American Culture = Obfuscation

The secret to contemporary American culture is that it is probably the world's most advanced structure of cultural obfuscation to ever be spontaneously and purposefully created. (This is NOT to say that it is the only culture with such a structural aspect. Indeed, this is probably common to most, if not all, cultures. It is just that the embeddedness and effectiveness of the American structure of cultural obfuscation seems to have set a new standard for humanity.) The machinery of NOT SEEING and NOT HEARING is quite elaborate and powerful. Our every thought is shaped within the structural contours of a system of television, motion pictures, popular mythology, strictly controlled educational curricula, and taboos. We do not see many aspects of our lives because we are taught not to see them. And we are taught to see a great deal that just is not there. It isn't that it is inappropriate to say "The emperor has no clothes, although it probably gets you called lots of nasty names when you do point this out, but that most people are programmed to see clothing where there is nakedness. And then there is the cultivation of ignorance. Where the hell is Iraq anyway? It's someplace else, for sure. But where? Is it near Cuba? People in the United States know more about a cartoon, The Simpsons, than they do about the Bill of Rights, which seems somehow appropriate given the tendency, particularly in the lands where slavery reigned not so long ago, to support politicians who view these rights as a leftwing nuisance. (Gunnar Myrdal long ago noted the tendency of Americans to say contradictory things, like they believed in equality of opportunity, but then in the same conversation argue against allowing "negroes" (or some other term) to go the same schools as "whites." While there are fewer people with such a predilection today, there are no shortage of similar contradictions.) The aforementioned (in an earlier post) ability to promote new definitions of terms, like capitalism, that had served as raw material in conversations about the present, past, and future of this and other societies, is a critical component in this structure of cultural obfuscation. If capitalism is "free markets" then capitalism has always existed and is pervasive in historical and geographic terms. If capitalism is human rights (does anyone actually say that? I seem to recall hearing this somewhere), then who can be against it? What happened to capitalism as a unique wage labor based system of exploitation? What happened to our ability to dream of better social formations? The pharaohs reigned for thousands of years but it was possible to develop a better social formation eventually, no? Isn't it possible that capitalism (the buying and selling of human labor power) might not be the END OF HISTORY. Well, it can't be discussed because we've completely displaced and replaced the definition of capitalism upon which that conversation could be held. Is it unpatriotic to define capitalism as the buying and selling of labor power? Is it unAmerican? It's probably too bad for the slave masters of the old South that they weren't successful enough to make slavery (as a labor system, rather than a gentile way of life) go away as effectively (although we've done a pretty good job of hiding the real atrocities of slavery, the millions who died, those who spent a lifetime being tortured -- it's not a story likely to be on ABC anytime soon). The culture of obfuscation tells us what to NOT SEE more than what to see, although we are presented with lots of fantasy images/imaginary in the movies and television, especially television, which is constructed around the commercial imagery that programs all of us to spend our days in pursuit of shiny objects and sex or sex and shiny objects. History disappears. The present disappears. Was it wrong to go to war in Iraq, despite the virtual certainty that humanity is better off without Saddam Hussein in power? Is this the right question? Why are we still in Iraq, either way? What are we doing there? Why is it right that we should do it, whatever it is? Does might make right? Is Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity sufficient excuse for our colonial misadventure in Iraq or the way the Bush administration has turned this misadventure into a money-making machine for their cronies (obfuscated by the "Support Our Troops" mentality that seems to translate as "Don't talk about what's going on in Iraq or criticize the administration's corruption). Once it was clear that the invasion was based on lies, shouldn't we have turned the administration and transition to democracy over to the United Nations? Or has the machinery of obfuscation so effectively tainted the image of the U.N. that it is a natural conclusion to say that the U.N. should not ever be put in a position of repairing the damaged nationhood that comes after such a successful blitzkreig? If we had turned over administration of this shattered nation to the U.N. (or even Sweden, for that matter), there would have never been an Abu Ghraib. Speaking of which, we don't really discuss Abu Ghraib. (We don't discuss the reality of slavery, either, but that's another story of torture and humiliation and the occasional murder.) It was a blurb, quickly dispensed