(S)election days and the exorcism are upon us
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 20:52The XL Terrestrials project heads to Croatia in 2 weeks, and one of the stops will be MAMA in Zagreb. Happened to catch a great linked essay on their site that Zizek presented at Columbia in 2003, called Too Much Democracy? Well not one of his best actually, but there are some ingenious lines that are highly appropriate to (S)election day in the US.
“ “Democracy” means that, whatever electoral manipulation took place, every political agent will unconditionally respect the results.”Regarding the travesty of (S)elections, he continues,
In this sense, the US presidential elections of 2000 were effectively “democratic”: in spite of obvious electoral manipulations, and of the patent meaninglessness of the fact that a couple hundred of Florida voices [decided] who will be the president, the Democratic candidate accepted his defeat. In the weeks of uncertainty after the elections, Bill Clinton made an appropriate acerbic comment: “The American people have spoken; we just don’t know what they said.” This comment should be taken more seriously than it was meant: even now, we don’t know it - and, maybe, because there was no substantial “message” behind the result at all. This is the sense in which one should render problematic democracy: why should the Left always and unconditionally respect the formal democratic “rules of the game”? Why should it not, in some circumstances, at least, put in question the legitimacy of the outcome of a formal democratic procedure?Since the US has become lost in its obsessions with exporting “democracies”, and deciding which geopolitical regions are ripe for its particularly mangled Brand, perhaps it would be more interesting to look at cultures which are ripe for Autonomy and consider importing them.
The US, in the name of its political delusions, has in just these last 3 years murdered possibly up to half a million people according to CounterPunch writer Andrew Cockburn , which is related to only one small region of the planet where its military is active. And it’s not a new game, though certainly one can point out the Bush dynasty has presided over, wielded, this glorious machinery of the free world for half a cenutry now. While I have no time to verify the accounts, there were a number of reports that came out during the last 2 elections, Herr Prescott Bush was a financeer/profiteer of the Third Reich; If the current “family values” are an inherent characteristic or a simple hand-me-down of class, priviledge, crimes and misdemeanors in the days of blind or vicious capitalism, this hardly seems like uber-gonzo journalism but simple investigative reporting that the corporate media naturally won’t touch with a ten foot pole until perhaps George has shot himself in the bunker and Laura, Jenna and Barbara are arraigned in Nuremberg or the Hague.
One cannot any longer possibly believe that by voting Republican or Democrat one can extract themselves from the device which has brought them to this cliff ! But to merely “question the legitimacy” of such a tragic spectacle/atrocity is only going as far as to admit to oneself that one has been sleeping with the weapon ( of mass distractions ) under one’s own pillow; As soon as it becomes a public confession, a mass recognition, it will become a national catharsis.