Political Ideology and Socialization: Apathy towards our Meta-Culture
I recently took a political orientation test. It was quite the pleaser, asking me if I was pro choice, pro life, pro tax cuts, pro fiscal prudence. It wasn’t anything enlightening, the test called “idealog” was more of a joke than anything. Personally, my socio-political position on many issues is far-leftist; we’re talking Nader leftist. In a way, idealog can be a paradigm for American politics, which doesn’t really offer feasible political representation for many of my views. So, I tend to act more as an outsider looking in; parsay, a French socialist, gaffing at our corrupt capitalistic endeavors. Condescending? Perhaps. Rooted behind cogent ideologies? I would like to think so.
To begin, I’m anti-capitalist. Delving into my sociological beliefs, I find that the root of free-enterprise is a system based upon opression and inequality. Having thought about the ideals of capitalism, specifically in the context of American culture, I have deduced (or came to a conclusion) that capitalism is a base system of relativity. It is natural to have relativity, and by relativity I mean a scale of values that we use to measure value. We also use it to covet. If we deconstruct the fundamentals of capitalism, it is haves versus have nots. The “joy” of being wealthy or upper-class is only meaningful in context, or relativity. You are only rich if someone is poor. For every extra promotion or extra wealth you accumulate, someone else must loose that wealth, because our system is based upon sheer absolutes, discounting inflation and absorbing technological advancements. There isn’t infinite wealth, no matter what a politican tells you.
Fair enough, you may say, because that is the nature of existence. We live in a world with a fixed amount of material goods, and this materialism predicates the scales of relativity. You might also argue that capitalism is the bull which propels technological and sociological advancement. It is through capitalism, one might say, that private endeavors are created and driven to success, creating the ammenities in our society. It’s a fair and pretty reasonable assesment, because, afterall, where would we be without some form of extrinsic motivation to propel us towards success.
The question is where do we want to be propeled towards. What are our goals and ambitions? I think this is the root of our political ideology, because politics, in essence, is the reflection of the layman’s endeavors. For me, personally, I really have lost the extrinsic motivations of our baby-boomer and post-boom generations. I’ve seen what that does to one’s spirit. I see it in my parents who slave tirelessly for my comfort and it sickens me. I don’t have aspirations for middle-class comfort, in a management position. I don’t have the desire to accumulate wealth so I can live a posh and exquisite upper-class life. My best-friend is one of the wealthiest people in the world and I don’t envy what he has. In fact, if I were in his position, I would be conscerned about my well-being and mental health. So what do I have to look forward to? Well, accumulation of knowledge and understanding. Breaking down the walls of deciet and misconception that greed and lust drive us towards. Self-conceptualization and an understanding of purpose. I search for these things in politics, society and philosophy.
At the penultimate stages of the cold war, the post-modern philosopher Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history” with the decay of socio-global conflicts. The ascension of our liberal-democratic capitalist ideology and the destruction of communism in its most lethal state, led to an assymetry in global power. Fukuyama says:
Both Hegel and Marx believed that evolution of human socieites was not open-ended, but would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental longings. Both thinkers thus posited the “end of history:” for Hegel, this was the liberal state, for Marx it was a communist society
His words resonate towards our society’s political aspirations and ideaoligies. In the aftermath of the cold-war (pre 9/11), we found ourselves squabbeling over health-care, abortion, the defecit and unemployment, because we no longer feared nuclear incineration at the hands of a red army. This is all fine and dandy, but it reveals something about our society. As we transgress through our Christian Eurocentric history, that shapes how we define social welfare, within our political ideologies, we have been pushed into directions that I don’t find satistfying.
