An Oil Spill in the Sea of Democracy
Mike Pulaski
July 2004
Do you plan to vote in this November’s Presidential election? Only one out of every two eligible voters did so in the last election. Among the many excuses for not voting (laziness, inconvenience, poor candidates) is that a vote for a specific candidate doesn’t really matter – that it has no real effect on the course our country takes. So why bother to vote at all?
An analysis of America’s Personality followed by an historical retrospective that frames the current world situation should sufficiently explain why this voter apathy has merit. The scenario presented here is meant to be an alarm, and is intended to rouse you from your comfortable lifestyle. Although you may not suffer the long-term consequences of the erosion of our democracy described below, your children and grandchildren will.
Like one of its Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, America has a peculiarly deep schizophrenic tradition when comparing its professed ideals to its historical actions. For example, Jefferson championed Freedom of the Press. Yet while he was President, he did almost everything in his power to quash published dissent of his Administration.
Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Privately, he was a slave owner until his death and wrote in his only published book that he considered Africans to be of a “lower mentality”.
Jefferson strongly supported an open government, a strong Congress and a weak President. However, when he was President, he dispatched the Navy to bombard the Barbary Coast of North Africa, concealing his unilateral action from Congress. Ironically, this secret military action was America’s first foreign war.
There have been many Presidential Administrations after Jefferson’s that have followed the same schizophrenic behavior patterns. It has become an American tradition. We profess the highest of ideals, but when it comes to action, we hardly measure up to them. And yet we constantly tell ourselves to the point of being wholly convinced how high-minded we are compared to other societies.
Young America started its real growth acting like a virginal Lady Liberty, who cast virtue aside, and shamelessly indulged herself in sybaritic activities with numerous parties. Then one morning, she awakens next to yet another strange bedfellow, casts him out, vowing to sin no more. Like many reformed souls, she then begins to lead a crusade for virtuous living. However, she is haunted by her past, at times thinks of it fondly, and on occasion returns to seek its devilish rewards.
A quick historical perspective bears this out.
Once enough influential Americans realized that oceans bound the North American Continent, they popularized the notion it was a Manifest Destiny that our country should be ocean-to-ocean, and nothing or no one would stand in the way. Thus, our heritage became one of fierce territorial acquisition from others.
Most of this acquisition was through theft, murder, payoffs and deceit. Even though we made the Louisiana Purchase from a cash-strapped Napoleon, did the French actually have the rights to sell it in the first place? Ask the Comanche, Crow, Apache or Sioux Indians. Instead, one could easily say the purchase was a payment of “protection money” to the French so they would not go to war with us while we gobbled up the land, playing out our Manifest Destiny.
Most historians today will acknowledge that the Spanish-American War was actually contrived by the Americans, when they blamed the Spanish for blowing up the battleship Maine. The Americans easily won the ensuing military campaign, and as a settlement, the Spanish ceded Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Wake, Guam and the Philippine Islands. These new possessions were strategically important as fueling and supply stations for America’s burgeoning global mercantile and naval fleets.
During the Spanish-American War, President Teddy Roosevelt decided we needed a shorter shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific. Thus, he sponsored a rebellion in Columbia that led to the creation of a new country – Panama. As a result, this new country became our political proxy as well as the location of an ocean-to-ocean canal passageway under American control.
The Americans took California, Texas, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming from Mexico, the Comanche and Navajo Indians for little compensation and light bloodshed. Thus, the first phase of our Manifest Destiny was complete.
Once we became a “sea to shining sea” Republic with a booming economy, our appetite for ill behavior was temporarily sated. Like Lady Liberty, we reformed our ways. We got what we wanted and now we had the luxury to become a moral world citizen.
Thus, during most of the Twentieth Century, America bore the standard as a world citizen and leader. We fiercely and successfully defended ourselves and our Allies against the military, economic and political threats of Fascism and Communism. Most significantly, after each conflict, the US bore the expense of the reconstruction of those vanquished territories and peoples, and avoided acquiring them as possessions. During most of this period, America and its citizens became respected and recognized for their generosity and civility.
Presently, the high moral ground occupied by America for the past century has been abandoned. Lady Liberty’s flowing red-white-and-blue garments have been stained – this time by crude oil. Alas, once again she has succumbed to the callings of the dark side.
The global economy and our dependence on a steady supply of foreign oil require that the US be the world’s policeman. From a political perspective, the military-industrial-oil interests in our country have shaped that requirement to become our foreign policy – a New Manifest Destiny.
The theme of this new Manifest Destiny is consistent with our well-established schizophrenic personality. It plays along these lines: “We are the most moral and fair power in the World, so align your economy and society peacefully with us, and together we will achieve great democratic stability and wealth. However, if you do not do so, we will laser-bomb you to rubble, because any other alignment is morally and economically inferior.”
Our foray into Iraq was championed by America’s military-industrial-oil complex. The US military easily wrested control of Iraq under the guise of pre-empting Saddam Hussein’s use of weapons of mass destruction and of freeing the Iraqi people from the ruthless despot.
