dictated for us by our sustained training in happy-face passivity in schools and its continual reinforcement via the dominant media--which stage the world as something we watch, that is separate from us, and we watch it alone, locked up in living rooms. it seems our collective vanity is assuaged by the fact that we repeat as we're told to repeat it that we're all very very free, but that's really just an expression of our docility, almost a joke being played on us, one that we're too far inside to see.
there's no revolution coming in the united states. people are afraid of organizing because in part they're afraid of being found out. they're educated in repetition so they repeat without knowing the difference. what's more likely is a long, pathetic decline in the context of which varying degrees of denial will be proffered and most folk will duly repeat whatever they're told, in the way they're told. chances are that this decline won't even register until its fallout gets so bad that that there's no way around it.
other places with more viable political cultures--places that are not so centered around the fear of dissent as is the united states--would be in better shape were the same process of decline to happen because at least there's enough of a diversity of viewpoints that something of reality can slip through. not so in the monolithic mediascape of the united states.
i hope i'm wrong.
but i don't think i am.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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