Empire of Illusion

So I have started reading the Empire of Illusion, written by the same guy, Chris Hedges, who wrote Bobos in Paradise. It has the same harsh tone of Bobo's without the same comedy. This consistent borderline rant character of his writing set off some internal alarms, so I have chosen to look at the man speak, as I am expecting another Kozol situation (I find my self nodding to his writing but shaking my head to his speechs-type situation).

This is what I watched.

He is speaking at the New School, and his message that the government has failed us, before the Vietnam war is interesting, seeing how if one looks into the background of the New School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_School#History), this rhetoric is not surprising considering it was founded, as an offshoot of academics dissatisfied with the American war rhetoric of WWI. But recently many of the head honchos of the school have had close ties with the Clintons, and other high profile political groups. But they also have a tradition of synthesizing leftist intellectual thought with European philosophy.


At any rate, his use of Michael Jackson for a vehicle to demonstrate how the illusions (and their exploitation/creation by corporations) that have become an integral part of our society. The cult of celebrity has taken over our culture and even political arena. Everything has become a brand, the past election was Brand Obama vs. Brand Bush, so he is arguing that the entire system is indeed corrupt.


But what I find most interesting is his ruminations of totalitarianism, he says that we live in an inverted totalitarian society ( a term first used by Sheldon Wolin)


"While the versions of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Fascism consolidated power by suppressing liberal political practices that had sunk only shallow cultural roots, Superpower represents a drive towards totality that draws from the setting where liberalism and democracy have been established for more than two centuries. It is Nazism turned upside-down, “inverted totalitarianism.” While it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of the cost-effective rather than of a “master race” (Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the “ideal.”"


 -From  Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought by Wolin

According to Wikipedia there are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism. In classical totalitarian states, the state dominates economic actors, where as in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the state. Second, while the most regimes aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population with military demonstrations and youth groups, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy, all that is required is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them. Lastly, inverted totalitarianism still feigns democracy.

Wolin again: "Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."

The idea being that since the close of WWII and the onset of the Cold War our country/empire has been evolving into this type of state.  Alternatively there is also a Managed Democracy that more closely resembles Nazi type totalitarianism. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism#Managed_democracy).


However, the main problem, currently, is the economic slowdown of our empire. Eminent Harvard historian Charles Maier attributes this to a shift from being an Empire of Production to an Empire of Consumption, and from my limited knowledge of history, this seems to be an accurate assessment of why every past empire has fallen from power. I feel that our country is going through what can be seen as a painful growing process, where economically we are realizing what we are still an empire of production in one category, ideas! The reason that we have the best Universities in the world is due to the ingenuity and creativity within the natural sciences that we possess and the ability to translate that to the business world. http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2012/02/01/why-china-cannot-develop-its-own-iphone/ 


Our K-12 education system is realizing that the present is not like past, and radical transformations are being made to curriculum around the country, looking to emphasize critical thinking and technology literacy. While hedges brings up a number of issues that are hard to address in this blog, I think that the answers to maintaing our empire at least exist. Perhaps we can still save our bubble economy and become more politically conscious. Unfortunately, according to Hedges these may be irreconcilable.