Like many before it, but unlike any in intensity, we are facing the ultimate showdown of culture-war-politics. Why is this one different? Purely subjective, here, but I have a feeling this one could be for all the marbles - either we pull ourselves out of this insanity, or we march through it to oblivion. IMHO, it's not just the lighting rod of Barack Obama's message and personality that is driving voters to register in record numbers. I believe there is a sense that something very, very big is about to go down - and it may be us.
I do not consider myself an alarmist. I laugh at the pathetic attempts by business, the media, and the government to frighten us into complicity. Y2K, color-coded threat alerts, anthrax-by-mail... sublimely ridiculous. But this election has brought out the best and worst in every person I know, see, hear, read about, ad infinitum. The division in this country has been only once wider, more apparent, or more violent, and it was the bloodiest war in out nation's history.
I mean this. Not even during the civil rights movement were we more sharply divided. And unfortunately, the division has been 70 years in the making, the last 30 of which have been positively ruinous.
In my mind, the culture war started with a campaign of corporate propaganda following the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), which established protections for labor unions and the measures of collective bargaining and strikes, to name a few. The Wagner Act sought to put an end to decades of bloody, shockingly violent clashes between labor and business, most of which labor was on the losing end of. After (and during) a decade of failed challenges, business engaged in a coordinated campaign to stamp out the ludicrous notion that workers were somehow entitled to dignity and rights.
And in large part, they were successful. They destroyed the labor press, branded many civil and union leaders as domestic terrorists, and rewrote the media narrative to 'explain' to the 'sober working man' that unions were a corrupting force he must fight against.
And since then, the everlasting battle for the hearts and minds of men (channeling Chomsky, here) has been a matter of refinement. As technology and propaganda techniques became more sophisticated, so did the strategy. Better than a compliant workforce was a frightened and compliant workforce, and better than that was a frightened, ignorant, and compliant workforce, and so on, until we reach this near-ultimate expression of the robber barons' wet dream: people so confused, ignorant, panic-prone, and selfish that they would actively campaign against their own best interests.
In other words, Bush voters. Palin supporters. People who have been so thoroughly disenfranchised, lied to, and manipulated that facts become mutable. The Bush administration's stream of lies and false promises about the Iraq Occupation are no longer a matter of public record, they are a matter of opinion. Everything is up for grabs: Is the sky blue? Senator X says it is, and Senator Y says it isn't. Let's see how their messages are resonating with the voters.
Furthermore, the bombardment of contrary input and propaganda has at last succeeded in going beyond merely making facts debatable; it has actually indoctrinated a frighteningly large swath of Americans and calcified the dogma. Any attempt to explain, refute, or reason is met with anger, violence, and a redoubling of the indoctrination. (This last part is literally true. In studies, two groups of Bush supporters were given different input: one group was given the Bush administration's justification for invading Iraq, another was given both the justification and the factual evidence that the justification was false. In the latter group, the number of people who clung to the justification was double that of the former. In other words, refuting the lie only made the lie more believable.)
And thus the divide is expressed: those who are victims of the culture war, and those who continue to fight it.
The victims are pitiable, although they don't invite it and would react violently to it. They are the "neocons": Bill Clinton was a rapist/sex maniac; Larry Craig was... who? Factual reporting is liberal bias; Faux News is fair and balanced. The truth of a candidate's claims isn't determined by comparing said claims to the facts, it's determined by how many people believe it - unless it contradicts the party line. Christianity is an elitist, me-first club that - instead of doing good works - means fighting against the "war on Christmas" by cluttering the town square with a nativity scene hacked out of driftwood by some art-school dropout and worshiping the graven images like idolaters with no sense of irony. You get the idea.
The ones who continue to fight are admirable, but largely ignored and increasingly marginalized. They are comprised of a hodge-podge of the political and socioeconomic spectrum: true "Goldwater" conservatives, actual Republicans (now largely called Democrats), old-school Democrats (now largely called Greens), rational, analytical liberals, open-minded centrists, etc. For this loose collective, America has become a bewildering, shattered landscape of ignorance, unfocused anger, hatred, and outright stupidity.
The effects of this war are obvious, if not often remarked upon. Brilliant satire like All In The Family and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour are replaced by a revival of Knight Rider and American Gladiators. Bob Dylan and The Who gave way to Britney Spears and The Jonas Brothers. Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin are dead; Larry The Cable Guy and Dane Cook will probably live forever. And Edward R. Murrow spins in his grave every time Katie Couric or Bill O'Reilly speak.
Of course, all is not lost. While occasionally partisan, Keith Olbermann has gone so far as to even resurrect Murrow's "Good night, and good luck," a move that would be shocking in it's audacity if not for Olbermann's commitment to speaking out loudly and harshly against the excesses of the current administration and it's lieutenants. South Park continues to lampoon us all, a reminder that no one is that important. Even Green Day came out of their dark, depressing, self-flagellating closet to put out American Idiot. But sadly, these examples are the exception, and not the rule.
The rule is, "they (all Americans) need to watch what they say, watch what they do." And in a time when our implausible 'news' agencies blithely discuss voter suppression in terms of how well it works - as opposed to what an unacceptable outrage it is - the rule must be broken.
I know I'm not saying anything new here, but I wish to put as many of the pieces together as possible to form the larger picture. I often find it instructive to do so.
But to focus on the point, this election (IMHO) is not merely about the choice of two candidates, or even the choice of two ideas/platforms. It is the crux-referendum on two distinct future Americas, with varying cosmetic permutations.
One America has nearly come to pass; it is the distopian imaginings (from the silly: Idiocracy to the frightening: 1984) made real. Big Brother watches while his flock of lobotomized sheep buy unnecessary products steeped in the blood of the third world and are reduced to a nation of rubbernecking, vicarious-thrill-junkies who do not think, participate, or have a stake in their own future.
The other has height I cannot imagine. The beauty of this future is precisely that; a truly free country can choose its own destiny. But I suppose it would have to have decent wages and benefits, a forward-looking environmental policy, actually fair trade agreements, reasonable protections against foreign (or domestic) attack, civil liberties enshrined for all time, a flexible and evolving rule of law, freedom both of and from religion, and most importantly, a well-informed and engaged populace.
With the aforementioned minor, cosmetic permutations, I believe one of these futures will come to pass. And it will stem from this election. We are at the tipping point; either we plunge further into the nightmare, perhaps never to return, or we begin the long, slow climb out of this pit of insanity. And I do believe it would be that: a long, slow, difficult climb. In that respect, those of us who continue to fight are losing. The other side is nearly there; to push them all the way back will take a monumental effort of sustained campaigning.
And I can't stress this enough: there is no big sigh of relief and going back to our daily routine when Obama wins. Swearing him in would not be the end of the struggle; it would be the first minor victory in a war we have been losing for nearly a century. We must continue to fight, because the other side has all the momentum, confidence, and soldiers they need. We've marshaled an army for this battle, and I say we don't beat our swords into plowshares until the other side is an historical footnote.
I know I won't. Hopefully, there will be enough of us left on November 5th to keep fighting.