with, and given far less air time than Tom Cruise's scientology or his relationship with that woman from Dawson's Creek and a heckofalot less air time than Barry Bonds. We don't discuss the secret but not so secret CIA prison(s) in Eastern Europe (where the prisoners who go there are never seen again). Joseph Stalin now works for us. The secret prison story was a short blurb on the poorly watched evening news and even there not really covered, not really exposed, certainly not properly investigated. We don't discuss the thousands of children burned alive by our military (in our name and with weapons paid for by our tax dollars) or those children who survived with lost limbs, lost skin, lost faces, lost dreams and hope. It wasn't even a blurb (don't mention this stuff --- "Support Our Troops"). It just isn't important enough to be on the television. We don't talk about it around the water cooler, where it is more likely that the sports pools will be the object of concern. In the hands of the carpetbagger cowboys and chickenhawk neocons, America has become something fantastic, more Roman Empire than the Roman Empire ever was. Every city has its colossal venue for games, it's colosseum. We play games and watch television and work (harder than just about any other capitalist country, it would seem, with fewer vacation days and a higher cancer rate). America is about playing games, watching television, working hard, and talking about games and television shows at work or lunch or in the little bit of time we have after work and waving flags at games (how many of those who claim a monopoly on the flag support the Bill of Rights?). We know way too much about sports and so-called celebrities (who are human creations/fantasies of the culture of obfuscation and substitutes for royalty) and far too little about just about everything else, especially what our tax dollars are used for (or who is stealing them). Thousands of American children are disappearing into sexual slavery every year, but we play games and watch television and go to work. Hundreds of thousands of children are homeless, but we play games and watch television and go to work. The America of the television world is not one that suffers from a cancer epidemic or a health care crisis. America seems to be about Desperate Housewives and Lost. It isn't the "liberals" who are taxing the people and running off with the money but the frat boys who have taken over government (I'm for TAX CUTS, damn it, but I also want the money that is raised to be used for the betterment of ordinary Americans, not a bunch of thieves, including some who have so little loyalty for their country and country folk that they would move their corporate headquarters outside of the U.S. to escape taxes). And all those games and television and work (loyalty to the company) are eroding family values. The family is under a slow erosion, unlike the rapid one that slavery wrought (so perhaps that is worth celebrating --- slow pain, rather than fast and deep cuts). And as the culture of obfuscation becomes more advanced every year, the social contract formed during and in the aftermath of the Great Depression, where Americans were guaranteed certain protections from the vicissitudes of social and environmental processes (whether old age or Katrina), is taken apart piece by piece and the dismantlement is described as the pursuit of freedom. Freedom from the freedom from insecurity? Freedom from a state that uses the collective resources that comes from our taxes to help its citizenry, which we used to think was what a democratic state should do. The former Trotskyist neoconservatives (who may have finally found a way to undermine the core values of America) have taught us to think of the government as bad (just as the old conservatives taught us to hate unions) now control the government and use it to channel tax dollars into their own hands and the hands of their pals in favored corporations, who promote hatred of the Bill of Rights, of democracy, of creating a world of peace and cooperation, rather than a world of warlordism and might-makes-right-makes-money-for-one's-pals. Theft has become a sign of conservatism. Well, I suppose theft has been extant within the social fabric of life for most of human history, so perhaps this is what these so-called conservatives and neoconservatives are conserving. Alternatively, government is good if it really is the outcome of a democratic process, if those in the leadership are really the representatives that the people want to represent them and not the outcome of a tainted process whereby money and power and special access determine who sits in the halls of government and control the instruments of governance and military power and judicial power. How can the state/government be bad if this really is a democracy! Perhaps we need to make sure this really is a democracy and if it is not, then perhaps we need to take action to make it one. God know, the social contract is broken. Ask not what your country can do for you . . . because the answer may be not a damn thing. Don't lose your job, because if you do then you have no chance of getting health insurance. If your child gets sick, then . . . What a society. Just watch television. Watch another episode of Lost. Hope it doesn't flood.