Page 88 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 88
šolsko polje, letnik xxviii, številka 3–4
regularly and either volunteer for or donate to campaigns – fully 70% of
Democrats and 62% of Republicans say they are afraid of the other party.
In a society where 22% of American adults are gun owners, and the
average number of guns per American household is eight, is it any won-
der that these different versions of The American Dream play out so vi-
olently? As a critical educator I would surmise that the lessons learned
by Trump supporters throughout their formal and informal education
were gravely successful in creating a practiced inattention to history—a
motivated social amnesia necessary for Americans to live outside of his-
torical consciousness—unaware of the crimes of their forebears who
held slaves, exterminated the indigenous peoples, and who participat-
ed in imperialist wars, all in the spirit of Manifest Destiny and the na-
tion’s providential mission—in other words, all in the name of Ameri-
ca First! The ideological state apparatuses and the corporate catechism
embedded in the state’s media apparatuses—which confirm Marx’s dic-
tum that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas—are to be con-
gratulated on a job well done. And while I would single out Breitbart
News and Fox News as the worst offenders, since they are two of the
most egregious examples of right-wing network propaganda, I would
also include all the mainstream corporate media as participants, willing
or unwitting, and to a greater and lesser degree as responsible for legiti-
mizing Trump since in the final instance they eruditely pander to their
masters in the service of their corporate owners: the capitalist class. As
Thomas Jefferson (who was also a slave holder) noted: “The only securi-
ty of all is in a free press.”
So what can be done?
I would begin an answer to your question with another question:
Can whatever is left over of democracy after it has been ravaged by the
corporate capitalists, be salvaged and made beneficent once it becomes lib-
erated for social use by a United Front of the working-classes? The trans-
national state has made democracy into roadkill. Just leave it on the side of
the road. That is always the question, but strategies, tactics and systems of
intelligibility that once worked—that is, before the societies that past rev-
olutionaries forged turned into their opposite—need to be rethought on
different terms today. We need to work with inventiveness and piquancy,
conviction and commitment and the strength to endure the challenge of
Golgotha and be born anew. In my own work as a Marxist humanist who
draws from Catholic social teachings that are being developed in libera-
tion theology, this means developing a philosophically grounded perspec-
86
regularly and either volunteer for or donate to campaigns – fully 70% of
Democrats and 62% of Republicans say they are afraid of the other party.
In a society where 22% of American adults are gun owners, and the
average number of guns per American household is eight, is it any won-
der that these different versions of The American Dream play out so vi-
olently? As a critical educator I would surmise that the lessons learned
by Trump supporters throughout their formal and informal education
were gravely successful in creating a practiced inattention to history—a
motivated social amnesia necessary for Americans to live outside of his-
torical consciousness—unaware of the crimes of their forebears who
held slaves, exterminated the indigenous peoples, and who participat-
ed in imperialist wars, all in the spirit of Manifest Destiny and the na-
tion’s providential mission—in other words, all in the name of Ameri-
ca First! The ideological state apparatuses and the corporate catechism
embedded in the state’s media apparatuses—which confirm Marx’s dic-
tum that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas—are to be con-
gratulated on a job well done. And while I would single out Breitbart
News and Fox News as the worst offenders, since they are two of the
most egregious examples of right-wing network propaganda, I would
also include all the mainstream corporate media as participants, willing
or unwitting, and to a greater and lesser degree as responsible for legiti-
mizing Trump since in the final instance they eruditely pander to their
masters in the service of their corporate owners: the capitalist class. As
Thomas Jefferson (who was also a slave holder) noted: “The only securi-
ty of all is in a free press.”
So what can be done?
I would begin an answer to your question with another question:
Can whatever is left over of democracy after it has been ravaged by the
corporate capitalists, be salvaged and made beneficent once it becomes lib-
erated for social use by a United Front of the working-classes? The trans-
national state has made democracy into roadkill. Just leave it on the side of
the road. That is always the question, but strategies, tactics and systems of
intelligibility that once worked—that is, before the societies that past rev-
olutionaries forged turned into their opposite—need to be rethought on
different terms today. We need to work with inventiveness and piquancy,
conviction and commitment and the strength to endure the challenge of
Golgotha and be born anew. In my own work as a Marxist humanist who
draws from Catholic social teachings that are being developed in libera-
tion theology, this means developing a philosophically grounded perspec-
86
