American Democracy: A Eulogy and Requiem to a Convincing Dream Dissolved

[LiberalUprising]

You REALLY have to be asleep to see it now!

Interesting times, these. The end of the social experiment called Democracy has come and gone with very little fanfare or much in the way notice amongst the masses. One would have expected a big bang or two, maybe some chaos and pandemonium, or at least a letter or email from a trusted relative noting the event with all due seriousness and emphasis. The natives should at least bemoan a geat loss and toss out a few well chosen expletives over the fence.

No, the end is a moot point in the age of simulation. The vast, hypnotic media machine twists and gyrates through the minds of the many and confuses what should be clear while making clear the confusion it bestows for the sake of making as many as possible impotent and empty. The electronic hurricane turns and churns above today's body politic and emits a bewitching, irresistible drone of distraction and entertainment, misinformation and diffusion. And for what purpose? It is for a strikingly obvious and simple reason: to nullify the empowering capacity of mass communication and the interactivity of its odd, step-child, the Internet.

And so, we live in a capitalistic amusement park that has subsumed most of any life above total poverty and castigation. We allow our children to suckle at its fat, greasy, venom-filled tit -- either unwittingly or begrudgingly. How can most of us stop the process when it is so large, so pervasive, so tied into our way of life and the underpinnings of our survival? We might cop the, "best of times, worst of times" plea, but we know the stakes are so very high. We wince and nod and shake our heads as we watch our progeny stream, like sleep-walking martyrs, onto the altar of manipulated and parasitic pragmatism. For, it is clear that the practical aspects of our society-at-large have been stripped of the multi-faceted facade that implied a mutual and altruistic benefit for playing the game as proscribed and doing the right thing.

As those of use who see the end that has come and gone -- and can glibly, yet sadly, relate how it happened and what it implies -- pause to reflect, we shake our heads, sigh often, and ejaculate heartfelt expletives. In our hectic, hurried attempts to keep moving, keep surviving, play the cruel game for its own sake, we end up sequestering ourselves in catacombs of befuddlement and second-guesses. Perhaps we down a few drinks -- or x times that -- as we sojourn from whatever vice has given some relief or respite from the sterile, manufactured Hell that modern life has been carefully molded into. We are in the kind of Hell that is all the more effective and damning because you can never be sure you are actually dead and inhabiting it. It only exists as a vague notion that something is very wrong and that that kind of wrong could only be a product of demonic planning.

Those of us who have seen, and tired, all the options offered are left with a distaste for all the pop-answers to pop-questions. As popular and seemingly significant as the predicaments and solutions that each phase of culture might, they always seem rise and fall, leaving answers to nothing in their wake. Well, nothing is left but those who are left to ponder the results and query the process itself, it seem. The viability of turning on our own natures, (whatever they may be, good or bad) and accepting the rather convincing ideas of total responsibility for what we accomplish and experience or, in lieu of that, buying into the polar platitude of fate and victimization. Neither one works perfectly for everyone, nor for very long.

http://sensiblyeclectic.com/news/index.php/mainsite/2006/11/06/american_democracy_a_eulogy_and_requiem