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Ooooooooo,
quite
the dust-up in the halls of justice this summer, huh? Headlines
like this one were par for the course: Boehner pulls out of White House debt talks - A frustrated president calls leaders back to the negotiating table Saturday ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43851666/ns/politics-capitol_hill/ )
What due diligence ... what hard work ... how satisying to see countervailing forces working so hard together, all for the benefit of the people, of course. How could the outcome be anything other than optimal, or at least acceptable, right? And how nice that on the way to that inherently positive outcome, each side gets to revel in their imagined superiority. I can hear them all now: "We're the chosen ones." ... "God is on our side."
Crowd control via participatory soap-opera. Does anyone really think this time will be different? Have they turned over a new leaf? Let's just call it what it is, another rubber stamping, log rolling, charade. If history is any guide, the financial elites have already made the decision - long ago - regarding the outcome of this so-called "crisis", which they created in the first place. One would think the historical precedent, consensus in scholarship, books ... films ... independent media ... (and even the mainstream media to a certain extent), would be enough to prompt everyone to stop playing along, pretending that the existing system is working or even salvageable. It got ridiculous and embarrassing a long time ago. One almost has to wonder if there is a hidden camera somewhere or that we're are part of an experiment to see how much bs people are capable of assimilating.
The propaganda matrix is participatory sliding scale where the thought/effort we make and bs we have to accept/tolerate are inversely proportional. The more thought we put in, the less bs we have to tolerate. Whether or not it's worth it is highly subjective. Let's have a look: Level one is the first line of defense in the propaganda matrix and probably claims the most victims, unfortunately. (I'm guessing - and have read - around 1/3 of the population, kind of like carpet bombing to soften the target ... ) This is simply the predominant story in the mainstream mass media. It goes something like this: "Democracy and freedom are alive and well. The will of the people sets policy through elected representatives, and we are merely trying to spread this freedom around the world." This level entails minimal thought or effort but a lot of bs. This level is all about convenience, a ready made script for immediate consumption in the harried life of the wage slave.
Level two takes a little more thought for those who couldn't manage to trick themselves into reconciling the bs in level one, and are wondering to what extent "democracy" really exists. On level two, any who dare to risk rocking the boat ask the question, "aren't our elected leaders collaborating with big business interests behind closed doors and subverting the will of their constituencies?" The answer they ultimately succumb to is, "yes, they are collaborating, but they never agree on anything ... there is no unity and the collaborations are meaningless." So the system is salvaged via the meaningless collaborations bit.
The salvation on level 3, however, is different. And level three entails a bit more thought. On this level one comes to realize that the answer on level two was horse hockey, so one looks further for a better answer. The reconciliatory answer on level three is, "Yes, our elected leaders are collaborating with big business interests. Furthermore, their efforts have proven to be successful. Through history, there have been various fraternities, secret societies and round table groups, well attended by the predominant monied interests, which have proven extremely effective in controlling world affairs. However, this is for the good of the whole. The will of the people is dangerous. The lies told to the masses are noble lies ... told to them for their own good." How convenient. A much more powerful argument on level three, no doubt, but horse hockey nonetheless. The truth is that mankind as a whole would be infinitely better off if people's voices counted (other than deciding which stuff to purchase), and especially if the hoarding of obscene amounts of wealth were made impossible and access to credit was not restricted from the majority of the world's people the way it is today.
So the propaganda matrix produce the desired effect on all levels: peace in the minds of the people, either through convenience or satisfied curiosity. The system appears intact or at least salvageable for a large enough number of people to maintain the peace and status quo. Similarly, big agribusiness keeps the masses eating at the end of the industrial food chain by concealing itself behind window dressing like "organic" or "fair trade," the definitions of which are decided by agribusiness oligopolies. Crowd control at its finest.
Beyond the
propaganda matrix lies reality. This is the place where people go
when
they realize there is no point, beyond a false sense of civic duty, in
participating in the political apparatus. This is the place where
people go to do other things, real things like building community,
family, developing passions ... This is the place for
everyone who
has come to the realization that the system is undemocratic
because it was
designed that way. Beyond the propaganda matrix folks still keep
their
finger on the pulse of the political goings on, but only to help them
to anticipate what might be coming down the pipeline. But a lot
of this
is
academic, done for fun, to keep minds sharp and, as I said, to gain
perspective as to what we might expect in the future. These
discussions never involve pretending that the fundamentals can be
changed any time soon.
Pretending is maladaptive. It isn't just delusional, it wastes energy. So-called "civics" today takes time and energy, whether it's some part of the political process such as voting, getting caught up in mass media hype, arguing with our friends, family and neighbors, talking behind their backs, and creating rifts in our social networks, all over nothing, all over a fantasy world which we have no control over. Real civics are different. Real civics bring friends, families, neighbors and communities together. Real civics involve things that we can control and that have measurable results. Fantasy civics involves cheerleading ... regurgitating prefabricated scripts conceived by someone else that have zero chance of changing anything and in fact are devised/promoted to prevent change. In fantasy civics, the cheerleading becomes the civic duty, allowing people to attain a (false) sense of accomplishment. In other words, any impetus for real, positive change is diffused, precisely what our common sense tells us the elite establishment would do to protect monied interests - to maintain the "status quo."
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