Trumpism’s ugly side effect: How consumer culture is killing citizenship
Trumpism’s ugly side effect: How consumer culture is killing citizenship
by Harry Boyte at Bill Moyers, Salon
http://www.salon.com/2016/08/26/trumpisms-ugly-side-effect-how-consumer-culture-is-killing-citizenship_partner/
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Donald Trump’s candidacy gives rise to many descriptors — authoritarian, bigoted, divisive. It is also the culmination of long-developing dysfunctions of a culture where market values have spread beyond appropriate limits and radically eroded citizenship.
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Susan Faludi describes the consumer culture well in her 1999 book, “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man.” Drawing on interviews with groups of men from African-American shipyard workers to veterans to evangelical Christians, she shows how ideals of loyalty, team play and the mastery of a vocation were replaced by “a competitive individualism… robbed of craft or utility and ruled by commercial values that revolve around who has the most, the best, the biggest, the fastest.” Masculinity became something “to drape over the body, not draw from inner resources, to be displayed not demonstrated.”
Trump’s public persona, winner-in-chief, is a poster child for Faludi’s male. He surrounds himself with gold-plated trinkets. He seeks to brand everything he touches. He is also a snake oil salesman, a figure familiar from American history.
All these traits might be called Trumpism, not simply Trump. Trumpism represents a model of public life which replaces citizens as makers of democratic society with a transactional politics that asks only “what’s in it for me?” It is the mark of a society where market values spread without limit, in which we are branding and selling ourselves along with everything else.
Out-of-control consumerism sets in early these days. A decade ago, the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Advertising and Children found that children viewed more than 40,000 commercials each year. Our entire society is swamped with advertising, as Louise Story described in her New York Times article, “Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad.” Research by the Yankelovich group finds that people living in cities see up to 5,000 ads a day
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= new reply since forum marked as read
That's a perfect description of so many Republican men.
Think of Trump with his 5 military deferments and unrelenting bluster.
Think of Rush "anal cyst deferment" Limbaugh, and Fox BS Chickenhawk BoyOs Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. Pathetic Republican specimens of masculinity.
Think of George W. Bush sporting his "Mission Accomplished" codpiece in an attempt to overshadow his AWOL snort-a-thons.
Think of a thousand other examples of XY chromosome Republicans...and you have a pattern.
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