Market-Driven Hysteria and the Politics of Death
Salient analysis which pretty much sums it up on a number of fronts, and lays bare the case on the destructive anti-democratic nature of ‘market societies’ and the ideology that underlines them.
If we take seriously the ideology, arguments and values now emanating from the right-wing of the Republican Party, there is no room in the United States for a democracy in which the obligations of citizenship, compassion and collective security outweigh the demands of what might be called totalizing market-driven society; that is, a society that is utterly deregulated, privatized, commodified and largely controlled by the ultra-rich and a handful of mega corporations. In such a society, there is a shift in power from government to markets and the emergence of a more intensified political economy organized around three principal concerns: deregulated markets, commodification and disposability. In spite of the current failure of this system, right-wing Republicans and their allies are more than willing to embrace a system that erases all vestiges of the public good, turning citizens into consumers, while privatizing and commodifying every aspect of the social order - all the while threatening the lives, health, and livelihoods of millions of working class and middle class people.
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But more so, it produces a kind of dysfunctional silence in the culture in the face of massive hardship and suffering. There is more than moral indifference and political cynicism at work here; there is also a culture for which there is not much room for ideals, a culture that now considers public welfare a pathology, and responsibility solely a privatized and individual matter. This is a politics of disinvestment in public life, democracy and the common good.
Shouting against the evils of big government does little to register or make visible the power of big corporations or a government that serves corporate rather than democratic needs.
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As democracy is increasingly reduced to an empty shell and the rise of a corporate and punishing state looms heavily on the 21st-century horizon, the market-driven principles of deregulation, radical individualism and privatization penetrate all aspects of daily life. Such market-driven values and their accompanying power-shaping institutions now profoundly influence the very nature of how the American public think, act and desire. All of which are increasingly wedded to the epicenter of a grotesque consumer culture, whose underside is a heartless indifference to the suffering and hardship of the millions of people without jobs, homes, health care and, increasingly, hope.
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In this scenario, each individual is on their own in confronting the many systemic problems facing American society, each of us responsible for our own fate, even when facing systemic problems that cannot be solved by isolated individuals. This politics of hysteria and ruthlessness that is now on full display in America is not just an attack on the social state, big government, the public sphere and the common good, but the very essence of politics and democracy. This is truly a politics that celebrates death over life.
