I
don't know when this article will appear on How to Save the World. At
time of writing, Radio Userland has been down for over 40 hours, and
there is no word from anyone when they will be back online and
accepting new posts or comments.
 I had the opportunity Friday evening to listen to Robert Kennedy Jr. of NRDC speak. He was in Toronto to support Lake Ontario Waterkeepers,
a division of the international Waterkeeper Alliance. It was a stock
speech -- nothing substantial added to the angry litany of Bush's
regulatory rollbacks, non-enforcements, and appointment of giant
polluters and their lobbyists to head up all federal environmental
agencies. What was new was an expanded discussion about the role of the
media in shaping American public opinion on issues such as the
environment. The underlying thesis, which may not be new but is the
first time I have heard it from him, was (I'm paraphrasing):
There is no significant
difference between Democrats and Republicans, progressives and
conservatives on core values. What there is is an information
gap, caused by the fact that most Republicans and conservatives get all
their news from mainstream media sources that are either propaganda
arms of the neocon, Christian ultra-right wing, or cowed, timid
networks that lack the courage to report what Americans really need to
know, for fear of attracting the wrath of this ultra-right wing group,
and for fear that it would cost them corporate advertising revenues,
and hence their jobs.
There were quite a few Americans in the audience, and I took the
opportunity to ask them afterwards what they thought of this comment. I
got three different responses in roughly equal amounts:
- He's right.
- He's wrong -- there are
real differences in American core values, not attributable to the
media, which actually plays a fairly modest role in shaping people's
values.
- There is no difference between the Republican and
Democratic party, and neither represents the core values of Americans.
All their squabbling and rhetoric is a sham, a smokescreen to keep
Americans from realizing that both parties are in the pockets of
corporate America, and that between the two parties it's only a matter
of how quickly the sell-out of America to rich, corporate interests
will occur, and which corporations will benefit most from government
kickbacks for their campaign donations.
What intrigued me about this third viewpoint was that it was espoused
by almost as many self-proclaimed conservatives as progressives. What
this implies is that there are a
significant number of Americans who are revolted by Bush's
anti-environment and anti-worker laws, regulations and positions, but
who don't believe the Democratic Party will do a significantly better
job in either area, and who vote reluctantly Republican because they
prefer their conservative moral stance.
I confess to being shocked and appalled both at the thought that the
average American could be that ignorant, and at the thought that the
situation is so hopeless that informed, intelligent people really
believe it doesn't make that much difference which of the two oligopoly
parties wins. I suspect the average Canadian would find either
possibility almost unimaginable. After all, we have more than two
parties, and the one in power now has a minority and as a result its
legislative agenda has been dramatically altered by the need to get
support from other parties to stay in office. We are so alarmed at the
possibility of the Bush-loving Canadian neoconservative party (which
recently took over the more established, moderate conservative party)
getting into office that we hold our nose and tell pollsters we would
vote for the modestly corrupt Liberal party, as the significant lesser
of two evils. And Canadians have repeatedly shown enormous skepticism
for what they hear in the Canadian media, and a proclivity for making
up their own minds after discussion with peers, rather than after
watching or listening to the ten o'clock news. Are Canadians really
that different from Americans?
If Kennedy is right, and the majority of Americans are that ignorant
(unable or unwilling to hear information that would dramatically affect
their vote), or if this third
group of cynics is right, and a large minority of Americans are so
skeptical that they don't think it matters which party wins anyway, the
neocons win either way. Ignorance and apathy both mitigate against change. If you're in power and you can breed both in the electorate, you're laughing.
Let's suppose Kennedy is correct. He argues that a grassroots movement
is needed to get the mainstream media that are not already in the pay
of American neocons to get off the fence and start force-feeding the
American people some terrible truths. But if you were CBS, NBC, ABC,
CNN or any of the (few) independent radio stations or newspapers, why
would you risk the wrath of Karl, your ratings, your advertising
revenues or your job, to do this? You can get these truths from the New
York Times or the New Yorker, from NPR and PBS (for now, anyway) and
from a handful of other sources, and from many online sites. The public
isn't abandoning the non-neocon mainstream media for these more
illuminating sources, so why would these media rock the boat? Out of a
sense of responsibility to give the public what they clearly don't
want? Yeah, right. If Kennedy is correct America is in deep shit, and
anyone who listens to him carefully and thoughtfully is going to be
filled with despair and defeatism, not with indignation and energy to bring about change.
Let's suppose this third group is correct. Let's suppose that half of
the half of Americans who don't vote stay away because they're really
convinced it doesn't make any difference, because they've been screwed
by both parties and don't trust either of them. They have to be really
cynical to stay away when the talking points of the two parties are so
radically different from each other. Is the emergence of a third party,
in a country where two-party politics has been so entrenched and where
the entire system (gerrymandering, campaign finance, the media, the
leadership debate selection committee etc.) is designed to sustain that
duopoly, going to happen in anything short of overwhelming,
catastrophic circumstances? Of course not. So if this third group is
correct, the situation is even worse than if Kennedy is correct.
As much as I like RFK Jr. and greatly admire the work he is doing with
NRDC, I cannot agree with his grim assessment that so many Americans
are so ignorant they can't think past the propaganda of the neocon
media machine. I think the large majority of Americans are smarter than
that. They may not be well informed, but they know bullshit when they
see or hear it.
I am less inclined to doubt the cynicism of the third group, who
despite the apparently dramatically different rhetoric we are hearing
from politicians, really don't believe it makes much if any difference
whether the Tweedledum or Tweedledee party is elected. What Gene
McCarthy called acedia
(beyond apathy, spiritual torpor, resignation) in the dark days of
Nixon's America, is far more dangerous an enemy than ignorance. It is
far more difficult to overcome, and it afflicts those who are creative
and who would normally tend to be activists. Worse, if you follow the
lessons of history, it is apathy, in deadly combination with fear, that
has allowed the deterioration of values and the seizing of power by
opportunists responsible for the greatest atrocities of the past
millennium.
Apathy, acedia, learned helplessness, hopelessness. These, and not
ignorance, are the real enemies of our time. We will not overcome them
with rhetoric, or with knowledge. We might overcome them through a few
charismatic and independent leaders, though they are as likely to take
us down a worse path than a better one. We might overcome them by
inventing and talking about a better way of doing things -- a better
social, economic, political, legal, environmental, and educational
system -- but will even that be enough to pull people out of their
resignation?
Barring that, we can only wait until the situation gets much worse,
until the pain of doing nothing exceeds the pain of revolution. Until,
in other words, there is nothing more to lose.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
