Deep Thoughts: Invisible Dictatorship 2 (why America is a dictatorship cross-dressed as a democracy) - serial essay by Adam Ash

II. YOUR OPINION COUNTS FOR NOTHING

5. In a democracy, you’re free to express your opinions

Democracy starts for you, personally, with you having an opinion that you want the majority to act on. You may want women to have the right to have an abortion without being jailed for it, or men to have the right to bonk each other up the butt, or everyone to have the right to smoke marijuana in public.

Two of these rights have been achieved by taking individual cases all the way to the Supreme Court, one in 1965 and the other in 2003. The third seems unattainable, even though nobody has been able to prove that marijuana is harmful to adults in any way, except that it induces mindless fits of giggles, which don’t appear to fall within the definition of a criminal experience.

But our “democracy” says it’s criminal to get high. Does this mean that our democracy is stupefyingly dumb, bizarrely delusionary, or pathologically crazy? Not necessarily. It means that democracy, like religion or a fondness for broccoli, is not a creature of reason: if it were, smoking marijuana would’ve become legal long before abortion or butt-fucking.

But say you’re a creature of reason, and you think it’s reasonable that Americans should be able to smoke marijuana without getting locked up for it. Or you think it’s reasonable to prosecute doctors who perform abortions. Or you think it’s obvious that gays should not be allowed to teach your kids evolution. Whatever you think, you have the freedom to express your opinion. It’s the absolute foundation of democracy (otherwise how would we know what the majority thinks?).

You can even express a criminal opinion. There are organizations that devote themselves exclusively to expressing the opinion that marijuana should be legal. Like them, you can exercise your freedom of speech by talking, writing, speechifying, sending a letter to the editor of a newspaper or your elected representative, blogging, teaching, and every form of speech imaginable.

You can do that to promote whatever: to make marijuana legal; to say public schools shouldn’t depend on property taxes for their funding, because that makes for good schools in rich surburbs, but horrible schools in urban ghettos; to make it possible for gays not only to bang each other without the cops barging in on them, but also to get married like everyone else.

That’s the concept of democracy. But in real life, what happens?

6. In a democracy, you’re free to express your opinion, but your country is not free to hear it

In real life, not all opinions are equal.

Some opinions are much more powerful than others, because they reach many more people. Columnists get to express their opinion to thousands or millions of newspaper readers every week. The same small circle of people are invited time and time again to express their opinions on national TV to many viewers.

The freedom to have an opinion that’s heard by many people, is hogged by a few people.

You are free to express your opinion to your family (which can be dangerous) or your friends, and that’s about it.

Rightwinger Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand, is free to express his opinion to his massive radio audience that the state should show drug offenders no mercy (and the state has happily obliged him; there are kids sitting in jail for 20 years in Texas because they smoked a joint). You are free only to enjoy the irony when Rush himself becomes addicted to drugs.

There’s a name for opinion-makers like Rush. They’re called the punditocracy; the chattering classes. (They’re also called self-serving hypocrites, but that’s another story.) They control all opinion via the media, which in America is ruled by a few big companies -- Time-Warner, Fox, Disney, GE.

The punditocracy is not a democracy. You don’t get to elect Rush Limbaugh or Chris Matthews, or to vet their opinions. Media owners do that. You think you’re picking them because their popularity and power depends on you; your vote put them there. But who gave you the choice in the first place? The media bosses pick the select few who get to the starting line. You get to choose from their auditioned, screened, vetted, dry-cleaned, processed lineup.

You can hear Rush Limbaugh calling everything evil by turning on the radio, but you have to look very hard to find the contrary opinion – say, that marijuana is good because it gives you the munchies, the giggles, and carnal experiences more intense than elephant sex. Chances are you’ll never find this opinion, unless you commit the crime of smoking a joint with someone hot, with boxes of condoms and brownies in easy reach, at which point the truth of the anti-Rush opinion will hit you hard and good. However, until the entire nation has a similar experience (many are too chicken to try), this knowledge will be confined to the lucky few, and marijuana will stay illegal.

Not that pundits don’t deserve their big audiences. The punditocracy may not be a democracy, but most picks starts at zero, and the winners work hard to get a good hearing, as does the pundit entrepreneur Rush Limbaugh.