To cite an example, the corporate tax law passed a few days ago can be utilized to show the meta-narrative structure and the layers that unfold in political ideology. They are subtle and hidden. On the first layer of subtlty, we see that the tax cuts are meant to assuage outsourcing, creating more job revenue for our GDP and thus our social welfare. On a basic level, you can call it an “economic boost” in a republican sort of way. On the second layer, the more intricate lines of the bill show a 10 billion dollar buyout to tobacco companies, dating back to events occuring in the Great Depression. To cite a more liberal stance, Chris Edwards, Cato director of tax policy studies, calls the bill "the worst show of special interest tax lobbying in years” (Cato.org, 2004). Edwards says, “Hundreds of narrow provisions litter the bill, illustrating congressional sausage-making at its most complex” (Edwards, 2004). He details the breaks towards manufacturing, coal and oil energy plants, that would cause shifts in the basic structure of tax lobbyists. Cato is one of those organizations which create the political ideologies which fuel our government. It is a thinktank. Thinktanks are the organizations that hire politically sided ecnomists and politically astute people to create the plans which create policies. For example, in the late 70s, right-wing thinktanks created supply-side economics which were enacted when Ronald Regan assumed the presidency. Thinktanks created Neo-conservative ideologies during the Clinton administration, only to see them enacted in Bush Jr’s candidacy. They are the political undercurrents which have no faces and no backfall. They are the backbone of policial policy. Subtle and potent stuff, but nevertheless, it lacks the true conceptualization of the underlying motif.
If we peel one more layer of this onion of knowledge, to something few people can stomach or reason with, we find the bill is a cog in a wheel of socio-political opression on an American “meta-narrative,” so to speak. We protect our companies from going out to the uncivilized parts of the world (by definition, anywhere not here, Canada or Western Europe) where tax laws and labor laws aren’t restrictive of our free-market endeavors. Keep the wealth here, forget about everyone else. Well, anyone will argue that it’s pretty natural to protect one’s own interest; when was the last time you cared about some Sri-Lankan sweatshop worker? Only when the price of your Nike shoes goes up from $100 to $150.
So I find myself in a political apathy of sorts. It’s not the usual teenage apathy which ignores the political landscape due to its inability to connect with his or her interests (sex, drugs and money; address me you politicans!). It is a form of apathy that is analytically aware of the changes and systems, yet finds the results of either side, based upon historical socio-political ideologies as the same in the end. So our corporate tax cut is a microcosmic depiction of my futility with American politics.
Reaching back to Fukuyama and the “end of history,” we all know that his lapsarian utopia crashed in one executed strike, captured vividly one autumn morning on the national media. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 pushed America through the limbo of post-cold war simulacra into Zizek’s “Desert of the Real.” We are the super-power hated in many parts of the world. Terrorism rekindled our American mindstate into the frenzied panics we were so familiar in the 50s and 60s. We found ourselves dumbfounded by the Al-Qaeda terror networks and the hatred embued upon us from the rest of the “uncivilized world.”
Now I find myself grappled in an election, watching Candidate Bush, Candidate Kerry and Candidate NetZero (oops, did I say that?) grapple for who’s the better defender. Bush is adamant about his role as the guardian. Kerry is careful not to let you forget about his record in Vietnam, killing those uncivilized communists. One flip-floped, the other fooled our nation. The rhetoric is negligible as is the end-result. Afterall, 9/11 was not caused by either of these individuals; it was our holistic political ideology, regardless of political orientation, which induced the birth of global and more specifically, Islamic terrorism. How is Al-Qaeda any different from the Black Hand of the early 20th century? Fukuyama was wrong; history has a way of waking up and smelling the coffee. What Fukuyama neglected was the reverberations of our war on Communism, or any other ideology threatening our global hegemony. The CIA operations in Afghanistan, the funding of Sadaam Hussein with biological weapons, military intervention in Iran, Guatemala, the war crimes of Henry Kissinger in Chile, Cambodia, and most awfully, East Timor. The term is “blowback” and it denotes what happens when you destroy the livelihood of billions for the pursuit of geo-political prowess.
Blowback is a harsh way to denote the death of over 3000 innocent citizens, firemen and rescue crews, but that’s what it boils down to. Blowback is what boils down my apathy towards American politics, because we will blow back and we can blow harder than anyone else.
So if you ask me about my political ideologies and what makes me inspired about politics. I could talk to you about economic policies, social welfare, the war or terrorism and such, but I don’t think that really gets us anywhere.
