Lose-Colored Glasses

The most notable characteristic of our democratic system is Co-Optation. The twin forms this takes are Elections and Reforms.

Reforms weaken resolve among partisan groups, even when their goals are not met. Thus, a conservative politician makes hand motions and strong, empty words about abortion illegalization, which mollifies his supporters, who never realize that he needs abortion to be legal. Thus, a liberal politician may, if he is truly radical (within the constraints of our system), call for decriminalization or regulation of vice such as drugs, gambling, or sexual activity, which likewise soothes his people, who never blame him for failing to endorse individual liberty outright. Reform may always be dressed up as "taking what one can get." Taking what one can get is a policy of the weak who find rage to be exhausting. Taking what one can get is the intellectual's version of learned helplessness, with a dash of complacency, for one is not truly a victim, but a participant.

Elections, likewise, see political energies dissipate when, in more vital times and societies, they should be times of advancement and progress (at least for one side or another). Instead, they serve to enrich the state by easing the commitment of the public. Elections are honeymoons for the state, in which the philandering, more powerful partner exploits the lesser mate who, while holding some concerns, decides to suppress them for the sake of some momentary exuberance. You can decide for yourself which role the public plays in this scenario, which partner we are.

Now, this is hardly a thorough discussion of these dynamics as I see them, and it's hardly original. What I would like to add, which is something new, as far as I have heard, is the peculiar phenomenon now seen among the reactionaries of the working and light investor classes. They always see betrayal, but only in the quarters to which they have been told to direct their gaze.

So let us look at what they see when, say, a liberal politician dresses up his campaign with multicultural trappings and language. Naturally, to one who subscribes to a reactionary cultural program, this appears to be caving to a foreign element whose interests are not those of whatever "true" or "pure" culture which the subject believes is welcome and natural. Hence, we have paranoids who believe that Jews, or Muslims, or blacks, or welfare mothers, or whoever, is somehow seizing the throat of the most powerful class in human history, which is the American ruling class. The truth is, of course, that the state makes an appearance of being responsive to any and all whose acquiescence it desires. And, even as it neutralizes one party by appearing to respond to its demands, the opponents of that party see it as a victory (or a coup), which the original party encourages by itself declaring victory.

Neither realize the move that has been made. Each are filled with fools, desperate to believe that they have hope of being heard, or desperate to give their lives meaning by seeing around every corner an insurmountable foe. I guess we all have our fantasies. The fantasy of the modern aristocrat would be to rule--to own and command--without objection, or notice. It is no fantasy, however, for it is realized by their every action--and by most of ours, too.