By Henry A. Giroux
Truthout | Monday, 09 December 2013
C. Wright Mills argued 50 years ago that one important measure of the
demise of vibrant democracy and the corresponding impoverishment of
political life can be found in the increasing inability of a society to
translate private troubles to broader public issues. [1]
This is an issue that both characterizes and threatens any viable
notion of democracy in the United States in the current historical
moment. In an alleged post-racist democracy, the image of the public
sphere with its appeal to dialogue and shared responsibility has given
way to the spectacle of unbridled intolerance, ignorance, seething
private fears, unchecked anger and the decoupling of reason from
freedom. Increasingly, as witnessed in the utter disrespect and
not-so-latent racism expressed by Joe Wilson, the Republican congressman
from South Carolina, who shouted “you lie!” during President Obama’s
address on health care, the obligation to listen, respect the views of
others and engage in a literate exchange is increasingly reduced to the
highly spectacular embrace of an infantile emotionalism. This is an
emotionalism that is made for television. It is perfectly suited for
emptying the language of public life of all substantive content, reduced
in the end to a playground for hawking commodities, promoting celebrity
culture and enacting the spectacle of right-wing fantasies fueled by
the fear that the public sphere as an exclusive club for white male
Christians is in danger of collapsing. For some critics, those who carry
guns to rallies or claim Obama is a Muslim and not a bona fide citizen
of the United States are simply representative of an extremist fringe,
that gets far more publicity from the mainstream media than they
deserve. Of course this is understandable, given that the media’s desire
for balance and objective news is not just disingenuous but
relinquishes any sense of ethical responsibility by failing to make a
distinction between an informed argument and an unsubstantiated opinion.
Witness the racist hysteria unleashed by so many Americans and the
media over the building of an Islamic cultural center near ground zero.
To read more....
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