Seeing Through the Great Divide

I don't own a television, but from what I hear of the post-election coverage it's probably the best thing for my recovery. There is some patent nonsense being thrown around about what the election means and how America is deeply divided along party lines. A lot of the talk seems to have suddenly shifted to "moral values," something I don't remember hearing articulated before, at least in that way. My belief is that people are capable of coming to their own conclusions about what the election means, and that listening too closely to the "experts" has the effect of stultifying our impulse to do so. The news networks are highly concentrated conglomerates, closely linked to the political system, and they tend to reflect it in their programming. So if what you hear coming out of the four or five "official" news networks makes you feel like you're living in an alternate reality, it's only because you're still capable of independent thought, and what you hear does not match-up with what you see.

Regarding the election, I think there are some common sense observations one can make. The first is that it was very close, and could easily have had a different outcome. Secondly, we have a deeply flawed voting system, unverifiable in large parts and highly inefficient in others. Thirdly, the "moral" dimension the election has taken after the fact should be considered closely in the light of professional politics, where morals have not traditionally fared so well.

The idea that the country is divided is an indulgence taken by two parties who enjoy a monopoly over the political system, and who see America divided in their own image. The fact is that ordinary liberals and conservatives both perceive themselves in a pitched battle against entrenched elites, championing the little man against oppressive concentrations of power within the society. That strikes me as an overwhelming unity amongst ordinary people, who all suffer the same decline in real wages, benefits, and living standards regardless of their religious views or political beliefs, but who, thanks to the binary nature of the political process, attribute them to completely different things--a breakdown in values on the one hand, and a lack of regulation on the other. The actual elites--the ones within the Democratic and Republican parties, and their corporate backers--know this and play each constituency accordingly, and this election was largely a function of whose propaganda was more effective. That's not to say there aren't real policy differences between the parties, but rather that neither wants an actual shift of power from elites to the general population. That's something which can only come from below, by people recognizing the real, horizontal divide that separates their shared lot in life as increasingly impoverished liberals and conservatives vs. the ownership classes (both liberal and conservative, by the way) who run the country.