The (Rich) American Voice

Our class was asked to read and respond to Nicholas Lemann's article "Conflict of Interests" in The New Yorker.  It's a good thing that we were given some questions to guide us or else I simply might have answered "yes."  Yes, interest groups do rule this country.  Yes, one can only fight an interest group with an opposing interest group.  Yes, neo-Marxism is alive and well (insofar as the ideas of the elite are still the ruling ideas - that's what I remember of The German Ideology).  I would also argue that, yes, the only "voice" heard in American politics is the one with exceptional economic power.

This criterion is almost self-evident; examples of it occur nearly every day.  We rarely see an electoral candidate in rags or a lobbyist sleeping in a cardboard box.  If money weren't a key issue in being able to reach mass amounts of people, then we wouldn't hear the phrase "campaign finance reform" being batted around as a hot-button issue (at least it was until 2007 - beware of bias, but you can find information on the FEC closure here).  The influence of rich lobbyists and individuals also reared its head in the form of lavish parties at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, despite Obama's attempt to prohibit such contributions.  It seems that no matter what a particular candidate tries to do, the interest groups with big money will still find a way to use their money to get their agenda heard, or at least to grant their people access to the candidate himself.  

In terms of the media, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 stands as the clearest victory of the wealthy in ruling over what is now deemed "news."  Under this, media corporations began to buy other media corporations and create "conglomerates," thus homogenizing the news outlets of the nation.  In 1997, only ten companies (including Viacom, Time Warner, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation) rounded out mass producers of media within the US (McChesney 19).  According to Robert McChesney in Rich Media, Poor Democracy, "there have been pressing concerns that these concentrated markets would inhibit the flow and range of ideas necessary for a meaningful democracy" (12).  Again - special interests with money diminish the power of the "masses."  The wealthy again paralyze the "average Joe" in the realm of mass opinion.

Rarely has mass opinion - in the form of strikes, riots, or protest - ever accomplished major governmental change without the guidance of a wealthy, respected figurehead (e.g. the Bolshevik Revolutions of 1917 had Lenin and Trotsky, the American Civil Rights movements in the 1960s had MLK Jr).  I want to believe, unlike Arthur Bentley, that the mass will of the people still affects American politics.  In a way, the reactionary period after 9/11 stands as the most recent evidence of the will of the people; a country demanded retribution and got it as the President attacked Afghanistan.  It could be argued that the upper echelons of government took advantage of a frightened populace in order to achieve their own elite economic goals (e.g. oil interests, private military contractors).  How you view it depends on what you believe to be true about the power of the masses; I want to believe that the people still have power.  Without that belief, I have no say in my future as an American citizen - and where is the hope in that situation? 

Citation:

McChesney, Robert.  Rich Media, Poor Democracy.  (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).