We are witnessing the closing of the political coupled with explicit expressions of cruelty and “widely sanctioned ruthlessness.”
Moreover, the very conditions that enable people to make informed decisions are under siege as schools are defunded, media becomes more corporatized, oppositional journalists are killed, and reality TV becomes the model for mass entertainment.
Under the reign of corporatist neoliberalism - with its antithesis for community and embrace of deregulation, privatization, downsizing and consumerism - individuals are left to find sanctuary in the feudal orbits of self-interest, a selfie culture, and individualistic rather than social goals.
As public values, trust, solidarities, and modes of education are under siege, the authoritarian discourses of hate, racism, rabid self-interest, and greed are gaining traction. Under such circumstances, civic illiteracy substitutes opinions for informed arguments and works to erase collective memory (for example, the revisionist history of Trump-supporting right wing polemicists like Dinesh D'Souza, Dennis Prager, Candace Owens, and David Barton, etc.).
As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish — from public schools and alternative media to health care centers — there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values, and the common good.
This grim reality has been called by Alex Honneth a “failed sociality” - a failure in the power of the civic imagination, political will and open democracy. It is also part of a politics that strips the social of any democratic ideals and undermines any understanding of education as a public good.
There is an urgent political need for a public to understand what it means for an authoritarian society to both weaponize and trivialize the discourse, vocabularies, images, and aural means of communication in a society.
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