However, a larger point is that the "mental football match" quality of modern political discourse is not limited to the US politics, and it is quite widely spread in Europe (witness the electoral politics in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, the UK, or France) - although there might be some differences in intensity. As deTocqueville argued, this bombast is the direct consequence of democracy, but i would add that the ideology of market competition is a significant contributor as well.
Most ordinary people have little to gain from elections and their outcomes, so they have little or no incentive to participate. The only winners are political parties their paying clients who seek political patronage. However, the ability of political parties to deliver that patronage depends on election outcomes, so they have a good reason to motivate the disinterested public to participate. And since they cannot offer anything substantive, they use scare tactic and marketing gimmicks to make people believe that they obtain some symbolic gains from supporting this or that political party.
It is literally like a football match . The outcome has zero practical impact on most people's lives, they obtain only emotional satisfaction from "their" team winning. But that ersatz reward is enough to make them participate and even pay good money for that participation.
Democracy, as practiced today, is a fundamentally debased system that creates an illusion of self-governance where none or little of it actually exists. It is the latter day opium of the people. In that respect, it is not much different from religion or for that matter Soviet-style communism - an ideal that looks very appealing on paper, but turns into its opposite in practical implementation.
Wojtek
On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, "right" and "left" in conventional (perhaps especially conventional
> neoliberal) US politics (Ds vs Rs) is BS, this has been said here
> repeatedly.
> Similarly, if you constrain your take on gun ownership, environmentalism
> and
> health care to the range of the debate between (especially neoliberal) Ds
> and Rs then the differences are close to meaningless.
> That doesn't mean that - despite the contradictory authoritarian,
> xenophobic, and populist - tendencies of conventional neoliberal "left" and
> "right" politics in the US (and other liberal/social democracies) that it
> is
> worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
> The whole political problem with authoritarianism, xenophobia and populism
> is that each fundamentally presociological and therefore has no viable
> economic or political theory... much less one that generates any
> understanding of modern ecological, scientific, personal, health, spatial
> or
> cultural dynamics under modern capitalist democracies.
> Liberalism, by contrast, has a very specific theoretical meaning - and it
> is
> tied to utilitarianism, the philosophical tradition that undergirds
> capitalism economics and democratic governance as we know them.
> Internationalism, which does not mean globalization, also has a very
> specific meaning - one tied to particular strands of anarchism, socialism,
> and communism.
> It is exactly being able to differentiate conventional US politics and
> understand the relationship between these terms that allows us to define
> left and right in meaningful ways... but, then, from two years of your
> previous posts I'm pretty sure you know all this and that your screed -
> without intending (too much) to put words in your mouth or thoughts in your
> head - may come from a deep and pure frustration with the state of politics
> these days rather than from a professional and political embrace of the
> position taken.
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [WS:] As I see it, this whole left/right discourse is basically a mental
> > football match - the teams compete not because they stand for different
> > values but because they are simply opposing teams, and the rules of the
> > game
> > require that opposing teams compete against each other.
> >
> > Both historical "left" and "right" have their shares of authoritarianism,
> > xenophobia, populism, liberalism, internationalism, and democratic
> > governance - so attribute some of these traits to one side but not the
> > other
> > is not grounded in facts. What makes a difference is that is a specific
> > historical circumstance, a course taken by one side is almost
> automatically
> > opposed by the other. For example, gun ownership is neither "left" or
> > "right" , but under current political circumstance is a bone of
> contention
> > -
> > one side defends it because the other side opposes it and vice versa.
> >
> > Ditto for environmentalism or government regulation. In itself, neither
> > is
> > "left" or "right", but the US left espouses both because they are
> > signifiers
> > of anti-capitalism, while the "right" opposes them because they are
> "left"
> > issues.
> >
> > The entire modern political "discourse" has been reduced to a shouting
> > match
> > between opposing camps. The main goal of this match is to shut down the
> > opponents, not to decide merits or demerits of their "positions." In
> fact,
> > there are no "positions" in a conventional meaning of the term i.e.
> > logically coherent systems based on a set of fundamental principles.
> > Anything goes as long as it scores points for "our" team. Thus, the
> same
> > health care system that was a brain child of Heritage Foundation and the
> > Republican governor of Massachusetts became "socialism" when proposed by
> a
> > Democrat president. This shift defies conventional logic, but is
> perfectly
> > consistent with the logic of a football game - the very same maneuver can
> > be
> > either good or bad, depending is "our" team is scoring or losing points.
> >
> > For that reason, I am rapidly losing interest in political discourse,
> just
> > as I have zero interest in spectator sports.
> >
> > Wojtek
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:42 PM, brad <babscritique at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I am having a little trouble grasping exactly what you mean by the left
> > > being defined as 'fight on the side of the oppressed'. Who exactly is
> > > deciding who is 'the oppressed'? Sure all of us here might agree on
> > this.
> > > But the left deciding who's oppressed which you claim determines if one
> > is
> > > on the left is pretty circular. There are plenty of free market wackos
> > who
> > > would argue that they are fighting for the oppressed. What about
> > stiglitz
> > > and sachs, don't they claim to be fighting for the oppressed. Are they
> > on
> > > the left? Seems a bit subjective or open ended.
> > >
> > > Brad
> > > ___________________________________
> > > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> > >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
> --
> *********************************************************
> Alan P. Rudy
> Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
> Central Michigan University
> 124 Anspach Hall
> Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
> 517-881-6319
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>