Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jeff Dardozzi, who is an architectural designer, builder and writer on issues of sustainability. He is a co-founder of the Brandon-based autonomous architecture collective Livingstructure.
[I]t looks as if America is due for its own version of that Soviet-era masterpiece “The Yawning Heights” (1979). In his famous and prescient 829-pager, Alexander Zinoviev satirically chronicled the profound disconnect between the reality of everyday life for everyday people in the Soviet Union and that of the ruling Communist Party elites and their lackeys. Listening to Sen. Patrick Leahy the other day – or any day – or really any of the two-party politicians at any time – one realizes that you can just substitute “ruling capitalists elites” for “ruling Communist elites” throughout Zinoviev’s book and you almost end up with almost the same story and what will surely become the same ending. It only took 12 years for the social disconnect Zinoviev gave voice to to collapse the Soviet empire.
At some point, someone in the upper echelons of power must realize that when the social conditions of the average person’s existence contradict the propaganda about “Our Glorious System” – and, yes, it is propaganda, masses of people will simply no longer believe the official lies – whether the ones that emanate from the government or the press although it is no longer possible to distinguish between the two. Both are, for all intents and purposes, controlled by a very narrow set of interests as Wikileaks and many other credible sources has so abundantly made clear. We use to be able to depend on our journalists, scholars, intellectuals and artists for guidance about the nature of society but the only ones we get to hear from these days in the mainstream channels really have nothing interesting or compelling to say to the vast majority of us. They almost always seem to be admonishing us to stay inside in the narrow confines of the ruling prescriptions.
And of course those of us who do not believe the lies, either left or right or some other stripe, are rightly understood to be the dangerous ones.
This election, more than any I can recall in 40 years, reveals the depth of the disconnect between ruler and ruled, and the frenzied, almost pathological denial on part of the establishment that there is anything fundamentally wrong with Our Glorious System is categorical dangerous behavior for an elite. When public officials weigh in on the integrity of the election process, patronizingly attempting to calm us restless children with platitudes and self-congratulatory claims of bureaucratic efficiency, efficacy and transparency, they obviously either do not have a clue as to what the question is or have never read an unauthorized and critical accounting of Our Glorious System and its methods, deceptions, failures and crimes.
And of course those of us who do not believe the lies, either left or right or some other stripe, are rightly understood to be the dangerous ones. We are the Unbelievers, the ones to be kept at bay, surveilled, monitored, policed, re-educated, disparaged, discredited, ridiculed and kept out by any means possible. Our existence is routinely marginalized and our voices systemically denied. Nothing good will come of this election as we can only look for increased disaffection and disparity. In this “age of personal responsibility,” there is only one group personally responsible for the state of our society – those who hold power.
Donald Trump’s phenomenal rise in this election cycle is like that of Bernie Sanders, unexpected and in response to a deaf, self-absorbed ruling elite whose lackeys run the machinery of power and who are so desperate to appease them at the expense of more than one half the people of this country and most of the world. Once again, the frenzied almost pathological denial on part of the establishment that there is anything fundamentally wrong with Our Glorious System is categorical dangerous behavior for an elite.
Unbelievers are nails in a coffin of any system, even Our Glorious System and it seems like the nail-makers from both sides of the aisle and throughout the halls of power are working feverishly these days to produce more nails. History repeats itself. As Zinoviev can testify, make too many nails and the fate of any system of governance is sealed.
