Must Democracy in America Be a Facade?

excerpted from the book

The Democratic Facade

by Daniel Hellinger and Dennis R. Judd Brooks

Cole Publishing Company, 1991, paper

p247
Must Democracy in America Be a Facade?

Three Sources of Crisis for American Democracy

Electoral processes and institutions in America have always been put in the service of maintaining the political authority and class privilege of elites. Even so, elections have been arenas for important and sometimes crucial political struggles. Though they were never useful in energizing populist movements for long, competing elite factions sometimes used elections as opportunities for mobilizing mass publics behind political agendas; on these occasions political discourse and electoral competition was enlivened, though these political openings occurred within strict ideological limits. By the 1980s, however, elections had become little more than opportunities for elites to manipulate mass opinion; elites use them as occasions for passion-play entertainment and symbolic proof of their right to govern. Though campaigns offer a mirage of competition and political debate, it is an illusion artfully maintained by the professionals who run them as a lucrative new service industry of the postindustrial age. Educational institutions recognize the growing economic importance of campaigns, and as a consequence programs are springing up to train people for careers in the politics industry. The Graduate School of Political Management in New York City, for example, offers "advanced certificate programs consistent with its stated objectives of providing students with the knowledge and skill base for professional work in political management."

Recently it has become popular to quote Alexis de Tocqueville, who argued in the mid-nineteenth century that there was a danger of mass tyranny in American politics. Benjamin Ginsberg, echoing this view in a recent popular book, argues that mass opinion promotes state power; indeed, he illuminates how during the present century modern communications technology has put public "opinion," a phenomenon constantly measured and reported, at the service of power. But public opinion does not exist as some objective phenomenon, waiting to be measured and amplified by the media. The media, the education system, the campaign industry, and government leaders constantly shape it. And when it does not conform to their massaging, elites have a significant capacity to ignore it, in proportion to the electorate's diminishing ability to hold government accountable.

It should be understood that the campaign "industry," like other industries, is dominated by corporations, it runs on money, and the participants expect to make a profit. Money and politics always have been intimately entwined in American politics. In the age of electronic mass media, the relationship between money brokers and politicians is tighter, possibly, than at any previous period in our national history. High-tech campaigns are extraordinarily expensive, so that the ability to raise money substantially decides who realistically can win public office. At both ends-the politicians' purchase of campaign talent and media advertising, and at the other "end," fundraising and contributions-corporate elites wield decisive influence. The nature of this system has become so obvious that even some incumbents worry that the legitimacy of the political system may become broadly questioned. In this spirit the Senate minority leader, Robert Dole, called for campaign reform in 1989 to reduce the 7-to-1 advantage in PAC contributions that incumbents enjoy. Claiming to be troubled by the 99 percent success rate of congressional incumbents in the 1988 elections, he said, "Republicans are determined to bring grass-roots politics back to the campaign scene. The reforms he proposes would reduce the upper limit on individual and PAC contributions. Such reforms would certainly not restore "grassroots politics," but the entrepreneurs who bundle small contributions together would have more to do, presumably. In any case, does anyone believe that reform is a priority for the beneficiaries of the present system? Dole's proposal will make some good "sound bites" for the television ads in his next reelection campaign, and that is no doubt its actual intention. Promises of reform, like most statements politicians make in the electronic age, are offered up for their public relations impact.

The first crisis of American democracy, the privatization of electoral politics, has led to the second crisis: the privatization of the national government's policy making processes... The Defense Department and military contractors constitute perhaps the most well-known and thoroughly insulated policy subgovernment. But these subgovernments are numerous: The National Forest Service and the lumber industry are engaged in a constant, complicated dance, together with key senators and representatives who receive appropriate campaign contributions. The oil industry does its dance in a subgovernment composed of oil-state politicians, their committees, and the Energy, Interior, and Commerce Departments. And so forth. What passes for political "debate" in the United States skirts around the margins of these systems does not impact them significantly, and therefore does not affect policy to any substantial degree. Such a tight relationship between politicians and business in the making of policy has probably not existed in the United States since the time of the "robber barons" in the late nineteenth century. Most policies that matter to Americans are now for the most part put up for sale. Like campaigns and elections, the everyday policy processes of American government have been privatized.