Works Cited
Cato Institute, Cato Daily Dispatch. 2004-10-13
<>
Edwards, Chris. “Corporate Tax Tangle” 2004-10-13
<>
Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and The Last Man
Perenial Press, NY. 1993
To begin, I’m anti-capitalist. Delving into my sociological beliefs, I find that the root of free-enterprise is a system based upon opression and inequality. Having thought about the ideals of capitalism, specifically in the context of American culture, I have deduced (or came to a conclusion) that capitalism is a base system of relativity. It is natural to have relativity, and by relativity I mean a scale of values that we use to measure value. We also use it to covet. If we deconstruct the fundamentals of capitalism, it is haves versus have nots. The “joy” of being wealthy or upper-class is only meaningful in context, or relativity. You are only rich if someone is poor. For every extra promotion or extra wealth you accumulate, someone else must loose that wealth, because our system is based upon sheer absolutes, discounting inflation and absorbing technological advancements. There isn’t infinite wealth, no matter what a politican tells you.
Fair enough, you may say, because that is the nature of existence. We live in a world with a fixed amount of material goods, and this materialism predicates the scales of relativity. You might also argue that capitalism is the bull which propels technological and sociological advancement. It is through capitalism, one might say, that private endeavors are created and driven to success, creating the ammenities in our society. It’s a fair and pretty reasonable assesment, because, afterall, where would we be without some form of extrinsic motivation to propel us towards success.
The question is where do we want to be propeled towards. What are our goals and ambitions? I think this is the root of our political ideology, because politics, in essence, is the reflection of the layman’s endeavors. For me, personally, I really have lost the extrinsic motivations of our baby-boomer and post-boom generations. I’ve seen what that does to one’s spirit. I see it in my parents who slave tirelessly for my comfort and it sickens me. I don’t have aspirations for middle-class comfort, in a management position. I don’t have the desire to accumulate wealth so I can live a posh and exquisite upper-class life. My best-friend is one of the wealthiest people in the world and I don’t envy what he has. In fact, if I were in his position, I would be conscerned about my well-being and mental health. So what do I have to look forward to? Well, accumulation of knowledge and understanding. Breaking down the walls of deciet and misconception that greed and lust drive us towards. Self-conceptualization and an understanding of purpose. I search for these things in politics, society and philosophy.
At the penultimate stages of the cold war, the post-modern philosopher Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history” with the decay of socio-global conflicts. The ascension of our liberal-democratic capitalist ideology and the destruction of communism in its most lethal state, led to an assymetry in global power. Fukuyama says:
Both Hegel and Marx believed that evolution of human socieites was not open-ended, but would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental longings. Both thinkers thus posited the “end of history:” for Hegel, this was the liberal state, for Marx it was a communist society
His words resonate towards our society’s political aspirations and ideaoligies. In the aftermath of the cold-war (pre 9/11), we found ourselves squabbeling over health-care, abortion, the defecit and unemployment, because we no longer feared nuclear incineration at the hands of a red army. This is all fine and dandy, but it reveals something about our society. As we transgress through our Christian Eurocentric history, that shapes how we define social welfare, within our political ideologies, we have been pushed into directions that I don’t find satistfying.
To cite an example, the corporate tax law passed a few days ago can be utilized to show the meta-narrative structure and the layers that unfold in political ideology. They are subtle and hidden. On the first layer of subtlty, we see that the tax cuts are meant to assuage outsourcing, creating more job revenue for our GDP and thus our social welfare. On a basic level, you can call it an “economic boost” in a republican sort of way. On the second layer, the more intricate lines of the bill show a 10 billion dollar buyout to tobacco companies, dating back to events occuring in the Great Depression. To cite a more liberal stance, Chris Edwards, Cato director of tax policy studies, calls the bill "the worst show of special interest tax lobbying in years” (Cato.org, 2004). Edwards says, “Hundreds of narrow provisions litter the bill, illustrating congressional sausage-making at its most complex” (Edwards, 2004). He details the breaks towards manufacturing, coal and oil energy plants, that would cause shifts in the basic structure of tax lobbyists. Cato is one of those organizations which create the political ideologies which fuel our government. It is a thinktank. Thinktanks are the organizations that hire politically sided ecnomists and politically astute people to create the plans which create policies. For example, in the late 70s, right-wing thinktanks created supply-side economics which were enacted when Ronald Regan assumed the presidency. Thinktanks created Neo-conservative ideologies during the Clinton administration, only to see them enacted in Bush Jr’s candidacy. They are the political undercurrents which have no faces and no backfall. They are the backbone of policial policy. Subtle and potent stuff, but nevertheless, it lacks the true conceptualization of the underlying motif.
