Under his "new totalitarianism," corporate

and state power have become co-joined and practically

unbridled. The People - in whose name US "democracy"

claims to function is politically uninterested,

infantilized, obedient, distracted, and divided

Words from an American Dissident [Source]

To what extent are U.S. government and political culture

meaningfully democratic in the 21st century?

In trying to answer the question, we can turn to an important new book from someone who has long operated in the intellectual heart of the beast.

According to Princeton emeritus political scientist Sheldon Wolin's chilling new volume Democracy, Inc: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (2008), the United States is becoming a totalitarian state posing as a democracy.

Under the rules of what Wolin calls "inverted totalitarianism," corporate and state power have become deeply "co-joined" and practically "unbridled."

The popular majority of the citizenry - the People - in whose name U.S. "democracy" purports to function is politically uninterested, infantilized, obedient, distracted, and divided.

An increasingly spectator-ized and subordinate public is shepherded by the professional political class across a painfully narrow business- and Empire-friendly field of political, policy, and ideological "choices."

Those harshly limited options are presented in periodic superficial, candidate-centered and corporate-crafted elections that function as anti-democratic exercises in capitalist marketing and managerial control.

These spectacular rolling extravaganzas privilege candidate image and other trivial matters over substantive questions of policy and ideology, with campaign consultants and advertisers selling candidates like they sell candy or cars.

They help keep the interrelated issues of the ever-growing rich-poor gap, corporate power, and imperial militarism (the last two topics are taboo in "mainstream" U.S. political life) "off the table" of acceptable debate and public scrutiny even though they are of primary interest to most American citizens.

Pseudo-Democracy

In this pseudo-democratic Brave New America, corporate power no longer answers to political controls.

The needs of the popular majority are relentlessly subordinated to the "quest for ‘economic growth'" and to the foreign policy elite's imperial perceptions of "Superpower's" needs and the so-called "national interest."

"Economic growth" and "national interest" are code words for whatever capital wants and cloak the regular state-capitalist practice of funneling wealth and power from the Many to the Few.

The demoted "people" are kept in perpetual fear and prodded to cower under the umbrella of the National Insecurity State by an endless so-called "War on Terror," heir to the imperial Cold War.

The Few steal elections are pocketed, shred civil liberties, and launch illegal, immoral, and aggressive wars and occupation without serious fear of popular resistance.

Young black males - formerly a leading source of protest - are dragooned into the burgeoning mass incarceration state.

The use of state power to alleviate poverty and ameliorate inequality is shamed as dangerous public overreach but the use of that power to shamelessly advance corporate interests and pay off big money election investors is celebrated in the ironic name of the "free market."

Working peoples' living standards are savagely rolled back and working-class sons and daughters are shipped off to kill and die in bloody campaigns of colonial conquest - wars that are waged on false pretexts and serve the interests of the Few while the costs are spread across society and fall with special force on the poor. It's a "Hood-Robin" system.

Policy-relevant political power is "monopolized by the Few," who "possess the skills, resources, and focused time that enables them to impose their will on a society the vast majority of whose members are overburdened and distracted by the demands of day-to-day survival".

Those demands grow ever more difficult as corporate and imperial masters deepen their stranglehold over American politics, policy, culture, and "life." It's a vicious circle that threatens to blow out democracy's last glowing embers in the "land of the free."

American "Totalitarianism"

This American "totalitarianism" promotes more than just specific policies and practices that serve the corporate and financial "elite." It also advances a "totalizing" and authoritarian notion of the perfect and final society.

The 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States defines America's grand historical mission as advancing "freedom" and the "single sustainable model of for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise" along with "development, free trade, and free markets."

As Wolin notes, "the freedoms dangled before the unfree are, in reality, disguised power" - the heavily state-protected and publicly subsidized power of multinational corporations, global high finance, and the military empire required to advance and protect capitalist profit ("development") on a global scale.

"When the NSS document presents the ‘free market' as one of the three components of the ideal political system," Wolin observes, "the market is a surrogate, a stand-in for globalization/empire".

Brave New America

Wolin calls the American pseudo-democratic political system "inverted totalitarianism" to differentiate it from the openly statist totalitarianism of classic European fascism (principally German Nazism) and Soviet Stalinism.

The earlier totalitarian systems mobilized millions to rally behind centralized state power and a single personal ruler.

They explicitly and rapidly demolished democratic and parliamentary institutions and elevated personalized state rule over markets and private profit.

The American model, by contrast, has evolved more slowly and under the guise - and in the name of - of democratic institutions and ideals, without open authoritarian intent. It "succeeds by encouraging political disengagement rather than mass mobilization."

It "relies more on ‘private' media than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda reinforcing the official version of events".

It makes "capitalism" its official "regime ideology," trumpeting the virtues of "free markets," "free trade," and "free enterprise" (code words for authoritarian state-capitalist corporate-managerial rule), which are falsely conflated "democracy."

"Inverted totalitarianism" wraps itself in the language and lingering, watered-down legacy of democratic freedom and constitutionalism.

It advances "leaders" who are the products but not the architects of the system.

It does not crush popular government under the iron heel of dictatorship but rather renders democracy ever-more feckless and irrelevant through regular systemic corruption, popular exhaustion, cultural privatism, popular division/diversion, mass misinformation, and mass entertainment.

Unlike classic 20th century fascist and Soviet (red fascist) totalitarianism, it requires no great sacrifice or strength on the part of its subject populace.

It creates a "soft," childish, and fearful citizenry that is asked mainly to buy things, to watch their telescreens (which largely filter and package the world in terms fit for corporate and imperial hegemony), and perhaps to occasionally vote for its favorite corporate-vetted and "misrepresentative" political candidates every few years.

"Inverted totalitarianism's" ideal "good Americans" pretty much stay at work, home, the bank, and the mall.

They are happy to leave big political and policy decisions and public affairs to designated experts and protectors from the professional political class that has emerged to serve the combined and interrelated interests of the corporate and imperial Few.

The American Model of Totalitarianism

Classic totalitarianism assembled, rallied, and projected the "masses." It beat up, intimidated, arrested, tortured, and killed dissenters.

By contrast, the American model of totalitarianism demobilizes and inverts the populace, keeping it (us) focused on personal, private, and family concerns - and on its corporate telescreens.

Antiwar and social justice activists don't generally have to be beaten and jailed; they are deleted and occasionally mocked and marginalized on the Ten O'Clock News, leaving little mark on degraded public perceptions and history.

"Inverted totalitarianism's" pacified, apathetic, ignorant, and deceived public is content to leave history to be made by supposedly wise and benevolent masters.

People like Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, James Baker, and Donald Rumsfeld, who follow in the Nazis' footsteps by launching criminal and supposedly "preventive" wars of aggression sold on brazenly false pretexts.

These are dutifully advanced by dominant media, including the Orwellian claim to be exporting democracy through colonial conquest.

Since the Few learned from Vietnam not to send a citizen's army into bloody colonial "service," today's wars are fought by a safely segregated caste of mostly working class imperial mercenaries.

In Brave New America, the People do not need to be hardened and rallied to inflict violence on designated ideological and ethnic enemies of the state at home or abroad.

Their main jobs are to buy stuff, watch their telescreens and pursue their private interests.

The definition of meaningful popular participation in the polity is reduced largely to casting an occasional vote in carefully crafted elections.

None of the candidates are foolish enough to think they could run viably funded and broadcast campaigns in the name of the social-democratic and anti-imperial beliefs that most Americans privately and passively tell pollsters they hold.

Meanwhile the ex-citizenry is encouraged to believe that it is charge of the nation.