Performative Politics: Congressional Theater for the Naive

Watching these people testifying before Congress as if democracy, freedom and the rule of law really mattered; as if America’s “security” was really threatened (apparently it always is); as if ordinary citizens in the US determined foreign and domestic policy, and with both sides of the chorus playing their parts, proclaiming their fealty to the high ideals of the republic, requires a strong stomach. For none of the hypocrites discharging their roles with such solemnity understand, or perhaps even care to understand (living in a bubble of extreme privilege), what the US government (and the forces that animate it and which they happily represent) is really all about, nor what it really does in the world. Only sociopaths could both know what the US government actually does and be quite satisfied with it, so maybe there’s the answer to the riddle. We live in a sociopathocracy.  But I digress. 

These periodical performances before Congress are not good for the hoi polloi. They mislead the masses and actually hide the true mechanics of power. At best, these politicians’ and bureaucrats’ well remunerated minuets are, like the shadows in Plato’s cave, only rough and remote approximations, not of a reality, but of an ideal perhaps impossible to realize without the benefit of a revolution. Thus, the fake verbal duels and posturings will never yield a reliable representation of the actual power structure that oppresses the majority, nor of the ominous direction in which it is moving. The captive populations are thereby disarmed by these great exercises in fake information. Think about it for a minute. The very idea that the US regime’s “national security” watchdogs—that is, the ruling elite’s bodyguards—will level with a bunch of crooked politicians who, themselves, sit in Congress to above all protect the same oligarchs—is an insulting absurdity by definition. Besides, what do you mean “worldwide threats”, Kemo Sabe? Threats to whom? Not to me, not to us, ordinary Americans. But here we are. Being scared out of our wits for the umpteenth time by real professionals. And all according to a well-rehearsed and elegant protocol. Who could ask for more?

This elaborate and shameless pantomime is surely the best scam that money can buy, perfected to an art form, but a scam nonetheless.  So, fixate, if you will, on these long and ponderous hours of testimony —Plato’s shadows undulating on the walls—because they are a very good simulacrum of what an actually functioning representative democracy might look like if this ruling class was sincere about democracy.  Which is not, simply because it can’t afford to be. For starters, a society with an institutionalized core of constantly growing horrid inequality, cannot be a democracy. It must be something else. Call it a plutocracy, an oligarchy, a kakistocracy, but never a democracy. Fact is, a real democracy would quickly kill it. But guess what? We do have a democracy, “a democracy for the few”, as Michael Parenti so brilliantly called it, and in this strange animal, the “few”, that is, the billionaire class, the 0.0001% of the population, rule exclusively for their benefit. With no apology or effective accountability whatsoever to the much vaster and long-suffering masses. Some cynics have said that this arrangement sounds like a class dictatorship, and they would be right.  What’s more, this is the idealised template that most liberal-globalist “democracies” in the collective West so tediously brag about these days, while haughtily denouncing the rest as dangerous authoritarians. Well, that’s just another fantasy anyway, because vassal nations without sovereignty cannot enjoy a genuine democracy. 

CERTIFICATION
The professional peddlers of democracy tell us that, in a true democracy, the people rule and make the laws. If that is so, why is it, then, that in the US not even the most popular, obvious, and longed for laws—like universal healthcare, or a decent minimum wage, for example—never seem to get enacted? Answer that, big boy. Don’t worry, take your time.