As my mixed luck would have it, I find myself (in the last 2 days of this immersion (faced with one of the most relatable parts of Professor Buchanan’s book: that which starts on pg. 124 and goes into an application of D & G’s principles (their four theses (to issues presented by Tom Frank’s book What’s the Matter with Kansas. And I say ‘relatable’ because, being a progressive in the Midwest who has watched most of his friends grow into staunch republicans, I have had a front row seat to what is being addressed in this particular section. And because of this, a great deal of my own process has been expended on figuring out why this has happened: likely one of the main sources of my attraction to “that Goddamn Frenchman” (I mean it: damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway (with and without Guatarri. So I could easily spend a whole immersion on the subject.
But for this one, I’ll focus on this proposal to the question that we’re all asking here: what it is about people that seem to seek their own oppression:
“It might seem appropriate, then, to revive the Marxist concept of ‘false consciousness’ to explain to explain the turn to the right in the US. Without actually using this notion himself, Frank’s account of the political metamorphosis of Kansas from a left-leaning, pro-worker, state to a right-wing and anti-worker state, in the space of only a few generations is clearly underpinned by the conviction that the people of Kansas ‘know not what they do’.”
There would certainly seem to be a certain amount of false consciousness involved in it given the mythologies that the true believers (in Capitalism that is (tend to offer as confirmation of their position: the rugged individual that overcomes all obstacles to achieve greatness –a popular motif, BTW, among the supposed Hollywood liberal elite (which as we all know are owned by corporations. But I (in the Deleuezian spirit (would complicate the issue by referring to Buchanan’s quote of Zizek, ‘the unknown known’, and traverse the concept of Jouissance (that push/pull relationship we tend to have with reality (that Zizek goes deeply into in The Plague of Fantasies.
While there is clearly a sense of obliviousness involved in it, I can’t help but feel there is a kind of denial at work as well. It’s as if they know perfectly well that their self indulgent policies have negative effects on others (as well as themselves (that their arguments are weak in the context of discourse that assumes a purpose of working out some compromise that works for everyone. They’re like the old joke: diplomacy is the art of telling the other to go to hell and making it seem like they’ll enjoy the trip. And it is this ‘unknown known’ that results in the hysteria that characterizes their tactics such as that of the Tea Party, tactics that tend to ride on shifting criteria. For example: back when Hillary Clinton was trying to put together a one payer healthcare system under her husband’s presidency, we not only got arguments like ‘who the hell made her president?’, we also got the argument that there was no way a ‘government run’ enterprise could stand up to what the market could do. Now shift a few years later when we were talking about the public option presented by Kerry during his campaign for president. Then the whole argument shifted to a recognition that there was no way that profit seeking healthcare providers could stand up to the public option. In other words, the whole system would ‘collapse’ into a government run operation.
Once again, as Professor Buchanan points out, Capitalism is no longer just an option; it is the only option. And I would propose that what we are dealing with, as concerns Capitalism, is something like a drug or alcohol addiction (a kind of modern day Land of the Lotos Eaters (and the denial (via hysteria (we see expressed in our present social environment. I would only ask that it be considered along with the other theories and models presented as concerns the question we are all trying to answer.