Requiem for the American Dream Page #7

They want to create

an uniformed electorate,

which will make irrational

choices, often against their

own interests,

and we see it every time

one of these extravaganzas

take place.

Right after the election,

president Obama won an award

from the advertising industry

for the best marketing campaign.

It wasn't reported here,

but if you go to the

international business press,

executives were euphoric.

They said, "we've been selling

candidates, marketing candidates

like toothpaste

ever since Reagan,

and this is the greatest

achievement we have."

I don't usually agree with Sarah Palin,

(Governor of Alaska, commentator)

but when she mocks what she

calls the "hopey-changey" stuff,

she's right.

First of all, Obama didn't

really promise anything.

That's mostly illusion.

You go back to the campaign

rhetoric and take a look at it.

There's very little discussion

of policy issues, and for very

good reason,

because public opinion on policy

is sharply disconnected

from what the two-party

leadership and their

financial bankers want.

Policy more and more is focused on the private

interests that fund the campaigns...

With the public

being marginalized.

One of the leading political scientists,

Martin Gilens, scoscame out with a study

(professor of politics at Princeton University)

of the relation between public attitudes

and public policy.

What he shows is that about 70%

of the population has no way

of influencing policy.

They might as well be

in some other country...

And the population knows it.

What it's led to is a population that's angry,

frustrated, hates institutions.

It's not acting constructively to try

to respond to this.

There is popular

mobilization and activism,

but in very self-destructive

directions.

It's taking the form

of unfocused anger,

attacks on one another,

and on vulnerable targets.

That's what happens

in cases like this.

It is corrosive of social

relations, but that's the point.

The point is to make people

hate and fear each other,

and look out only

for themselves,

and don't do anything

for anyone else.

One place you see it

strikingly is on April 15th.

April 15th is kind of a measure,

the day you pay your taxes,

(In the United States is Tax Day)

of how Democratic

the society is.

If a society is

really Democratic,

April 15th would be

a day of celebration.

It's a day when

the population gets together,

decides to fund the programs

and activities that they have

formulated and agreed upon.

What could be better than that?

So, you should celebrate it.

It's not the way it is

in the United States.

It's a day of mourning.

It's a day in which some alien power

that has nothing to do with you,

is coming down to steal

our hard-earned money,

and you do everything you can

to keep them from doing it.

That is a kind of measure

of the extent to which,

at least in popular

consciousness, democracy

is actually functioning.

Not a very attractive picture.

The tendencies that we've

been describing within

American society,

unless they're reversed,

it's going to be an extremely

ugly society.

I mean, a society

that's based on

Adam Smith's vile Maxim,

"all for myself,

nothing for anyone else."

A society in which

normal human instincts

and emotion

of sympathy, solidarity,

mutual support, in which

they're driven out...

That's a society so ugly,

I don't even want to know

who'd live in it.

I wouldn't want my children to.

If the society is based on

control by private wealth,

it will reflect the values

that it, in fact, does reflect.

The value that is greed,

and the desire to maximize

personal gain,

now, any society, a small

society based on that principle

is ugly, but it can survive.

A global society based

on that principle is headed

for massive destruction.

I don't think we're smart

enough to design,

in any detail what

a perfectly just and free

society would be like.

I think we can give

some guidelines

and, more significant,

we can ask how we can

progress in that direction.

John Dewey, the leading

social philosopher in

the late 20th century,

he argued that until

all institutions,

production, commerce, media,

unless they're all under

participatory Democratic control,

(Participatory democracy)

we will not have a functioning

Democratic society.

As he put it, "policy will be

the shadow cast by business

over society."

Well, it's essentially true.

Where there are structures

of authority, domination

and hierarchy,

somebody gives the orders,

somebody takes them,

they are not self-justifying.

They have to justify themselves.

They have a burden of proof to meet.

Well, if you take a close look,

usually you find they can't

justify themselves.

If they can't, we ought

to be dismantling them.

Trying to expand the domain

of freedom and justice

by dismantling that form

of illegitimate authority.

And, in fact,

progress over the years,

what we all thankfully

recognized as progress,

has been just that.

The way things

change is because lots of people

are working all the time.

They're working in their

communities, in their workplace,

or wherever they happen to be,

and they're building up

the basis for popular

movements, which are

going to make changes.

That's the way everything

has ever happened in history.

Take, say, freedom of speech...

One of the real achievements

of American society,

it's first in the world in that.

It's not in the bill of rights.

It's not in the constitution.

Freedom of speech issues began

to come to the Supreme Court

in the early 20th century.

The major contributions

came in the 1960s.

One of the leading ones

was a case in the civil

rights movement.

Well, by then, you had

a mass popular movement,

which was demanding rights,

refusing to back down.

And in that context,

the Supreme Court did establish

a pretty high standard

for freedom of speech.

Or take, say, women's rights.

Women also began identifying

oppressive structures,

refusing to accept them,

bringing other people

to join with them.

Well, that's how rights are won.

To a non-trivial extent,

I've also spent a lot

of my life in activism.

That doesn't show up publicly,

but, actually, I'm not terribly

good at it...

I think that

we can see quite clearly some

very, very serious defects

and flaws in our society,

our level of culture,

our institutions,

which are going to have to be

of the framework

that is commonly accepted.

I think we're going to have to find

new ways of political action.

But the activists are the people who

have created the rights that we enjoy.

They're not only carrying out...

Policies based on information

that they're receiving,

but also contributing

to the understanding.

Remember,

it's a reciprocal process.

You try to do things.

You learn.

You learn about what

the world is like,

that feeds back

to the understanding

of how to go on.

There's huge opportunities.

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