The Great Divide

I think this country has come to a great divide, the divide is getting wider, and I'm about to fall in.

So are lots of older baby boomers, so at least I'll have company down there in the bottom of the trench.

America, the birthing room of democracy, where every man could pull himself up by his bootstraps, has become feudal Europe, where the only bootstrap most people will ever see is the one attached to the boot on one's neck. There used to be a middle class. I know, because I was in it. Now I'm a paycheck to paycheck wage slave with a mortgage and a prayer.

I, and many of the older baby boomers, used to look forward to some kind of retirement. I had a pile of equity in my house and some savings, not bad after a divorce. But then the real estate market dove to the bottom of the ocean and the equity I was counting on has shrunk to zero on a good day. Meanwhile the price of everything went into the clouds and those savings got smaller and smaller.

Put simply, the rich got richer and the middle class got wiped out.

Lawrence Lessing says on The Huff Post (Friday, 9/3/10), "It seems that just about every hundred years or so, he body politic we call America swells with fever as it fights off a democracy-destroying disease. That disease is "Special Interest Government," a government captured by the economically powerful in society, as they find a way to convert economic into political power; the fever comes from the reform movement, keen to kill that disease and restore an ideal of government of, by, and for the People."

Okay, I have a fever, what the hell. So should a lot of other older baby boomers and former members of the middle class. Too bad we're too busy babbling into our beer to get together. If we did.....remember the sixties? That's the heritage of the older boomers.

We marched, we pranked, we ruled the news, we brought down a corrupt government, ended a war, and changed history. After such shenanigans of course, the opposition bought every media outlet that wasn't nailed down. Now it's a little harder to get featured on the news, Even when we march, most reports cut our numbers by 80% (while boosting their own by 80%).

I guess Mr. Lessing makes the point that the reform movement usually wins and restores democracy in its intended form. But a hundred years ago they didn't have mass media. Marshall McLuhan warned us about its power in "The Media is The Message," a little book all too ignored by the mass of folks and perhaps all too embraced by the rich few. In any case, I believe modern media changes the playing field completely.

Completely. I cannot stress enough, the power of this media. If the wrong guys own it, you're cooked. And the wrong guys do. Yes, there is alternative media, thanks be to Keith Olberman and Air America Radio, but there is far more Special Interest Media. And there are so, so many persuadable people.

There is a school of thought that television works on the reptilian part of our brains. Whether you agree or not, it's no secret that most of the fare on TV is severely dumbed down. Newspapers are written for an 8^th grade reading level and nowadays they cannot compete with the all-holy screen with moving stuff on it. Television is hypnotic.

It is not a difficult task to hypnotize people into becoming followers. Most humans have a tendency to follow anyway; real leaders and independent thinkers are few among social animals. The formula is simple:

1. Create anxiety.

2. Divert blame.

3. Offer comfort.

First you scare people by making them fear for their financial survival, then you blame Liberals and Big Government, then you tell them it is you who will save them. Untrue and immoral, but what the hell, it gets votes.

This is why the authors of the current economic distress keep getting elected. This is why Hitler came to power. People are starving, blame someone (Jews, liberals), and then go get 'em. This might be a lot to swallow, except for TV.

So Mr. Lessing, I pray that you are right, and that the American people will rescue American democracy. But the way things are going in this election year so far, I'm worried. Demagogues are taking the field in many states, and we all know which side they work for.

The only solution I see is to reform campaign funding so that we would no longer recognize it. The only way to level the playing field is to publicly fund campaigns, each candidate getting the same amount. Campaigns might be kind of dull, but they would represent people, not Big Business and Banks. And representatives in Washington might actually do some representing, rather than whatever their contributors tell them to do. Lobbyists would be there to convince, rather than to buy. That would be nothing less than The American Revolution II, The Sequel.