The Heart of Pop Politics
I came across this story on Daily Kos and I believe it comes close to epitomizing, quickly summing up how centrist, liberal thinking US citz understand and mentally approach political life.
It’s an ‘analysis’ of the creative genius of the Obama logo. The post has hundreds of written responses, indicating that it was read by tens of thousands. The post doesn’t surprise as this is the kind of discussion I find to be popular in liberal and ‘progressive’ circles. This conception of politics, who can come up with the most clever trick, is depressingly demoralizing. It assumes people have no real ability to discern their interests and must be lured into one camp or another with patriotic colors and other indirect gimmicky appeals. Being good at this game will gain you instant rockstar status with a significant layer of progressive, usually white, Democrats. The flipside to this love of logos and gimmicks seems to be a subtle but powerful disdain for face to face contact with those most affected by the issues progressives champion. Poor and people of color are, of course, the least likely to be taken in by gimmicky campaign logos and slogans because they are the demographic least likely to read political magazines, newspapers and political teevee, thereby giving them the least exposure to these kinds of propaganda.
It’s ironic that in a campaign constantly evoking hope, this kind of politics is about the polar opposite of hope. This pop politics is based on the belief and understanding that all real hope is lost. The only refuge for change is a battle of gimmicks, tricks and various mind games. Without these logos, gimmicks and other kinds of manipulation and coercion who knows what political decisions people might make. They can’t be trusted.
All these factors add up to a kind of pop politics that speaks to a slim layer of progressive, almost all white, relatively affluent voters that spend a lot of time online campaigning amongst themselves. The majority of people, again the poor and people of color, who stand to benefit most from progressive political policy reside outside the sphere of influence of this brand of politics. But this isn’t a problem because this kind of politics doesn’t exist for the purpose of progressive political change but rather acts as a psychological salve designed to keep it’s target audience away from emotional depression by ensuring that they are busy and engaged with each other in the virtual world. As opposed to getting involved with their poorer neighbors and neighbors of color. Not that they are or would be clamoring to do this only obstructed by the distracting nature of pop politics. Of course they don’t want to talk to poor folks, black and brown folks. And this brand of online gimmicky politics provides them with a whole matrix of reasons and justifications not to.
