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Inside the American Dream

America today is almost a one party state and that one party is divided into two factions; one calling itself Republican, the other Democratic. The irony is that the two sides are increasingly finding it very difficult to compromise on almost nonexistent policy differences. In the battle for the American voter, each side sells fear perhaps because a paranoid population is easier to control than a free one.

Back to the queue to enter America at the JFK terminal: There, I watch hoards of humanity walking slowly and impatiently to the immigration desks; immigration officials painstakingly take their fingerprints, photograph the inside of their eyes, check their documents and finally stamp their passports. The unlucky ones are pulled out and taken to private rooms for questioning especially Muslim or anyone who writes articles critical of America. I suppose they keep such writers’ names in their databases so that when you are entering the country, you are taken care of.

I can feel the suppressed rage of all these non-American visitors to America – the sense that these procedures are far too out of proportion with the threat of terrorism. However, no one dares speak out for fear that the FBI may pick you out of the queue for questioning or that your visa might be cancelled. So when I attempt to share my irritation with a white couple next to me, they simply answer that all these excruciating processes are meant for our safety. An Australian businessman next to me interjects rejecting this defensive answer by announcing that this is his last time to America. “I just cannot stand this abuse of my rights anymore,” he says.

It is difficult not to imagine you are entering a Stalinist state, something akin to North Korea when you are entering the United States these days. The exception is that the flat screens on the walls have CNN reporting the trial of Michael Jackson’s former doctor. There, I watch Americans busy arguing and dissecting every bit of the trial – free, passionate and proud. This vibrancy of freewheeling debate brings back the America I dreamed of as a child, adored as teenager, embraced as an adult and are now growing to realize is only one aspect of that nation’s life.

But it is the America I want, not the one I am suffering. It also reflects the complexity of America’s political life – a combination of a growing Stalinism alongside Jeffersonian democracy; the existing sense of freedom but largely in entertainment, itself perhaps to divert Americans from loss of free debate about security.

The tragedy of America is the failure of its mass media, journalists, intellectuals and civil society to challenge the growing Stalinism of the security-industrial complex; the systematic dismantling of many individual liberties, the uncalled for intrusion into people’s privacy through wiretapping and other forms of electronic surveillance in the name of security.

Finally I leave the airport and begin driving to New York City. On radio, another heated debate about new regulations to govern city cabs; it is heated and polarizing but again reflects the America that I admire – an America of a free and proud people – vibrant and competitive. How has the concern over security blighted this once proud and courageous society to behave paranoid like cowards?

America is suffering from a crisis of leadership. It reflects Athens after the death of Pericles in 429BC. The democratic process produced a string of politicians who pandered to public sentiment. Unable to develop a vision for the city state, the leaders resorted to exchanging intellectual blows at the Ecclesia, or general assembly, in entertaining fashion to win popular approval rather than to provide solutions. Every intellectual argument would be cheered like the steady blows of boxers and wrestlers at the Olympic and Pethian games.

Thus, as philosophy gave way to oratory, Athens degenerated into mob justice. It was rule by the eloquent rather than the intelligent; sentiment overtook reason as the basis of decision making. Thus Athens went from one tragedy to another until, after 27 years of the Peloponnesian war it surrendered to Sparta. The defeat of Athens ended the democratic experiment and plunged the country into a tyranny of the council of 30 under Critius. And when the democrats wrestled power militarily back into their hands, their first objective was to kill Socrates – the one sane voice who stood consistently in opposition to the decisions of the mob.

As I drive to Manhattan, I encounter another ignored America: the Occupy Wall Street movement. For many years, the upper classes of this country have promoted the one-sided story of a prosperous nation and an invisible economy built on free market capitalism. It seems this message, more than the reality in people’s lives, has sustained the legitimacy of this arrangement for the last three decades.

In reality, however, even during the boom years of the Clinton administration, the real income of the average American has been declining, not growing. The vast majority of Americans have therefore enjoyed prosperity by association, not in their pockets. Instead, most of the growth in real incomes has gone to the top 20 percent of the population. The rest are kept hoping against hope that they too will benefit through the myths of the American dream. And because their incomes are not growing, the financiers of Wall Street decided to make them beneficiaries of this dream largely through credit – hence the rapid growth of consumer debt, now over 150 percent of an individual American’s annual income.

US democracy has been significantly undermined by these developments. For example, the top two percent control 20 percent of national income; the top 20 percent take 80 percent of total income. So 80 percent of Americans share only 20 percent of its income. The rich who take most of the benefits of growth have adeptly used the political process to block the benefits of a free market system from reaching those on the bottom of the ladder. Even my hero Frederic Von Hayek would not agree that a free market society should look like America.

The rich in America own the mass media and therefore control public opinion. They finance think tanks and therefore control the production of alternative policies. They fund universities and therefore control the production of knowledge. They pay for the campaigns of politicians to congress and the White House and therefore control power. And they hire lobbyists to promote the policies they want. The voice of the ordinary American is missing in almost every aspect of public life in this country as the rich goad themselves in opulence.

While in New York, I decided to use subway (underground train system) and that brings you face to face with the indifference of the rich to the concerns of the ordinary people of this wealthy nation. The tracks are littered with garbage and flowing with muddy water or sewage or both. The walls are peeling, the roofs leaking, the steel rusting, the wood rotting, the staircases breaking and the trains old and tired. Those who rule New York above drive in fancy cars and know little or nothing about the plight of the majority of their fellow citizens who use this subway – stuffy and smelly.

But why are most ordinary Americans content with the existing political system? Occupy Wall Street is not a big movement – I visited them and they are as few as it gets. Antonio Gramci had the answer in his famous concept of hegemony. The American political system has been extremely successful in “manufacturing the consent” (the phrase is from Noam Chomsky) of its citizens to the existing political and economic framework – largely using the power of propaganda (through the mass media), the production of knowledge (through the control of think tanks and universities) and the power of Christianity (by promising rewards in heaven).

amwenda@independent.co.ug

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