Back in 2000, when Bush-Cheney, Inc. stole the election in Florida, remember how Americans took to the streets demanding that their votes be counted or that Floridians be sent back to the polls? And remember how near bedlam broke out in cities all across this great land when, in 2004, Bush-Cheney, Inc., reprised the Florida scenario in southern Ohio?
No, no, that's right...Those protests didn't happen. Not here, not anymore. The spirit of democracy, of lower case "r" republican entitlement, fled these shores sometime in the early 1970's. Or maybe it simply retired to Vegas.
I was just there (Las Vegas, that is), taking in the so-called "Fremont Street Experience."
Yeah, baby!
This summer the Fremont Street Experience invites you to "re-live" the Summer of '69. There's a light show and black-jack dealers dressed in tie-dye and as I strolled into the lobby of the Fitz I was greeted with the Dead's "Uncle John's Band" blaring from loud-speakers...
This is capitalism in high gear: the social, political, and cultural unrest that made the 1960's a time of promise, hope, and deep anxieties has been commodified by the entertainment industry and sold back to the American people as so much kitsch and farce. Bread and circuses (though nowadays, it seems, many Americans had best not count on the bread).
I cannot help but recall Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; were he to try to write that book today, the correct title would read: The Capitalist Ethic and the Mere Spirit of Protestantism. But why bother with that? Cozy up with a copy of Tacitus's Annals and watch your future unfold from the past.
If you want to know where people take their republic seriously, look to Iran.
2 comments:
An excellent post. Very insightful take on Vegas and commodification. But I'm still waiting for a post about events in Iran.
p.s. this is rob posting from the account of my soon-to-be unveiled personality and Social Psychology blog.T
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