All this talk about excitement over the election. How so many first time voters are happily planning on going to the polls and how they might decide the outcome.
But not all young people are enamored by the process. Some are tired, after two years of listening to the claims and counterclaims on and off the campaign trail.
Today, my son Daniel's friend, Mark (last name redacted) wrote an e-mail about how strongly he feels about the election. In a negative sense.
Daniel then responded with an extensive, well expressed, reply. Basically telling Mark to take a chill pill. But then, interestingly, coming to basically the same conclusion. It's not worth voting.
First, in italics, I present Mark's initial missive. Followed by Daniel's reply.
Your comments are encouraged and welcomed.
Mark's message:I am turning off my phone on Novermber 4th, and I will not be answering any e-mail from that day, either. I don't want to hear another word about this stupid election. I am so exhausted by the ridiculously enthusiastic Obama supporters, and the ridiculously hysterical conservatives who think the world is coming to an end if he gets elected. Enough of this crap. I don't give a fuck, and I don't want to talk about it. Not that I expected any of you to notify (me)
who wins the election, but I want to just read it the next day in the news.
Oh, I will be deleting any mail I receive on that day without reading it, and I won't listen to voice mails or reading texts, either. Not a word; I mean it.Thank you.Daniel's reply:Honestly, I don't see what's so depressing about democracy, or rather,whatever you choose to call the ritual currently being avoided.Why, for example, are Obama supporters "ridiculously enthusiastic?" What is so ridiculous about their enthusiasm? There are plenty of enthusiasms that are much more worth avoiding. Chinese nationalism is one of these. The greedy self-assurance of a bullish Wall Street is another. Not only is it absurd to be enthusiastic in these ways for many reasons, but they are much more common than the enthusiasm regarding the presidential election every four years.
Most voters this year believe that the presidential election is very important for the future of the country. They are probably wrong. For years now, politicians have had no real vision to offer the public. It is as if society in America were held together by its packaging. Our rituals of government no longer protect us, they no longer give life and order to society, and they no longer represent a significant understanding of the world.
What they do provide is a sense of belonging, either to party or country, and an ill-founded faith that the above functions really are still served by the government.
Thence comes the apparently ridiculous climate of sentiment surrounding this year's presidential election. However, in a society which has to a large extent redefined itself as a market, the expression of individual desire -- that is, economic demand-- is both inevitable and necessary. If consumers suddenly became selfless, or principled, then Wall Street would face an even larger depression than the one for which the supply side is currently responsible. The market is incapable of responding to morality, because it is incapable of arbitrating its definition. The success of our consumer economy is fully predicated upon the ability of advertisers to sell consumers things that they don't need, and wouldn't want, were no suggestion given regarding their desirability.
One product in particular justifies the rest, through the example of its success as a public spectacle. That product is the president of the United States.
The president is the spokesperson of the entire country. For the duration of the president's term, the United States as a whole is conceptually dealt with in terms of the iconography of that particular presidential brand.
For example, if the President is a professorial-sounding liberal, then America is thought of by Americans and others as a progressive, intelligent, perhaps elitist nation. If the President is folksy, stumbles over his words, and partakes of saber-rattling often, then Americans will think of their country as closer to the American cowboy archetype -- either stronger or more "American," or trigger happy and stupid.
The election, in any case, is an act of collective self-expression. In voting, the voter at once affirms his personal autonomy, and submits his will to the infallibility of the collective. It is the exact same paradox posed by the use of mass-produced accessories as a means of expressing one's individuality.The logic of electing a president is essentially identical to that of choosing an MP3 player. It is a fashion statement, and an indicator of socioeconomic status.
The presidential candidate's ideological associations are assimilated into the family of brands that voters for the candidate have also chosen. In this way, the display of corporate logos becomes a statement of belief. Starbucks, Google, and Apple are liberal brands. The American flag is usually conservative, and so is Wal-Mart. It is only through this ideological association that consumerism is applicable to every facet of public life. Therefore, the primary function of the president in a consumer society is the transformation of political and moral thought into material excess. I mean by this not that the thought creates material excess, but that it
is material excess.
Human values, as they are regarded in the public consciousness, retain the character of unnecessary, diverse, irrational things, the same as children's toys and different styles of clothing. In turn, these unnecessary products are blessed with an intrinsic value, as they are partially constitutive of the consumer.
The person hood of the consumer is inseparable from the products that define it. This point needs emphasis. To repeat: the person hood of the consumer is inseparable from the products that define it.
In the absence of a political process, the tacit acceptance of the previous proposition becomes untenable. As well, if the proposition is consciously rejected, then American democracy loses its peculiar significance. Thus, strong emotions surrounding the presidency are both natural and necessary as centerpieces in the self-consistent relation of unconscious assumptions that "is" America. But they are just as absurd as the whole complex, which in particular finds its origin and justification in the financial profit of large corporations, which base their success in the faith that overproduction is sustainable, and in fact require what has revealed itself as a very elaborate system of rationalization to explain that this is the case.
I will for the time being call this climate of opinion the "modernmetapolitic," only to highlight that its basic assumptions, like those of modern scientific metaphysical materialism, go unquestioned in its own field. The major problem with the modern metapolitic, as well, is the same as that with scientific materialism, i.e., taking a cue from Whitehead, the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." That is, an attempt has been made in the project of the 20th century to construe all political phenomena in terms of the foundational abstractions of consumerism, which themselves explicitly deal only with the question of how profitable mass production is possible in ways other than through supplying basic, ubiquitous needs for survival. In a sense, it is an attempt to abstract economics from the larger concrete situation in which it finds itself, and build an entire world unto itself in replacement of that which it casts off.
The history of the last century should indicate that this project has failed. However, the identity of a nation now depends on that project. If I am right, then the 2008 election may become the final straw for the public; unable to understand anymore why the world progresses as it does, we may be forced to consider other ways of thinking. Even if I am wrong, the amount of emotional investment in the election ought to be welcomed.
Even if it is annoying.