As a result, the world’s second largest oil reserve is now controlled by the US and Britain. Further, the western Iraqi desert air bases are now under US military control. These bases provide greater and far less costly facilities for our air power to respond to any hostilities involving Israel and the Middle East cauldron. Prior to using these bases, we had to rely on the more expensive deployment of aircraft carrier groups for the same purpose. From a strategic military view, this frees up at least two carrier groups for other duty – or better yet – inexpensive rest.
America’s political institutions are nearing the completion of a fundamental change in the way their power is levied and controlled. Over the last few decades, Presidential campaign financing methods have become most influential in determining the outcome of an election. Further, the quid pro quo wrought by this financing has chipped away at our representative democratic process, rendering it into a Democracy of Campaign Contributors.
The prize of election to the Presidency is its inherent political power. The President acts according to the wishes of his constituency. Formerly, his constituency was groups of voters that pressed for common social, economic and foreign policy goals. Now that his constituency is primarily composed of corporate contributors, the actions he may take on their behalf will consequently narrow the scope of overall benefit, and might not be in the best interest of the people at large.
When it comes to foreign policy decisions, it really doesn’t matter who is President or what Political Party is in office. The decisions are essentially outside the Presidential domain and into the realm of campaign contributors. Now, the only essential differences between the candidates and their Party Platforms concern social programs and funding them.
In this new Democracy of Campaign Contributors, the politicians who acquire political office become nothing more than agents for, and administrators of, the organizations who gave them their largest campaign contributions. Thus, these elected officials take their philosophical direction from these contributing organizations. This is quite different than what was originally intended by our Country’s Founding Fathers. Their intention was that the elected official took his direction from the Common Voter.
However, a look at who the Common Voter is today is chilling.
Those who do vote are looked upon and treated by all Political Parties as Pavlovian-like laboratory animals, who have decreasing attention spans, and who are incapable of any type of linear thought concerning complex social and economic issues. The Parties’ political strategists believe that the voting public has been over-exposed to a stimulus-response type of conditioning by TV, movies and video games which can be exploited sufficiently to win elections. However, it takes a lot of money to carry out this exploitation.
Media consultants have long recognized the growing insensitivity of their audiences to murder, rape, robbery, lying, cheating and boorish social behavior. During the recent past, the rate that these behaviors are broadcast per hour has steadily increased in news and prime time TV and radio programs. Broadcast media analysts have promoted the reporting of hideously violent crimes and tragedy as a way to boost ratings. Movie producers tax their screenwriters’ creativity to produce increasingly harsh “shock values” they deem necessary to spawn “word of mouth” advertising of their productions.
The media portrays a world where our lives are increasingly violent and war-torn, with tragedy at every turn, populated with everyday people who are ready to rape and kill your family. The images and reporting are short in duration because of time constraints brought to bear by sponsor advertisers. The time constraints necessitate the compression of images so that maximum effect can be reached. Thus, the average viewer has become de-sensitized by this sensory onslaught running at a quickening pace to a point where his overall attention span has significantly decreased.
Political advertising – especially at the Presidential level – is created by some of the best minds in the world. “Sound bites” that are intended to encapsulate an emotional political message are created by very clever writers who have a sophisticated educational depth in psychology, marketing, history and literature. These sound bites are assembled in short political advertisements that are beamed over broadcast media in time slots that are well defined according to the audience’s demographics. The sound bites are created and engineered specifically for the voter who has an attention span deficit caused by long-term media exposure.
This type of political advertising is very expensive. That is why candidates have created a history of looking for deep pocket campaign contributors. Those with the deepest pockets are members of the military-industrial-oil complex.
In November’s Presidential election, a vote for George W. Bush affirms our New Manifest Destiny and the control that the military-industrial-oil complex has over our economy and society. A vote for John Kerry means putting a temporary and painful halt to what is already in motion. The halt will only be temporary because the power that the military-industrial-oil complex already has over our economy and society is greater than either political party. The halt will be painful because any attempted change will cause economic havoc that in turn will directly affect the voter’s pocketbook.
Does your vote matter? Most likely it does not. Remember, we are now living in a Democracy of Political Contributors and not a Democracy of Common Voters. Huge blocks of votes are bought through economic coercion and very expensive Madison Avenue chicanery. Perhaps this is why so few people even bother to vote any more, because they resent the lavishly expensive manipulation of our political campaigns. Sadly, most of these non-voting people are the ones capable of thinking in terms greater than simple sound bites.
In the end, that is what is so troubling. We are witnessing the decline and fall of our democracy as an ideal. It has been replaced by a Democracy of Campaign Contributors, and the most powerful element of them is the military-industrial-oil complex.
We can be reasonably certain that this “new democracy” will continue to provide prosperity and security to us for the rest of our natural lifetimes. However, we should not be certain that our children and their children will enjoy the same democratic freedoms and social stability that we have enjoyed.
The new political dynamic described here is like an oil spill in the Sea of Democracy. Even if you contain and clean up the spill, the resulting ecological damage caused by the spill reverberates for generations, causing death and even extinction of certain living species.