The third crisis of American democracy is the growth of an enormously powerful, autonomous, and secret national security apparatus. The insulation of foreign policy-making from domestic electoral processes came about because civilian and military foreign policy and corporate elites sought shelter from any accountability in the building of an American empire. They needed to conduct their business in secrecy and at a far remove from domestic political processes in direct proportion to the barbarity of their strategies to control the people and governments of other nations. More than any other reason, this is why foreign policies have been papered over so thoroughly by deceit and secrecy. Perhaps because America's elites find bloodthirsty policies so efficient, they are not willing to put these policies up for debate in the political arena. The public is able to exert influence in this realm mainly through protest activities such as mass demonstrations and civil disobedience.

It is an exercise in mythology to suppose that "foreign" and "domestic" policy making can be neatly demarcated. As Richard Barnet has observed, "Exempting foreign policy from the operation of democracy while preserving popular government in domestic affairs is becoming impossible now that the fragile membrane separating 'foreign' and 'domestic' issues is fast disappearing." Domestic politics have always been heavily influenced by the foreign policy agenda. During and after the First World War, the government's carefully orchestrated repression of labor leaders and socialists was justified on national security grounds. The code words "national security" again guided domestic repression of the 1940s and l950s. Subsequent events also illuminate the intimate connection between foreign and domestic politics, as represented by an executive power that has moved beyond the Constitution. The Watergate scandal should be understood in this light. At least in that case, the principal perpetrator was driven from office and his party punished at the polls. Several key players were prosecuted for their crimes. Nixon's vice president, Gerald Ford, who had no direct role in the scandal, was defeated in part for pardoning the former president.

But this episode stands in stark contrast to the latest scandal. In the Iran-contra scandal, the Reagan administration was able to prevent full judicial prosecution of Lt. Col. Oliver North and his coconspirators simply by withholding documents from the courts in the name of national security. Congress acquiesced in limiting full disclosure of the conspiracy, fearing that the public reaction might endanger all covert activities, which are essential to the U.S. capacity to intervene freely in the affairs of other nations. During Congress's televised hearings, when any representative or senator attempted to delve into issues such as the involvement of officials in drug running or the contingency plan to declare martial law and intern political opponents of the administration's Central American policies, the questions were ruled out of order by the committee chair, a Democrat. Before the television audience, North was able to project himself as the hero and the congressional investigators as the villains. His congressional inquisitors made this outcome more or less inevitable when they so frequently said they agreed with his aims but not with his methods, and when they dutifully added that state secrets were necessary and good. It is hard to imagine what other type of person they would want for the job. They seemed to be harping on extremely minor points-mainly, whether he had kept them informed (in secret sessions, of course). With this as their main concern, the lawmakers could not help but seem petty and self-serving.

The Iran-contra affair revealed the astonishing size and independence of the national security state. What it failed to show was that the presidency as an institution has grown enormously and that it is able to exert its will in domestic politics as surely as in foreign policy making. The "two presidencies," domestic and foreign, are closely interdependent. Before the Second World War, the White House managed the cabinet departments through the help of a few key aides, most of whom were personal acquaintances of the president. By 1970, the White House staff had mushroomed to more than 500 people. In 1988, the Executive Office of the President had a budget of $140 million, and employed more than 1,700 people. The White House employees are on call to do many duties, and these jobs are not necessarily separated into separate "foreign" and "domestic" spheres.

During the 1988 presidential campaign, the circle joining domestic politics and the national security agenda was closed. George Bush visited a flag factory and questioned Michael Dukakis's patriotism. His handlers adroitly exploited racism and fear of crime through the prison furlough ads. To complete the trilogy, Bush called Dukakis a "card-carrying" member of the American Civil Liberties Union. The third "issue" linked the other two: "card-carrying" works as a codeword for "communist" or at least "leftist" in traditional American discourse, and the ACLU often has championed the rights and civil liberties of accused criminals. The themes of the 1988 campaign perfectly illustrated the way in which the national security state has influenced domestic politics.

