With the November elections over, the cycle continues. For the foreseeable future in Maine and nationally the Republicans will be in the majority. They’ll wear out their welcome and the Democrats will return. The Democrats will lose favor and the Republicans will get another shot. It will go on and on -- to think otherwise is naive.
Under the guises of conservative and liberal ideologies, it is money and power that drives the political process. Voters are merely pawns played against each other on a chess board that stretches from California to Maine. Sound bites -- welfare, deficit, immigration, and healthcare. School ground name calling -- it’s the liberals, it’s the teabaggers. All used to inflame collective passions of party members.
The 24 hour media’s bombardment of shootings, natural disasters, terrorists, pandemics is leveraged to generate a constant state of fear. It is the other parties fault, but elect us and we’ll keep you safe. As former National Rifle Association (NRA) chief Ray Arnet once said, “You keep any special interest group alive by nurturing the crisis atmosphere.”
In her essay “On the Abolition of Political Parties” written more than seventy-five years ago, Simone Weil asks the question. “Do political parties contain enough good to compensate for their evils and make their preservation desirable?”
Ms. Weil states that decisions by a political party should be based on truth, justice, and the public interest. She challenges the possibility of such criteria being followed because of as she describes a political party’s characteristics.
1. A machine to generate collective passions.
2. An organization designed to exert collective pressure upon the minds of all its individuals.
3. Ultimate goal is its own growth without limits.
Earlier I described how our current political system has become quite effective in generating collective passions. We see daily what Ms. Weil observed seven decades ago -- “partisan spirit makes people blind, makes them deaf to justice, pushes decent men cruelly to persecute innocent targets.”
Collective pressure as described in her essay “occurs through propaganda which is used to condition and persuade, not inform.” In Ms. Weil’s day it was pamphlets, periodicals, and newspapers. Today we have TV, radio, and social media. “Nothing is more comfortable than not having to think” states Ms. Weil – “instead of thinking, people are for or against.” Imagine her reaction to our present day world of sound bites and generalities.
Further “all parties must use propaganda because the others do in order to survive.” And today all parties must solicit campaign funds, because the others do to survive. The words of Henry Thoreau appear to ring true “things don’t change, we change”
Beginning in July, 1845 Henry Thoreau spent two years living a simple, sparse life in Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. Secluded from the outside world, he built his cabin, and grew and gathered his food all within walking distance of Walden Pond. Thoreau comes to a key realization at the end of his two-year experiment: “Things do not change; we change.” In the simplified “world” created by Thoreau, he clearly saw on a daily basis what does not change: the sun rises, the sun sets; the four seasons occur year after year; people are born, grow up, mature, and die. Shifts occur from observations -- we change and thus perceive things differently.
Our political parties are wallowing in the final two circles of Dante’s Inferno – fraud and treachery. They have reached the furthest depths of Hell. As a society we have become more divisive with each election, manipulated to fight each other for a piece of a shrinking pie of wealth and resources. Our attention is trained to focus on the evils of one party while the other serves as emissary to a select few constituents. We do so at times with the wrath described in Dante’s fifth circle.
Political parties will not change, we must change. Is it time we weaken if not fully eliminate political parties?
References
http://mediamatters.org/...
“On the Abolition of Political Parties”, Simone Weil (1909 – 1943)
http://www.amazon.com/...