The best opinions, however, don’t necessarily reach the largest audiences. High Times magazine may have a better opinion than Rush Limbaugh on the marijuana issue, but it reaches a much smaller audience. Also, people with money and power can make sure their bad opinions prevail, by spending money on advertising and propaganda.

7. Opinion is manufactured

Opinion is not only controlled, it is manufactured.

For example, when Hillary Clinton wanted to reform healthcare, HMOs bought ads that helped kill her reform plans.

If you had millions to play with, you might get marijuana legalized by manufacturing an opinion that it gives people religious experiences. But you don’t have millions. You may believe in marijuana harder than in Jesus, but you’re not going to get a hearing for your opinion, even if it appears to be more reasonable than the opinion that gay marriage is a sin, an opinion much discussed in the media, especially around election time.

Even if the majority of Americans hold a great opinion, you and they aren’t heard. Only the opinions of the few are heard widely, so those opinions rule. It’s a form of control. Nothing democratic about it.

8. In a democracy, governments spin and lie

Perhaps the biggest manufacturer of opinion is our government. One would assume since they’re supposed to represent the majority of voters, they wouldn’t need to sell us on anything. So why do they spend most of their media time spinning and lying?

If you think this is an understatement, think back to the last interview you heard with a high-level administration official. That official would have been robotically stuck on message – Dick Cheney, George Bush, Scott McClennan, etc. Any politician outside the administration as well -- Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, you name one.

The explanation is simple. Their opinions often do not represent the majority, even though they promise to represent the majority to get themselves elected.

For example, consider the issue of war. Presidents don’t generally include war in their list of election promises, and most American wouldn’t want to vote for a president who promised to plunge the country into war anyway.

So it is that when they want to start a war, all presidents lie about their reasons for it.

President Polk lied in 1846 about starting a war with Mexico. He said it was because Mexico “shed American blood upon American soil,” when he and the slave-owning aristocracy coveted half of Mexico. President McKinley lied in 1998 about invading Cuba, saying he wanted to liberate it from Spain, when he wanted Spain out of Cuba to make room for the United Fruit company. He lied about the Philippine war, when he said he wanted to “civilize” the Filipinos, while he really wanted a piece of real estate in the Far East. Harry Truman lied about dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, saying it was “a military target.” Vietnam was one big lie from start to finish: Kennedy lied about the extent of our involvement there, Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, and Nixon lied about the secret bombing of Cambodia.

Presidents even lie about tiny wars: President Reagan lied about Grenada, and Bush Sr. lied about Panama. Then there was the lie about baby-killing when the Gulf War started, and for our war in Iraq, the lie about Saddam’s WMD, “the smoking gun” which could become “a mushroom cloud” over a US city.

Wars start with lies: it’s standard operating procedure in our “democracy.” Once again, democracy, like religion or a desire to have your tongue pierced, does not appear to be a creature of reason. The Big Lie Technique is normally associated with dictators like Stalin and Hitler. So, when it comes to starting wars, our “democracy” operates like a dictatorship, without fail, every time.

9. In a democracy, the government dictates the agenda

The government is also in the fortunate position of setting the agenda for the punditocracy: the actions of the government frame most debates in a democracy. If the government takes no action on a serious problem, it becomes invisible. For example, America has only 4% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population. A large prison population is only supposed to happen in a dictatorship like Burma, not in a “democracy” like America. But nobody does anything about it, which is why nobody even talks about it (which is why nobody will ever do anything about this dictatorship habit of our “democracy”).

So yes, you have freedom of expression in America, but America doesn’t have the freedom to hear all expressions of freedom. It only gets to hear the opinions of a few people. There is no democracy of opinion in America. Freedom of expression is a democratic right, but not a democratic fact.

The only democratic expression of opinion is via an opinion poll, where all opinions are equal. Everywhere else, as far as opinions go, we don’t live in a democracy; we live in an undemocratic punditocracy.

There is one shining exception, and it heralds a glimpse into a new future: the internet blogger, whose best tool is the commentary thread. There are bloggers who started from zero, like Daily Kos and Instapundit, who are today read by millions, with very lively comment threads, where readers debate and inform and attack and defend each other on issues of the day. Granted, the issues discussed are those put on the agenda by the dictatorship. But at least they’re discussed.

We shall return to the subject of the Internet. It holds the promise of a revolution in power. It threatens to put everything in the hands of the communicators, a far bigger class than the rulers.

TOMORROW: Your vote counts for nothing much.