Gilded Cage Match

The way out is the way in. -- Rush, Secret Touch

Commenter thedevilzone points out a great post from IOZ, which neatly encapsulates the political predicament we find ourselves in, perhaps without many of us even realizing or thinking about it.

If you asked me, "What would a contemporary police state look like?" I'd reply that it would look an awful lot like what America looks like right now. I would tell you that subsidized consumer affluence has proven a far more effective method of social control than centrally planned, faux-egalitarianism. I would tell you that someone finally figured out that breadlines breed rebellion but lines at the multiplex for the midnight opening of the next blockbuster do not. I would tell you that keeping up with the Joneses has proven a more effective enforcer of conformity than any book of Dear Leader's wisdom ever did. I would tell you that hope for Vegas vacations beats fear of the work camps for quashing dissent. I would tell you that subtle is better than overt, seemingly random better than routine, carnivalesque better than somber, colorful better than drab. Look at the billions of dollars and man-hours thrown into deciding between a guy from Massachusetts and a gal from New York who evince no convincingly held differences of belief. Has ever a nation been farther from revolution than the United States in the year 2007?

I feel a great many people waiting, breathing shallowly, as if one day at last the whole edifice will tip over and reveal its infested foundation. It won't. I feel as if a great many people are waiting for a president to suspend the government, or for black-hood squads to start snatching people in broad daylight, or for the police to establish checkpoint entrances to our cities and loyalty oaths in our schools. (That last, of course, already . . . ) They are waiting, in other words, for incontrovertible and public evidence that Denmark is rotten, some moment of national epiphany when Candidate-for-Life Benito Giuliani descends through the clouds in his own airline trailing some athletic blond with a camera on his way to a firelit vigil in Yankee Stadium.

Breadlines breed rebellion, but lines at the multiplex do not. That's it right there. The control mechanisms do not have to be overt. We have managed to spook ourselves with nasty tales of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo suicides as concrete indicators of creeping authoritarianism, due to this administration. These are very real and very dangerous, but only part of the picture. We are expending more energy on marginal abstractions than on pernicious realities.

There are many more "soft" indicators which we simply accept. Every public event and many major urban streets are now constantly, openly surveilled. Gated communities abound, are prized even. The gap between the have-mores and have-nots grows inexorably, while the remaining haves scramble for upward mobility and the illusion of security. This in itself is the seemingly benign control mechanism to which we have all become accustomed.

And these subtler mechanisms have been in play for years, so they cannot be attributed solely to this administration. It's systemic. Which means that the next one, be it Mitt Pepsi or Hillary Coke, will extend or at least maintain those mechanisms. We may wish to fool ourselves that because Coke is more amenable to preserving Roe v. Wade or hiking cigarette taxes to fund low-income children's insurance programs, that they are "better" than Pepsi. And on those boutique issues they may indeed be objectively better. Super. Now poor people can still get free health care thanks to an accelerated sin tax. Feel better now? Coke still empowered the very same people she has implied are incompetent liars to move forward with plans to expand the pre-emptive war doctrine into Iran. Plus ça change....

I recently finished watching the second season of The Wire, which I hadn't seen since it originally aired. It all came back with amazing quickness, but I'd almost forgotten how phenomenally those twelve pitch-perfect episodes describe the evisceration of the American dream. The rug has been pulled out from under the skilled blue-collar middle-class, leaving finance weasels with their hands in each other's (and everyone else's) pockets above, and a feral grey economy below (and all around), which the workers reluctantly join just to supplement their dwindling income, not to mention a small role in steering the course of their own lives. Politicians at several levels weave through and above, taking their cut and exerting their influence where possible. Crime pays, as always; what changes is the players and the places. The game is the same, even (perhaps especially) in a $3,000 suit. The only question is whether people's hopes and dreams get pickpocketed, burgled, or mugged by reality.

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Last month's big protest march was a fine illustration of the kabuki we continue to subject ourselves and each other to when it comes to how we view our place in our country. I think a public airing of grievances is a fine thing, especially since we are still at least nominally entitled to such things, so long as we stay in the free speech zone. But people seem to be under the impression that this is necessary to effect real change in the world. When it happens in Ukraine or China or Burma, it's Truth to Power; here it's a short-counted rabble of marginalized, patchouli-smelling traitors.

And nothing changes from it. Urban police forces are more paramilitary organiztions these days anyway, and it is nothing for them to gear up and let ANSWER run through its paces every few months. You get your protesters -- who again are undercounted in the media anyway, so's not to upset the corporate hierarchy -- and you get a few counter-protesters, a couple of them scrap, the cops knock a few heads and maybe arrest a couple dozen, and everyone goes home. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Becoming a genuine agent of change is not a day-long event, but a real commitment. It is paradoxically both simpler and yet more complicated than marching asshole-to-teakettle with fifty thousand other sweaty bastards outside the White House, when you know Junior is either in Bumfuck Texas chasin' tumbleweeds or cranking up the Toby Keith and drawing the curtains in The People's House. It's not really accomplishing anything lasting, sorry.

Now, if the same number of people want to do that every day for a solid month, then you might get somewhere. But clearly, right now nobody in your representative government gives a rat fuck what any of you think. If they did, they'd do something. Instead, their idea of constructive governance is to bitch about a fucking newspaper ad. Even Pat Leahy yea'd that happy horseshit, and don't get me started on Feinstein.

On the other hand, real change can be accomplished with very simple lifestyle alterations. Collectively we're getting mired in waste and excess, consumption and distractions. I keep reading how a consistent majority of people claims to have Had It With This War. Very well ,then. Our greatest vulnerabilities are oil dependency, food (specifically processing and transportation, and now with the ethanol scam, production and ancillary pricing), and finance.

If this consistent majority of folks has truly Had It, then they had best start looking at how they each impact those areas. Where we drive, what and where we eat, what we consume, and how much we live on the margin all ultimately contribute to the systemic inertia and political stasis that so many of us ritualistically complain about. So people who want to drive their Hummer to Wal-Mart, have at it -- it's still at least notionally a free country. But that essentially strips them of the right to gripe about the problems facing them. I'm with P.T. Barnum on that one -- it is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

As I constantly say, people do not change until they understand that the cost of not changing is greater than the cost of changing. So we either overcome the system, or disengage from it as much as possible. Showing them at the ballot box hasn't done it, nor has showing them in the streets. Don't kid yourself for a second that they're laughing with you.

And in the process of disengaging, perhaps we re-engage, with our communities (for example, multi-use planning/zoning, as well as buying local), and with ourselves. I think we're on the downside of a society that has too many distractions to keep itself motivated and innovating, too busy trudging through life to look up, and the government has simply turned into a money-grubbing snakepit of grifters and lobbyists.

And again, that doesn't mean that we must shed ourselves of all amusement and fun and live monklike existences of privation. It's just time to stop being short-sighted about what and how we consume, and where we apply what precious little political leverage we still retain. Instead of jockeying for position on a crashing bus, maybe it's time to just get off the fucking thing. The thing about a grift is that the one sure way to beat it is to stop being a sucka. It's time to opt out.