If we peel one more layer of this onion of knowledge, to something few people can stomach or reason with, we find the bill is a cog in a wheel of socio-political opression on an American “meta-narrative,” so to speak. We protect our companies from going out to the uncivilized parts of the world (by definition, anywhere not here, Canada or Western Europe) where tax laws and labor laws aren’t restrictive of our free-market endeavors. Keep the wealth here, forget about everyone else. Well, anyone will argue that it’s pretty natural to protect one’s own interest; when was the last time you cared about some Sri-Lankan sweatshop worker? Only when the price of your Nike shoes goes up from $100 to $150.
So I find myself in a political apathy of sorts. It’s not the usual teenage apathy which ignores the political landscape due to its inability to connect with his or her interests (sex, drugs and money; address me you politicans!). It is a form of apathy that is analytically aware of the changes and systems, yet finds the results of either side, based upon historical socio-political ideologies as the same in the end. So our corporate tax cut is a microcosmic depiction of my futility with American politics.
Reaching back to Fukuyama and the “end of history,” we all know that his lapsarian utopia crashed in one executed strike, captured vividly one autumn morning on the national media. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 pushed America through the limbo of post-cold war simulacra into Zizek’s “Desert of the Real.” We are the super-power hated in many parts of the world. Terrorism rekindled our American mindstate into the frenzied panics we were so familiar in the 50s and 60s. We found ourselves dumbfounded by the Al-Qaeda terror networks and the hatred embued upon us from the rest of the “uncivilized world.”
Now I find myself grappled in an election, watching Candidate Bush, Candidate Kerry and Candidate NetZero (oops, did I say that?) grapple for who’s the better defender. Bush is adamant about his role as the guardian. Kerry is careful not to let you forget about his record in Vietnam, killing those uncivilized communists. One flip-floped, the other fooled our nation. The rhetoric is negligible as is the end-result. Afterall, 9/11 was not caused by either of these individuals; it was our holistic political ideology, regardless of political orientation, which induced the birth of global and more specifically, Islamic terrorism. How is Al-Qaeda any different from the Black Hand of the early 20th century? Fukuyama was wrong; history has a way of waking up and smelling the coffee. What Fukuyama neglected was the reverberations of our war on Communism, or any other ideology threatening our global hegemony. The CIA operations in Afghanistan, the funding of Sadaam Hussein with biological weapons, military intervention in Iran, Guatemala, the war crimes of Henry Kissinger in Chile, Cambodia, and most awfully, East Timor. The term is “blowback” and it denotes what happens when you destroy the livelihood of billions for the pursuit of geo-political prowess.
Blowback is a harsh way to denote the death of over 3000 innocent citizens, firemen and rescue crews, but that’s what it boils down to. Blowback is what boils down my apathy towards American politics, because we will blow back and we can blow harder than anyone else.
So if you ask me about my political ideologies and what makes me inspired about politics. I could talk to you about economic policies, social welfare, the war or terrorism and such, but I don’t think that really gets us anywhere.
Works Cited
Cato Institute, Cato Daily Dispatch. 2004-10-13
<>
Edwards, Chris. “Corporate Tax Tangle” 2004-10-13
<>
Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and The Last Man
Perenial Press, NY. 1993
posted by Hurst at 7:06 PM
1 Comments:
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