The Culture of Violence

Voltaire wrote, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." There are those who excuse the complicity of U.S. foreign policy in the slaughter of Third World people as an unfortunate by-product of our competition with the Soviets. But the endorsement and practice of human rights abuses and dictatorship overseas and the cynical manipulation of the democratic ideal has profound consequences for American democracy and for American culture. No American in the 1990s can avoid the consequences of living in a culture permeated by ideas and images of violence, war, and conquest.

Consider, as an example, the extraordinary prevalence of militaristic themes in movies. Such movies always have been popular, but they became a leading genre of the 1980s. Their motivating energy was a belligerent nationalism and racism. In 1984 Cannon Films released Uncommon Valor, followed by Missing in Action and Missing in Action 11, all of which depicted privately organized covert operations in Vietnam to rescue American prisoners of war. Movies like Red Dawn and Invasion USA portrayed fanciful and glorified wars against Third World and Soviet invaders led by teenagers. ABC television weighed in with a communist takeover of Amerika in early 1987. Delta Force, a product of the Cannon-Norris team, featured U.S. soldiers changing the history of the 1985 Lebanese highjacking of a U.S. plane. Hundreds of Arabs are killed in the film while only one U.S. soldier dies-and his death is compared to Christ dying on the cross.

Of course the all-time champion in this class is Sylvester Stallone's Rambo, First Blood II, in which racist images of brutal, duplicitous Vietnamese are interwoven with the idea that liberal bureaucrats and politicians are weak on communism. As in other films of this type, the action is staged in the Third World, where the American defeat in Vietnam can be rerun with a "happier" ending-we win. This is achieved, notes critic Susan Jeffords, through a "reaffirmation of the American male and the values of the masculine war experience." She quotes lines from a key scene in Uncommon Valor that could just well been spoken by Rambo:

There's a bond between you men as strong as the bond between my son and me. 'Cause there's no bond as strong as that shared by men who've faced death in battle. You men seem to have a strong sense of loyalty because you're thought of as criminals. Because of Vietnam. You know why? Because you lost. And in this country, that's like going bankrupt.

Pentagon officials understand the value of such films and provide logistical support for their production. U.S. allies such as South Africa and Israel have made major investments in television and film production to influence world opinion. For example, the Chuck Norris films are produced by Israel G.G. Studios, founded by Israelis Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who received a $ 13.2 million grant from the Israeli government, signed by Ariel Sharon, defense minister at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Immediately after constructing new studios just outside of Jerusalem, the team began filming Delta Force. In addition to war films, Golan and Globus produce slasher movies (e.g., Texas Chainsaw Massacre II). Ironically, they also received the right to construct a $50,000,000 theme park called "Bible Land" next to their studios.

The chief competition to the "low-intensity warfare" and "peaceful engagement" movies are provided by a multitude of police, detective, and crime flicks. Without doubt, the most usual story line in these films has a sadistic rapist/mass murderer on the loose, and all because the criminal laws let him out on a technicality or loophole. Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry series best epitomized this plot, but there were countless imitators. For the summer 1989 movie season, Criminal Law added a new twist by tying in a contentious social issue. The crazed killer, who is acquitted through the wiles of a crafty criminal lawyer, stalks women who have had an abortion. He is driven mad by the thought that they have murdered their babies.

Television series that debuted in 1987 and 1988 took the logical next step of depicting "unsolved mysteries," profiling actual criminals on the loose or reconstructing heinous crimes while inviting viewers to phone hot lines with tips for solving the crimes in question. In a society of gaping inequities and a permanent underclass, a high level of crime can scarcely be avoided. But in a political culture addicted to military solutions, crime becomes, like communism was, a frightening enemy that requires a paramilitary readiness to combat.

