The hoopla surrounding the current American Presidential race is reminiscent of a Three-Ring Circus. We have a ring master in shiny boots with a megaphone announcing the acts, each more astounding and unbelievable than the next, we have trained performers, clowns, wild animals, lions and tigers and bears, oh my! The announcer is of course, the Media, in its never ending pursuit of ever higher ratings (and market-share) inciting the audience to a fever pitch of political fervor, and yet...some of the audience is left cold.
America, is really a two-party system. Never mind the dozen or so splinter groups such as the Greens, etc. They have neither any real power nor any real effect. This is for all intents and purposes being cast by the Media as a black and white election. Even within the respective parties there is little focus on nuance or shading, you are either for a candidate, or you are a baby eating monster.
I am here to tell you that most of America therefor consists of baby eating monsters! The citizens in the middle, I am going to use a very un-American term here and call them “Centrists”, Centrists care little for the extreme politics of either the left or the right. Most of them even find the antics of each of the party's more center leaning candidates too outre for their tastes. The middle, the Centrists, are what used to be termed the “silent majority”.
I have bad news for the Media, the political caucuses, the pundits, the talking heads, and the analysts; the Centrists are still the majority and they are not the same voter as the silent majority of a decade or two ago, they are no longer silent, and they vote. They are not swayed by your rhetoric, your leaping in the air, and your balancing balls on the tip of your nose does not impress them at all. Nor do I believe that current socio-political theory accounts for them. Surveys and polls pass them by.
The seeds were planted last election and are beginning to sprout, change is coming, it may be this election, it may be next, but media hype and party politics are both walking into an era they never anticipated seeing: a well informed, angry voter. Trust me, it is a mine field.
My friend Emlyn recently wrote a piece in response to a political column in The Guardian. While he was addressing the neo-liberal left, I think it is appropriate for the far right as well. I think it expresses what is happening far better than I can, prose not not being my long suit. With his permission I have re-posted it here in its entirety:
Emlyn O'Regan
The
Invisible Revolution
George Monbiot wrote this great article:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
describing what neoliberalism is, its problems, and its modern failure. At the end of the article, he bemoans the failure of the left to bring forth an ideological replacement for it.
But that’s not going to happen. Left and right are dead. Go home old man!
The next great movement isn’t a top down system of political and economic organisation. It is barely recognisable as an ideology.
Instead, the next great movement is a decentralised, almost instinctive mass rejection of ideology, hierarchy, elite power in all its forms.
It is characterised by the rejection of paternalistic domination in our private lives; censorship, IP, drugs, and the regulation of bodies and genitals and the bedroom.
It is equally unimpressed by pre-existing economic organisation; careers, unionisation, utilities, monopolies. We cheer as apparently fixed points of our world order crumble.
This movement is toward networked self sufficiency. It is a space of artists and artisans, an adhocracy of power tools and pop up businesses. It’s solar panels and fruit trees, ride sharing and craft beer and home made CNC machines.
It’s Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, but only as proxies for a mighty Fuck You to the powers that be, because really, top down government and corporate control can go get fucked.
It is an eschewing of money in favour of a sophisticated, heterogeneous, tech mediated interaction between individuals. It is organising something between friends on messenger, and no money changes hands.
It is a movement with few leaders and sacred texts. Instead it is instinctive. It is the world’s billions feeling their way into a new space of potential.
It doesn’t think in long form text; instead it thinks in pictures and symbols and memes. It is emotional.
It is heterogeneous and decentralised. It is uncounted and uncountable. There are no statistics, no colourful graphs. It’s adherents don’t share a language or an ideology, and aren’t really adherents after all.
It is the slow shaking off of tyranny.
It is invisible to the previous order. If neoliberalism is the ideology without a name, then the new movement is almost entirely without form. The current elites watch their ideas stall, the numbers turn bad, and no evidence of an alternative appears in their metrics. But I think they know in their guts that something is up.
Something is up, fuckers.
George Monbiot wrote this great article:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
describing what neoliberalism is, its problems, and its modern failure. At the end of the article, he bemoans the failure of the left to bring forth an ideological replacement for it.
But that’s not going to happen. Left and right are dead. Go home old man!
The next great movement isn’t a top down system of political and economic organisation. It is barely recognisable as an ideology.
Instead, the next great movement is a decentralised, almost instinctive mass rejection of ideology, hierarchy, elite power in all its forms.
It is characterised by the rejection of paternalistic domination in our private lives; censorship, IP, drugs, and the regulation of bodies and genitals and the bedroom.
It is equally unimpressed by pre-existing economic organisation; careers, unionisation, utilities, monopolies. We cheer as apparently fixed points of our world order crumble.
This movement is toward networked self sufficiency. It is a space of artists and artisans, an adhocracy of power tools and pop up businesses. It’s solar panels and fruit trees, ride sharing and craft beer and home made CNC machines.
It’s Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, but only as proxies for a mighty Fuck You to the powers that be, because really, top down government and corporate control can go get fucked.
It is an eschewing of money in favour of a sophisticated, heterogeneous, tech mediated interaction between individuals. It is organising something between friends on messenger, and no money changes hands.
It is a movement with few leaders and sacred texts. Instead it is instinctive. It is the world’s billions feeling their way into a new space of potential.
It doesn’t think in long form text; instead it thinks in pictures and symbols and memes. It is emotional.
It is heterogeneous and decentralised. It is uncounted and uncountable. There are no statistics, no colourful graphs. It’s adherents don’t share a language or an ideology, and aren’t really adherents after all.
It is the slow shaking off of tyranny.
It is invisible to the previous order. If neoliberalism is the ideology without a name, then the new movement is almost entirely without form. The current elites watch their ideas stall, the numbers turn bad, and no evidence of an alternative appears in their metrics. But I think they know in their guts that something is up.
Something is up, fuckers.
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