Capital dominates and plutocracy prevails in good part through promulgation of ideas ...

Capital dominates and plutocracy prevails in good part through promulgation of ideas, vulgar notions that flow from its privileged class interests, but repeated often enough that they seem to become common sense and widely adopted. The media wing of the 1% creates an “information age” in which we are all machine-gunned by soft bullets of doctored news and TV serials with the end of obliterating consciousness. The media, what passes for political discourse, popular culture, in some ways the internet, in general every means of communicating ideas, is directed to indoctrination of citizens in the ruling ideology. Perhaps the most central element is social Darwinism, the “survival of the fittest” means a “war of all against all.” This creates a society of viciousness that staggers along held together by doctrines that grossly contradict experienced reality, a smashed sociality of lived contradiction, a failed state that poses plutocracy as democracy and practices austerity as promoting the social good, a state in which war and repression with their ideological justifications are central. A frightened citizenry is overwhelmed by oppressive circumstances that create all sorts of social problems—high crime rates, violent behavior, alcohol and drug abuse, mental illness, suicide, early death rates, susceptibility to scapegoating, and political support for demagogues. The ideology fashions policy—“neo-liberalism” promotes free market fundamentalism, financial deregulation and monetary orthodoxy guarded by the oligarchs of high finance, and labor “flexiblization.” The twin of neo-liberalism, “globalization,” is facilitated by “free trade” agreements that spread the doctrines worldwide while fostering imperial interventions and war everywhere.

The ruling ideology is a formula for social dissolution and a failed state. Social dissolution is a social world and a cultural environment in which people live the experience imposed by social Darwinism and related dogmas institutionalized in the dynamics of the social structure. There is a generalization of a failed sociality in our culture. The ideological basis of the degenerative phase of capitalism fosters a war of all against all among all the classes and peoples struggling for survival. Morality, civic responsibility, human decency are submerged in a culture of fear. The culture seeks to crush souls in the religion of class privilege. If allowed to continue, this will represent the collective death of all that is worthy in the history of civilization. The movement has a difficult long march to change a failed sociality to one in which people are active subjects of their own liberation. This long march has difficult uphill inclines, steep precipices on both sides of the road, and road blocks, erected by the repressive forces, that must be hurdled.

The United States is a failed state, not in the way that Iraq is a failed state, having been violently torn apart by the American invasion and occupation, but by the American state, as such, being progressively stripped of its social content and reduced to its repressive apparatus (that I term the State of National Insecurity). In the established political sphere, nothing can be done except what is forced on us by the thinking, class interests, and policies of the 1%. There is no “change we can believe in” enunciated by politicians or emanating from a government that is captive of the plutocracy. Social programs, any sense of the common good, are rolled back, austerity practiced. A failed state leads to mounting repression of the victims and change activists. Under Obama, corporate Democrats administered governmental institutions on behalf of the plutocracy and were kept strictly in line by Republican intransigence. Many supporters of Trump’s candidacy recognized this failed state and were taken in by the slogan “Make America Great Again.” Trump policies will only deepen the failures. His demagoguery has already acerbated America’s failed sociality. Hate, bigotry, and irrationality are now pervasive.

I am given to overstatement to try to make a polemical point. Of course, there are still shreds of decency and soulfulness in America that our history and cultural legacy have produced. A current decided tendency is not today’s lived reality, but it could be tomorrow’s if we, as a people, do not find effective ways to resist and renew. The greatest threat in the United States to redemption of a decent sociality and a more democratic state is the religion of Republicanism (or what I sometimes term “zombyism”, sometimes terming Republicans “mummies”). This religion suffered a set- back in the election of November 2012, resurged in 2014, and, in 2016, went truly wild. By 2016, it was so bizarre that it appeared that human evolution had taken a wrong turn. The apparitions lining up on TV lacked any appearance of traits that could be considered human. Reverting to my polemical overstatement, I would say that the Neanderthals are back! They call themselves Republicans, but they are zombies risen from the grave of history. They now chase Homo Sapiens with their big sticks, clubbing every social advance of human kind; torturing and killing non- white peoples in distant lands. Greed, obfuscation, and force infuse their mentality. The Republican base among the petty privileged and those with threatened privilege give the plutocrats the opening to whip-up the worst of social ills for their political advantage. The tea toasters party the death of decency; the white-skinned machos revive racist creeds and denigrate womankind; the xenophobic wave flags, spread fear, spout hate; the arrogant boast American Exceptionalism and America First; the straight machos spout homophobia; the morally confused believe that a fertilized egg is sacred life, but favor cutting programs to feed hungry children— and celebrate killing a million people in Holy oil wars. All these elements rally to Donald Shrill Trumpet.

These demagogues, led by Trump, deceive their base of admirers, many of whom are victims of the system they defend. The ruling ideology converts system victimization to personal shortcomings of the victims, teaching that the common good is bad for America Inc., that “handout” is immoral, takes away personal responsibility, and makes people dependent and lazy. Too many of the downtrodden are taken in and strive for gain and social positioning, and, failing, their experience leads to guilt of failure, self-loathing, and loss of soul. The experience of adverse circumstances is also displaced to scapegoats, holding white males in line with cultivated hate of illegal immigrants, uppity women, queers, off-white populations, and Muslims. Demagogues such as Donald Trump appeal to this loss of soul to “Make America Great Again” by engendering irrationality, hate, and scapegoating—cultural forms that have a long history in America that have made the United States much less than great.

The fundamental of class domination is that the ruling class rules, first, by subverting, distorting, and obliterating consciousness of the reality of the actual experience of oppressive circumstances. The consciousness of individuals, communities, and social classes is formed in the varied experiences of daily life that are conditioned mainly by class positioning. Consciousness becomes “false” when actual experience is given distorted meaning by reifications that twist or obliterate the reality of life experiences, misdirecting and transforming thought and feelings to fit system maintenance, to reproduce the injustice of what is. We now live in an Orwellian world in which the populace is bombarded with tautologies. “War is peace” from Orwell is very current; “freedom is slavery” is now “freedom is capitalism;” “ignorance is strength” these days becomes “ignorance is patriotism.” A new one is “austerity is abundance.” All the instruments of what Chomsky terms “the manufacture of consent” issue from their Ministry of Truth message that “reality is whatever we say it is.” So, the question becomes the strategic and tactical methods of generalizing an understanding of what ought to be. But, first, we need to understand what is in the sphere of ideology. In this regard, all the elements of the ruling ideology have become condensed in a fashioned culture of fear.

DL Johnson,
An American Crisis