Themes of militarism and violence permeate the culture of childhood in America. By 1985, ten war-theme cartoons were being beamed at children each week, with another eight added in 1986. Among these were Rambo and Karate Kommando, the latter based on a Chuck Norris character. Most such cartoons were sponsored by the toy industry, which, thanks to such efforts, increased its sales of war toys by 600 percent between 1982 and 1985. By 1985, war toys accounted for seven of the leading ten toys. Broadcasters made huge profits off cartoons promoting the toys because they spent nothing for the programs, which were provided free by the war toy industry (most children's shows depicted characters that were also sold in stores and advertised during the programs). One innovative show (Thundercat) even provided broadcasters with a 5 percent cut on the profits from the sales of toys. Both the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission made requests to protect the nation's children from this barrage. Congress demonstrated its concern about the problem in 1985 when it passed legislation to protect the toy industry. The new law provided that any retail store selling a counterfeit Rambo doll (for example) could be fined up to $ 1,000,000 for the first offense, and $5,000,000 and fifteen years in prison for the second. In 1988, Congress finally legislated restrictions on advertisements aimed at children, but these were vetoed by President Reagan.

By the age of sixteen, the average American child will have watched some 20,000 hours of TV containing 200,000 acts of violence and 50,000 murders or attempted murders involving 33,000 guns. Popular Reagan-era shows were The A-Team and Miami Vice, both featuring military assault weapons in their plots. Popular cartoon programs featured "death ray" weapons much like artists' drawings of the proposed Star Wars program. The culture's images accurately reflect its love affair with arms. The United States is the largest producer of firearms in the world, accounting for 70 percent of the world's arms sales, and it also has the weakest gun control laws of any Western democracy. In the mid-1980s, American citizens owned about 40 million registered handguns and over 100,000 registered machine guns, and an estimated 500,000 unregistered military-style assault weapons. The Pentagon did its part to build this arsenal by sponsoring a program that distributes surplus M-14s to people who pass a certified marksman program.

"To survive a war, you've got to become a war," says Stallone as Rambo in First Blood II. In 1985, one of every 131 white male deaths and an astonishing one of every twenty-one black male deaths (almost 5 percent) were homicides. In 1979 the United States spent $ 13.8 billion on police protection and $21.7 billion on property protection. ~° According to the FBI, in the early 1980s sixteen survivalist camps taught paramilitary tactics. Graduates of these schools freelance as anticommunist mercenaries in the Third World; one graduate was arrested in an assassination attempt on the life of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Graduates and other paramilitary specialists keep in touch with one another through magazines like Soldier of Fortune SWAT, International CombatArms, and Firepower.

The proliferation of arms, together with training by right-wing organizations suggests that "covert" violence easily could be turned against American citizens. The problem is likely to become more widespread as propaganda portrays the threat to national security as internal and emanating from groups working for peace and justice or from such organizations as the ACLU. The death squads who operated with such devastation in El Salvador; the terrorists that attacked clinics and schools in Nicaragua and shot down civilian airlines in Afghanistan; the military officers and the police officials who tortured and "disappeared" citizens in Guatemala were all armed and trained by the United States. It is painfully obvious that such government-supported terrorism could logically be directed to individuals and groups inside America's own borders.

Are world events now likely to reverse these trends? The Soviet Union has, in effect, withdrawn itself as the main adversary of the United States. Pentagon spending seems about to level off for the first time in more than a decade. The Warsaw Pact states have, one by one, gone through remarkable political changes. Pieces of the Berlin Wall were on sale in department stores in time for the Christmas holidays in 1989.

One should not, however, underestimate the ability of America's elites to invent new enemies. Struggles for self-determination and national independence will continue to be regarded as revolutions that must be snuffed out. In its search for enemies, the United States will find all it wants in revolutions throughout Latin America and the Third World. As long as America's elites regard aspirations for social and economic justice elsewhere as a threat to U.S. security and affluence, they will, without fail, find endless enemies.

