amateur ramblings

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning political speech restrictions on corporations and unions, a chorus of voices from the Democratic Party has attacked the decision. Notably, President Obama claimed in his State of the Union address that the ruling “will open the floodgates for special interests… to spend without limit in our elections.”

I think we are missing the point. The fact is that corporate, special, and powerful interests already have effective control of our political system. As Jon Stewart’s coverage of the State of the Union effectively shows, our public discourse is already in the shits. Fox offered only vapid criticisms, saying the President was not acting “presidential” — whatever the hell that means. MSNBC the most desperate praises; and CNN the most useless collection of raw data from Twitter. This is the discourse we desperately need to save, say the Democrats?

Perhaps it’s irresponsible for me to refrain from thinking about the merits of this decision–but it’s more important to look at our political system and public discourse before the ruling, which Democrats have treated as apocalyptic. For from being the valiant resistance, Democrats are actually part of the problem. Their monopoly on progressive, left, or liberal forces in the United States, whose leaders, no matter where they start, once filtered through the party machine, end up spouting meaningless make-believe like Obama on Palestine in Tampa, is part of the same special interest control that has incapacitated our country.

Last September, as the Court was hearing arguments on the case, Eliot Spitzer penned an op-ed calling for the regulation to be overruled. In his more persuasive points, Spitzer argued that the exclusion of “media companies” like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News from the restriction, was “a distinction that makes no logical sense” — especially since these are all channels with clear political agendas, with clear loyalty to the two-party system, if not to individual candidates, and with clearly little substance to contribute to our discourse. It’s hard to see how the systemic bias and inanity of the mainstream media (which is also corporate, by the way) is not part of the problem, especially if the proclaimed goal of such legislation is to facilitate a healthier public discourse.

I can’t help but think that there is a larger problem here. When we call for restrictions on corporate speech, we are missing a larger picture. My gut sense is that this call is informed by a patriarchal attitude towards the mythical “average American.” We place ourselves outside of this fictitious person (Joe Six-Pack, if you will) when we call for his protection, since we–unlike him–are apparently so well-informed and intelligent that we’re not susceptible to the same influence and mind-control as he.

This apparently patriarchal dilemma leads us to our real problem: sure, we can try all we want to patch the holes in this leaky dam of corporate rule, rushing from one plugged hole to the next one that bursts. None of these short-sighted regulations will address the larger issue of corporate power in this country, however. Surely we can’t believe that if corporations can’t spend money on explicit endorsements of political candidates 30 days before a federal election, that they will suddenly lose their stifling powers, thereby finally allowing our political creativity and freedom to flourish.

How can we buy such a fanciful idea when every aspect of our society, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, is pervaded by corporate influence? Our educational systems are designed and developed in coordination with corporate needs; our pop culture has become an industry; our streets are overwhelmed with corporate pollution in the forms of advertisements and billboards; even our humanitarian efforts are sponsored and guided by corporate money — and this one weak restriction, which does not even limit corporate donations to candidates (a separate issue from speech) is supposed to hold back the floodgates?

We cannot change the way media works if we rely on a vertical remedy, as the patriarchal approach attempts, hoping only to limit its excesses. We must adopt a more horizontal approach to inspire and spread the critical modes of thought that are necessary to rejuvenate our political culture. Underlying the notion that corporate money unduly “influences” people is the demeaning idea that Americans will gobble up whatever their televisions beam at them — if that is the case, we have to change the way people engage with media, as much as, if not more than, we need to change the media.

I empathize completely with the need for media (and politics!) that is more transparent, honest, and sophisticated. To that end, however, we have to fundamentally re-think and re-approach the issues. It’s myopic to understand the relationship between corporations and our political system against a First Amendment backdrop alone; that relationship is so imbricated in our society at large that focusing the discussion on some ghost ideal of free speech simply obscures the real power dynamics and issues at stake.