The spin from Tuesday's elections is practically unbearable to listen to.
The majority of it is a continuation of all the crap we have already heard for months, repackaged as "analysis" or "commentary."
Since the capacity for thoughtful analysis eludes the majority of our esteemed political commentators, our esteemed political reporters and our not-so-very-much esteemed politicians themselves, it is safe to assume that almost every word you hear or read is going to be complete garbage.
To my mind, the single most important lesson the nation learned from yesterday's elections is that the power of propaganda and advertising has thoroughly overwhelmed the power of knowledge and ideas to shape the course of our nation's future.
Millions of dollars were spent during the election campaign on advertising and political propaganda specifically designed to deceive and manipulate the public through a calculated, strategic misrepresentation and distortion of facts.
That is a fact.
American politicians have become just one more product to be sold to a gullible and increasingly ignorant populace.
One could view this election as the culmination of two powerful and dangerous trends in American society: the over-commercialization of politics and the steadily increasing ignorance of the populace.
As of 2010, only 32% of 4th grade students could read at or above "proficiency." Fifteen-year-old students in America ranked 17th in the world in math and 24th in science. Last year, when the National Geographic Society conducted a survey of 18- to 24-year-old Americans, "only 37% could find Iraq on a map, despite the fact that U.S. troops have been in that country since 2003...50% percent couldn't locate New York, the country's third largest state."
Not coincidentally, there's also this, from a 2009 Nielsen report:
...the average American watches more than 151 hours of TV per month. That's an all-time high, up 3.6% from the 145 or so hours Americans reportedly watched in the same period last year.
Even more relevant to this year's election are the results of a January 2009 study on U.S History conducted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute:
More than 2,500 randomly selected Americans took ISI's basic 33 question test on civic literacy and 71% of them received an average score of 49% or an "F."
...only half of U.S. adults can name all three branches of government, and just 54% know that the power to declare war belongs to Congress. Almost 40% incorrectly said that it belongs to the president.
Those who have held elected office lack civic knowledge; 43% do not know the Electoral College is a constitutionally mandated assembly that elects the president. One in five thinks it "trains those aspiring for higher office" or "was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates."
"There is an epidemic of economic, political, and historical ignorance in our country," says Josiah Bunting, III, Chairman of ISI's National Civic Literacy Board. "It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned. How can political leaders make informed decisions if they don't understand the American experience?"
How, indeed?
This does not mean that the majority of Americans are not good, decent people. Nor do I mean to imply that Americans are not by and large a smart, practical-minded people. But the plain truth is that we are becoming increasingly passive and breathtakingly ignorant, which make us that much more susceptible to being duped, manipulated and misled.
So, for example, when a politician or pundit makes the claim that Tuesday's election was a rejection of President Obama's health care plan, it has now become necessary to ask, "Which one do you mean? Do you mean the health care plan that was continually mischaracterized, distorted and lied about in innumerable television ads paid for by the powerful interests that opposed it? Or the actual health care plan that was written and passed by Congress?"
Because, as we know, these are two entirely different things.
The first was invented out of whole cloth by right-wing politicians, political strategists and a handsomely paid cadre of advertisers. That is the "health care plan" the public heard about over and over again during their 151 hours of television watching last month. That is the one that was supposedly "rejected" by the voters.
The other health care plan is the piece of legislation itself. The public has had a hard time getting to know the actual legislation because of the way it has been caricatured on television. The public largely supports the individual components of the bill - it's just the bill itself they oppose.
We have emerged into a future in which our elected officials no longer even pretend to separate truth from fiction. In which our citizens are becoming incapable of distinguishing one from the other. "Truth" to a passive, ignorant and uninformed public is something that is heard enough times on TV and has a vague ring of plausibility to it, depending on one's political orientation.
"Truth" to a politician is whatever he or she needs to say to a particular group of voters at a particular point in time.
Political strategists and advertisers guarantee that whichever version of the "truth" a politician needs to communicate will be packaged and sold in precisely the right way to appeal to that particular group of voters.
Vital decisions affecting the lives of millions of people, the economic future of the nation, and perhaps even the long-term viability of the planet, are now largely being determined by lies, distortions and cartoonish negative ads instead of by facts, knowledge and ideas.
The nation faces a host of very serious problems. Effective solutions will emerge only when the nation and its elected officials are ready to engage in serious and honest discussion about the nature of these problems.
With every subsequent election, the possibility of finding and implementing effective solutions becomes more and more remote.