Of course, the "enemies" can be found within as well as elsewhere. The drug war is a convenient means for expanding the national security state, and here no distinctions are possible between foreign and domestic policy. The architects of the drug war imagine that military and paramilitary action in Colombia and other nations as well as at home will somehow solve the drug problem, despite a consensus among police and drug enforcement authorities that interdiction of drugs has not had and cannot have anything but a marginal effect on supplies. At home, the drug "czar," William Bennett, said that he would not object to the idea of public executions and the beheading of drug sellers. National and local news stories obsessively chronicle daily drug busts and shootouts. The killing of "drug lords" is openly celebrated. This is the best kind of war for America's elites and for political conservatives because it is in no danger of being won with the methods employed, and can be used to justify an indefinite expansion of state power. In the face of this endless enemy, who needs the Soviet Union? The militarization of American society can proceed even if the superpowers achieve rapprochement.

But even in the contemporary political culture of the United States, militarism is not irresistible. American public opinion continues to register disapproval for the deployment of American ground troops in any protracted wars in the Third World. Several films such as Salvador, Platoon, Missing, and Born on the Fourth of July have portrayed realistic views of war and U.S.-backed terror abroad. Military recruitment is still based as much on a materialist as on a patriotic appeal, and there is little to suggest that army morale could sustain engagement in any prolonged war. Public reaction to revelations about illegal arms deals and slush funds for the contras showed that most Americans can still be outraged by abuses of executive power. Millions of people have been mobilized into disarmament and antiwar groups, like the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and the Committee in Support of the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Public opinion continues to favor arms control agreements and to oppose military intervention in Central America.

The Democratic Prospect

Those who would work for something besides a democratic facade had best anticipate the opportunities and dangers that a crisis of legitimacy would present in America. Perhaps the best first step in a struggle for mass-based, broadly representative democracy is for people to understand how the present system is selfmanaging in the way that it induces passive acceptance of elite rule. A challenge to current policies will have to place a premium on popular organization and mobilization, which are difficult to achieve, but such challenges to elite power have been recurring events in America's historical tradition.

Political scientists have long argued that elite rule is not monolithic, that because of competition among elites and because individual citizens come together to promote common interests, organized groups participate in the political process all the time, not just during election campaigns. The Dictionary of American Government and Politics says traditional democratic theory, with its emphasis on individual responsibility and control, is transformed into a model that emphasizes the role of competitive groups in society. Pluralism assumes that power will shift from group to group as elements in the mass public transfer their allegiance in response to their perceptions of their individual interests.

But pluralists have underestimated the obstacles that ordinary citizens face in recognizing and then acting on their interests, which is most dramatically demonstrated in the biases toward corporate wealth built into the campaign finance system and in the control of mass media by corporate capital.

Though the ability to communicate ideas on a mass scale is dominated by the corporate media, there are opportunities to challenge the prevailing consensus as it is articulated by elites. There remains in the United States a space for the expansion of alternate politics and communication. As a first step to protecting and expanding this space, individual citizens must avail themselves of a full range of information. The views and agendas of corporations and of the ideological right are amply represented in numerous mass-circulation publications such as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and the New York Times. A different point of view, often labeled "left," can be found in small-circulation publications such as The Guardian, In These Times, The Nation, Z Magazine, The Progressive, and Mother Jones. Most regions of the country are served by community radio stations that carry National Public Radio or the Radio Pacifica News Network. For television news, World Monitor offers an alternative to the official sources, sound-bites-between-commercials type of entertainment news shown by the networks. For the most part, however, the electronic and print media remain a vast wasteland that reflects the poverty of political discourse in American life.

