Every four years, we have "The America is a Democracy Pageant" to reaffirm the fact that we are in fact still a democracy, and to select the "facilities managers" for the two parallel governments of "Democracyland," for the next four years.
On the one hand, there is the "permanent government" that believes in giving the illusion of self-government -- the illusion that government is fair, justice and equal. It does this in an effort to maintain public order at all costs. For it knows that a lost of faith in the symbols of democracy might lead to rioting in the streets.
The permanent government consists of the Fortune 500 companies, lobbyists, the media/entertainment syndicate, the military/intelligence complex, the prison/medical/drug complex, the research universities and law firms, plus their subjects among the voting populations who have been hoodwinked into thinking that the principles upon which the "permanent government" stand are meant to serve their needs as well.
The permanent government, leases the presidency for its term of office through its campaign contributions. It sets the terms of the contract between the government and private citizens. It underwrites their liberty, and brackets what they can consider as the proper pursuit of their happiness.
The "provisional government," on the other hand, is the spiritual, emotional and symbolic part of "Democracyland." It oversees the production of the "America is a Democracy" Pageant. It exemplifies the nation's highest moral aspirations, protects the citizenry from unholy thoughts and actions, and devotes itself to the mending up of wounds to the nation's soul. It also maintains the sanctity of the nations symbols.
The problems that animate the provisional government such as the widening gap in income and wealth between the rich and the poor, or restoring Glass-Steagall, or helping build a new infrastructure, or increasing taxes on the rich, or providing healthcare for everyone, are off the table for the permanent government. Therefore the candidates ignore them, or at best, as Mr. Obama has done, wave a symbolic hand in their direction.
The things that the permanent government worry about are always front and center. Things such as more relaxed regulations, justification of the next war, balancing the budget without cutting subsidies to the rich or raising taxes on them; cutting entitlements to the poor and raising taxes on the middle-class.
Chapter XIV: Back to School
"Ambition has no mean, it is either up on all fours or upon tiptoes." (Marques of Halifax)
American education has become a course of study that defines the terms of our existence as little more than courtiers to the corporate elite. To wit: Lawyers like journalists or actors, are hired to arrange the truth in its most flattering and convenient poses, a smiling and accommodating person loyal to power under whatever name it presents itself, constructing the edifice of a brilliant career by saying to a succession of masters: Make of me what you want; I am what you want me to be.
This attitude, that the corporations expect of their junior executives, or campaign managers, or women is the same attitude they expect of their dogs. Well aware that they have little choice but to become dependent upon a corporate overlord, not only for their wages, but also for their very identity and thus the very terms of their existence -- how could young college students not want to learn the ways and means of keeping their places in the sun?
After four years in the academic limelight, how could the typical college graduate not imagine himself on tiptoes, or more likely on all fours addressing a business convention, developing projects for PBS, or lecturing at the Kennedy School of Government?
Chapter XV: Oklahoma Lobster?
The desired to punish foreign thugs can be emotionally overpowering, especially to Americans living in the richer zip codes. The difficulty however is locating them properly along our color and religiously coded sociological grid. Whenever someone is difficult to locate on the American sociological grid, we tend to find a place for them by conflating them, not necessarily with the nearest, but with next most "comforting" category.
For instance, coming from California, Ronald Reagan helped blur the distinction between poverty, crime and global terrorists. While "foreign terrorists" are nearest America's own home-grown terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski or Eric Rudolph, since they are white, locating them next to foreign terrorists becomes problematic, or more accurately, a bit too close for comfort in the American mind.
Following Mr. Reagan's lead, foreign terrorists thus, more often than not, are conflated with being poor, or just being common ordinary criminals, or worse yet, with being just other illegal immigrants. As a result, voters in the richer zip codes tended to associate Arabs carrying suitcases of plastic explosives with their normal everyday enemies: unmarried black mothers carrying babies, or illegal Mexicans carrying rakes and hoes, rather with the Symbionese Liberation Army, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, or Ted Kaczynski.
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