CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: The state represents human beings at their worst: force instead of persuasion, impunity instead of accountability, censorship instead of free inquiry  Mon Nov 16, 2020 9:46 pm | |
| The culture war is a distraction
Weeks after the historic presidential election, America seems as polarized as ever. The red and blue political sects looking at each other as enemies, morally suspect and indeed “almost incomprehensible” to one another. But even as polarization has spiked, as Northwestern University psychology professor Eli J. Finkel points out, “The debate going on is increasingly divorced from ideas.”
The two sides are interested in “conquest,” not in political ideology, social science, or philosophical questions about the appropriate government role. So while polarization may seem to be about politics, it’s really about increasingly cordoned social, cultural, and demographic groupings. Within this context, with a better understanding of what’s actually dividing the country, culture war histrionics are revealed as a mere distraction, the thin veneer that covers a public policy reality too terrible for most Americans to confront honestly.
For example, Americans have never seriously reckoned with “our” government’s foreign policy of endless war, or its lawless, unaccountable intelligence and national security officialdom, or its collusive monopoly capitalism. And in a year when there really did seem to be a historic moment of reckoning on issues of systemic racism, particularly as associated with policing and the criminal justice system, Americans elected a pair who built their political careers on pushing exactly the kinds of policies that led to the current crisis of injustice — on the war on drugs, general overcriminalization, mandatory minimums and mass incarceration, the militarization of the police, stop-and-frisk, and no-knock warrants (and this is, of course, a non-exhaustive list). Americans seem to like authoritarianism, which is not unique to either party, embarrassing celebrations of the Democratic victory notwithstanding.
The two culture wars sides are much, much more alike than they are different. And while Donald Trump did his best to damn Biden and the Democrats as socialists, socialism and the monopoly capitalism Trump represents are also more alike than different; they only seem to be opposites, a fact that more insightful thinkers have long appreciated.
Having such an openly dishonest and odious character in the White House has forced people to evaluate political power as principled libertarians always do. At least the cultural and media elite see Trump for what he is. One of the only things a peace-loving anti-authoritarian can say for the Trump years is that the newsmedia actually scrutinized presidential power, treating the president as an evil authoritarian. In contrast, they fawn incessantly over Biden and Harris, who represent the very worst and most demonstrably racist public policy decisions of the past several decades. Journalists have been either pretending not to know this, or else they actually don’t know.
Trump is an inarticulate, unscripted speaker lacking charisma and moral character. But it is too little acknowledged that such traits frequently made Trump less dangerous as a politician rather than more, for the media and political establishments arrayed themselves against his administration before it even began, and for a good reason. How are the same people handling Biden and Harris? How are the journalism profession and the pundit class likely to treat the Biden administration's abuses and excesses? Which candidate do you think warmongers and Wall Street wanted to win the 2020 election?
On the political philosophers' pages, the state is an abstraction; it can be a perfect justice-producing machine, untethered to the human imperfections and evils to which it ostensibly addresses itself. That it has been, from its earliest appearances in history, an expression of those imperfections and evils, is everywhere ignored by those who ask for an even stronger state.
The modern state is best understood both historically and conceptually not as some kind of neutral “scorekeeper sit[ting] outside the game,” but as a corporation made up of and operated by actual flesh-and-blood human beings with their own interests, incentives, blind spots, and shortcomings. Unless we believe that the state is possessed of some supernatural essence that makes it different from other human-operated organizations (and indeed many seem to believe just this), then it is not at all clear why we should consider the state a “scorekeeper,” unbound by the rules and assumptions in place for all other mere mortals.
The state represents human beings at their worst: force instead of persuasion, impunity instead of accountability, censorship instead of free inquiry. Instead of polarizing and treating each other as enemies, we must come to understand that political power itself is the enemy.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/526135-the-culture-war-is-a-distraction
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