Brilliance from guest-blogger Jason Duchac
Jason's blog is currently not functioning, so until gets it up and running again he'll be posting his thoughts on here. It will all be good stuff, he has a deeper and more intuitive understanding of political and social systems than most anyone I know. Enjoy.
“Cities, like dreams, are built from desires and fears, although the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules absurd, their perspectives deceptive, and everything hides something else.” -Italo Calvino, The Invisible Cities.
Fear is the handmaiden of authoritarianism. The hidden mass is anxiety: diffuse, ambiguous and without object. It induces a cold paralysis that invites control and opens the masses to the subjugation of power. To that end, dictatorships are very often characterized by a somewhat paradoxical effect: they typically increase the demand for security, which nourishes the desire for a strong hand. Chile during the 80’s, for instance, is a well-documented case that illustrates the relationship between fear and authoritarianism. At the end of 1986, when the state of siege was at an apex, the population of Santiago most feared an increase in crime rate and drug use, despite the fact that the economy was cited as the primary national problem. People were allowed to trace their anxiety and fears to a concrete origin. When confined to a clearly identifiable problem that is officially recognized by the state as “evil”, the fear can be brought under control. The operation is simple and recognizable. The parallels are unmistakably present in virtually all authoritarian regimes. Because differences cannot easily be eradicated, they are treated as transgressions from the norm. They are labeled “deviation” and “subversion” and subjected to a process of normalization. Emphasis is added to the elements of fear because, simply put, they edify and validate faith in the existing administration.
In the last five years, the United States has witnessed a tremendous political paradigm shift that has catalyzed the birth of a number of startling and dangerous precedents. For one, there has been a usurpation of the language of identity. The political discourse has been completely impoverished in the complete absence of neutral terms. The term “liberalism”, for example, in the mainstream has taken a predominately negative and “deviant” connotation, which, apart from its obsolete usage, is far from the current mark. Moreover, the right has developed and monopolized moral-political concepts and partisan language, which makes rebuttal nearly ineffectual. The media, quite unfortunately, has only exasperated the growing political rift and strengthened the administration’s hand. News reporting now, even on literally quite fair standards, assumes that concepts are literal and non-partisan. Concepts, and the language that express them, however, are rarely ever neutral, most especially in political and moral spheres. In conjunction with one another, these facets alone have contributed to the political polarization of the masses and made it difficult to express and dissect diametrically opposed notions, which accordingly isolates and further alienates the individual.
Apart from an apparent inability to communicate, the administration has capitalized upon the fear of terrorism at every step to further their agenda and quell insurrection and dissent. Bush’s inauguration marks the beginning of the single most sweeping consolidation of power in the brief history of the United States, with the NSA wiretapping being only the latest of a myriad of civil rights infringements veiled artfully behind a wall of loaded expressions. Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O‘Connor spoke recently at Georgetown University. According to National Public Radio, she told the assembly that, “It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.” We are slowly being forced to the precipice and losing our ability to affect our own environment. We as Americans need to learn to acknowledge difference as an innate and multilaterally indispensable part of our society, as well as the world at large. We need to begin to be cognizant of our collective failures and misjudgments before they consume us.
“Cities, like dreams, are built from desires and fears, although the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules absurd, their perspectives deceptive, and everything hides something else.” -Italo Calvino, The Invisible Cities.
Fear is the handmaiden of authoritarianism. The hidden mass is anxiety: diffuse, ambiguous and without object. It induces a cold paralysis that invites control and opens the masses to the subjugation of power. To that end, dictatorships are very often characterized by a somewhat paradoxical effect: they typically increase the demand for security, which nourishes the desire for a strong hand. Chile during the 80’s, for instance, is a well-documented case that illustrates the relationship between fear and authoritarianism. At the end of 1986, when the state of siege was at an apex, the population of Santiago most feared an increase in crime rate and drug use, despite the fact that the economy was cited as the primary national problem. People were allowed to trace their anxiety and fears to a concrete origin. When confined to a clearly identifiable problem that is officially recognized by the state as “evil”, the fear can be brought under control. The operation is simple and recognizable. The parallels are unmistakably present in virtually all authoritarian regimes. Because differences cannot easily be eradicated, they are treated as transgressions from the norm. They are labeled “deviation” and “subversion” and subjected to a process of normalization. Emphasis is added to the elements of fear because, simply put, they edify and validate faith in the existing administration.
In the last five years, the United States has witnessed a tremendous political paradigm shift that has catalyzed the birth of a number of startling and dangerous precedents. For one, there has been a usurpation of the language of identity. The political discourse has been completely impoverished in the complete absence of neutral terms. The term “liberalism”, for example, in the mainstream has taken a predominately negative and “deviant” connotation, which, apart from its obsolete usage, is far from the current mark. Moreover, the right has developed and monopolized moral-political concepts and partisan language, which makes rebuttal nearly ineffectual. The media, quite unfortunately, has only exasperated the growing political rift and strengthened the administration’s hand. News reporting now, even on literally quite fair standards, assumes that concepts are literal and non-partisan. Concepts, and the language that express them, however, are rarely ever neutral, most especially in political and moral spheres. In conjunction with one another, these facets alone have contributed to the political polarization of the masses and made it difficult to express and dissect diametrically opposed notions, which accordingly isolates and further alienates the individual.
Apart from an apparent inability to communicate, the administration has capitalized upon the fear of terrorism at every step to further their agenda and quell insurrection and dissent. Bush’s inauguration marks the beginning of the single most sweeping consolidation of power in the brief history of the United States, with the NSA wiretapping being only the latest of a myriad of civil rights infringements veiled artfully behind a wall of loaded expressions. Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O‘Connor spoke recently at Georgetown University. According to National Public Radio, she told the assembly that, “It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.” We are slowly being forced to the precipice and losing our ability to affect our own environment. We as Americans need to learn to acknowledge difference as an innate and multilaterally indispensable part of our society, as well as the world at large. We need to begin to be cognizant of our collective failures and misjudgments before they consume us.
posted by David at 8:49 PM
2 Comments:
This was awesome. Thanks Jason.
Yeah, Jason really does have the mind best suited for grasping systems theory of anyone I know, but he's too busy being a mercenary/gunhand and bringing the riffage to write anything.
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