There is a positive political tradition in America, consisting of skepticism about concentrated power, defense of rights enumerated in the Constitution, and a belief in the right to equal opportunity. These aspects of the American experience need to be defended against those who would abrogate civil rights and liberties in the name of national security or a war against drugs. Even if the Constitution were left unmolested by elites, however, it is not democratic enough. Reforms are long overdue to make it easier for citizens to register to vote. Perhaps in no other area of substantive reform are the prospects so favorable because Democratic party officials are pressured to move on this issue on one side by the Republican financial advantage and on the other by the Rainbow Coalition. Another crucial reform would mandate the counting of blank and spoiled ballots cast in protest-or even the option of a binding "none-of-the-above" vote. Voters desperately need an alternative to the lesser-of-two-evils choice that invariably is presented to them.

It is likely that in the next few years there will be changes in the campaign finance system simply because the corruption endemic to American politics has become so blatant. But it is not sufficient merely to add regulations and rein in the PACs. It is much more important to strengthen the enforcement ability and the representativeness of the Federal Election Commission, provide access to mass media for any party or candidate who qualifies through a petition process (instead of a fund-raising process) to get on the ballot, and replace private financing of electoral campaigns with public financing. Finally, the number of terms that senators and representatives can serve should be strictly limited so that incumbents do not so easily become members of entrenched, hidden subgovernments.

Among other structural reforms, the most important may be changes in the way that parties get access to the ballot and in the way that representation is allocated to parties. Access to the ballot should be uniform throughout the country and require a fixed percentage of signatures of registered voters, with many fewer further qualifications requiring geographic dispersion of signatures across congressional districts. Within each state, a system of proportional representation should be implemented for elections to the House of Representatives as a first step in encouraging the development of a multi-party system.

Even if reforms were to open up the electoral system, it is possible that militarism in America has proceeded to the point that elites might be willing to use force, if they deem it necessary, to prevent significant social and political change. It should occasion no surprise that the government has become a significant threat to the people it is supposed to represent. The American national government has lasted for 200 years mainly because the elites who have controlled it have had a significant capacity to protect themselves from effective challenge. The degree to which they are able to use the government to protect their interests has never been greater. While nations in Eastern Europe and elsewhere are embarking on historic experiments in democracy, the U.S. political system-ironically-becomes less democratic every day.

Aristotle understood that "The real ground of the difference between oligarchy and democracy is poverty and riches. It is inevitable that any constitution should be an oligarchy if the rulers under it are rulers by virtue of riches." America has a government run by elites who use the political system to protect wealth and privilege; thus, it is accurate to say that America's oligarchy is also a plutocracy-a government run by the wealthy.

Since the 1980 election, when plutocratic government in the U.S. became fully institutionalized by the new system of campaign finance and refined technologies of campaigning, a significant redistribution of wealth toward the top has been successfully initiated. In one decade the incomes of the wealthiest 20 percent rose by 29 percent, which was eight times faster than for the population as a whole. The incomes of the top I percent of wage earners increased by 74 percent, or by $233,332 each-an amount that is five times the income level of the average family in the U.S. All this occurred during a decade when workers' wages fell, the first time since the Second World War this has happened during an economic recovery.

Specific public policies facilitated this rapid redistribution of wealth. Tax "reform" lowered taxes for the rich, but raised them for most other people. High real interest rates benefited investors who were already made wealthier by relaxed regulation of antitrust laws and of financial institutions. The evidence of the redistribution of wealth and incomes is obvious every day, in the newspaper articles on the savings and loan scandal, which made fortunes for some, like George Bush's son Neal, to reports on the rising number of homeless, and the growing underclass, and the new crime wave in the cities.

How would elites respond if there were a serious political challenge to their new gains? Imagine the following scenario: Sometime in the 1990s a candidate proposes during a presidential campaign to drastically reduce the military budget and to stop all Star Wars research; meaningfully increase taxes on the rich to fund housing, health, and education programs; and reorient U.S. policy to support national selfdetermination by Third World countries. Against all odds he or she wins the presidency. Would the institutions of the national security state accept the electorate's verdict, or would they turn their well-honed skills of political manipulation and terror used so frequently against the people of Latin America against a "national security" threat at home? To survive in America, must democracy be a facade?

The Democratic Facade

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