Presidential campaign season is in full heat. Given the vast power of the state, the warring identity lines within our society, and the people’s susceptibility to all manner of propagandistic discourse, it’s looking a lot like midnight in America.
Americans consume their propaganda the way Walter Benjamin observed people consume art:
“Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise.”
It is therefore not surprising that film (and television) deploys some of the most sophisticated propaganda in American society. Remember how awesome Top Gun: Maverick was? How kick ass Zero Dark Thirty was? And just think how gloriously advantageous for the state that millions of Americans ritually view Law & Order, NCIS, Blue Bloods, Swat, FBI and Chicago PD.
With more than three hundred million people in our multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, mass democracy, Americans have a lot of ways to draw ingroup v. outgroup lines. Maurice Davie said:
“There are two codes of morals, two sets of mores, one for comrades inside and another for strangers outside, and both arise from the same interests. Against outsiders it is meritorious to kill, plunder, practise blood revenge, and steal women and slaves, but inside the group none of these things can be allowed because they would produce discord and weakness.”
You put our distracted consumption of propaganda together with a complex social field of endless identities and you get an American people predisposed to fear that the people running the state are diabolical outgroup members.
For example, imagine what would happen if the American people woke up one day to discover a Muslim had been appointed Secretary of Homeland Security. The American people would be concerned. Notably, “the well-funded Islamophobia publicity machine” has them convinced there is a “clash of civilizations” between the benevolently hegemonic West and the savage, demonic Islamic world.
“It was them Muslims what knocked down our towers!” the American People would say. “How can you put a Muslim in charge of the agency created to prevent that from happening again!?”
Now imagine the American people learned that the secretary of state and the secretary of the treasury and the attorney general were also Muslim. “Holy Moly, pass the Stoli!” they’d say. “You’ve got Muslims running our diplomacy, our economy, and our justice system!?”
Suddenly, the American people are sitting up. They’re paying attention. All that anti-Muslim hate is knocking around in their psyche. Sound-bytes from cable news and talk radio. Jokes from late night TV. That book they read a few pages of on the beach a few summers ago. They become tormented by what Sigmund Freud called “dreams of fear.”
“Wait, how many Muslims are there at the highest levels of power?” They ask, a cold dark wave rippling through their being.
So now imagine they find out the director of national intelligence (DNI) is Muslim. They’re horrified. “Not our beloved CIA,” they scream. “The whole point of the CIA is to kill Muslims and you’ve put a Muslim in charge of it.”
No, they’re told. The DNI is not the head of the CIA. Keep up with the bureaucracies. The DNI is the head of the entire Intelligence Community. The head of the CIA is not Muslim. However, the deputy director of the CIA…yes, Muslim.
At this point the American people would pass out. But imagine when they finally come to, they are told that the U.S. ambassador to Jordan is Muslim. “Well, ok, that makes sense,” they’d say. “Jordan is a Muslim country.”
Then they’re told the ambassador to Israel is Muslim.
“Is that a sick joke?” They’d shout. “Israel is our greatest ally!!!”
This is just a thought experiment. But currently, liberals are portraying another Trump administration and the right is portraying another Biden administration as existential threats of the first order. Which they are, but more because of the structure of the state than who has what job. As Hannah Arendt observed:
“The very substance of violent action is ruled by the means-end category, whose chief characteristic, if applied to human affairs, has always been that the end is in danger of being overwhelmed by the means which it justifies and which are needed to reach it. Since the end of human action, as distinct from the end products of fabrication, can never be reliably predicted, the means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals.” [Emphasis Added]
When the founding fathers of the New American Century created Homeland Security, they never imagined a Muslim might run the agency. Or worse, a Democrat. Americans are terrible at imagining an outgroup member running the diabolical machinery of state when that machinery is being built.
No matter who the president is on January 20, 2025, that person will sit atop a massive killing machine that is slowly dying. And nothing kills harder than a dying killing machine. The real ingroup/outgroup dividing line isn’t about race or class or religion or sexual orientation or gender (imagine how batshit Americans would go if the co-chair of the Council on Gender was a Muslim woman, burqa and everything). The real dividing line is between those within state power and those without.
And even those within state power are never entirely safe from the monster that is the state. No matter how the election turns out, discord and weakness are guaranteed. The means of our future horror are in place. And the horror is coming.
