Images of the State - 2020, Ch. 3

One of the images of the state in 1984 is that of the windowless, faceless ministry.  The ministry can see out at and into everything but no can see into the ministry which remains impenetrable to the outside.

The windowless ministry symbolizes the abolition of civil society; for civil society -- at least in the sense of burgertum -- presupposes openness and comity, a willingness of citizens to be exposed to one another and being exposed to engage.  Civil society is a matrix of two way streets.  You may not be agreed with.  You may be criticised and opposed but you will be heard.

In 1984, no one exists to be heard but only to be barked at and told. The ministry can see and extract what it wants but the denizens of Oceanea exist as units to be informed and worked, manipulated and excited.

The windowless ministry is a grim image of a grimmer perversion of society. But in the United States of 2020 we have learned to make the ministry cheerful, colourful, accessible and seemingly open.  In 2020 the ministry goes by the name of Webpage.

The Webpage is first of all colourful.  Depending on the department its portal shines with pictures of Scenic Natural Vistas, Alabaster Monuments, Glowy Mornings, Happy People with Glowy Faces,  Towering Trees, Radiant Parrots and Butterfles,  Grizzlies and Polar Bears, Breathtaking Bridges, Happy Silver Birds ("managing" their health or portfolios) in the active, ongoing honeymoon of Glowy Retirement, shiny appliances, gadgets, cars, sports equipment handled and driven by handsome, pretty, zesty (and glowy faced) youths... or simply pictures of "our team" always smiling and on the go.  Twenty-twenty is out to prove with a vengeance that life is not bleak.

Webpages are of course the mainstay of all types of merchants, as they are a cheap, effective, and a mass way to hawk goods.  But webpages are also the mainstay of banks, insurance companies, corporations, non-governmental organizations, the media, academia, ecclesiastica,  government agencies and last but not least elected officials.  To perpetuate the illusion of transparency and openness, everyone one of these ministries has some sort of contact or feedback form where, in exchange for disclosing your name, title, age, sex, address and phone number ("tracing information") you can ask questions of your bank or insurance company or express your views to your local media "outlet" or elected official.

But consent and comity end there.  Your "feedback" will never be read.  You will have written it, perhaps even laboured over it, but when you "hit enter,"  are reminded to fill in a "required field" you preferred not to answer, hit send again, answer and pass the CAPTCHA test and finally hit enter one last time... your missive will immediately be shit-canned into a memory hole. 

Of course, even here, Amurka in 2020 offers an improved version of 1984.  Wonder of wonders, the Memory Hole actually answers back!  If you are truly stupid enough you can rest assured and contented that your thoughts have been considered by to whomever they were addressed.

This new improved Memory Hole offers two options.  The first is the non-answer which gives the impression of more or less engaging with whatever it was you had to say; the second is the more brutal direct brush off.  This usually goes like this: "Thank you very much for writing to the editors of The Daily Times-Mirror-Herald. Every day we receive hundreds of letters from readers around the world. We regret that because of the large number of submissions we are not able to respond to all of them, other than by this automated reply. Because of computer security concerns, we do NOT accept attachments; they will NOT be opened..."

In other words: thank you for your missive; we want you to know that you are an insignificant worm among worms not worthy of our time much less attention.  You can renew your $ubscription at paynow@sellingpaper.com

It is hard to say which one of these is worse.  The answer that calls you a nothing or the answer that takes you for a stupid nothing.

It will be said that I complain unrealistically. After all... how can anyone expect that Senawhore So and So, or Chief High Editor Poo Baum would really have time for everyone...  Not even Mr. Us has time for all of us.

There is a story that addresses this point.  A woman once approached the Emperor Hadrian with a petition.  He waived her aside, saying "I haven't the time...."  She snapped back, "If you don't have the time, then don't be emperor." He heard the petition.

Why?  Because the early Roman Emperors were very solicitous to preserve the image of a free republic within a civil society.  In Hadrian's time the Empire covered an extent about the size of the continental United States.  It had an estimated 100 million inhabitants.  Every day thousand upon thousands of incidents of one sort or another had to be managed by local, regional, senatorial and imperial governments.  But the emperors were keen to maintain the promise made by Augustus that he had "restored the Republic."

Of course, he had done no such thing.  The image of a free republic was history's most colosssal joke.  But it was joke they put genuine effort into.  In Gibbon's inimitable words, "the Caesars concealed their powers and expressed themselves the humble servants of the Senate whose decrees they dictated and obeyed."

Needless to say, Rome had its webpages too; the Ara Pacis being one of them.  But the earlier emperors put genuine time and effort into maintaining the illusion... They mingled with and exposed themselves to the public and heard their concerns.

Did they really give a damn about Marcus Anonimus and his petty problem?  No more so than the Queen of England today gives a rat's ass about the thousands of people she meets in a year.  But they and she do put time and effort into seeming otherwise and, paradoxically, to that extent, the illusion is not quite an illusion.

The United States in 2020 puts no effort into the illusion and to that extent the reality is that it is not a civil society but rather a conglomeration of hermetic power clusters, each open entre nous, but otherwise  blaring at and manipulating the drudges outside the circles. 

To be clear, this is not a criticism of just corproations, ecclesiastical bodies, media and government.  It is as  much a criticism of so-called grassroots movements, the most recent example of which was Bernie's "Not me, Us!" campaign.

How very engaging!  But try to reach anyone in Bernie's campaign and one was confronted with the widowless facade of the Ministry of Love.  Nowhere on Bernie's campaign page was there a who's who list and nowhere could one find out who was in charge of what.  Nowhere was there an email except a small window for input to "info@bernie.com" 

I sent input to Bernie, via the Input Window and via hardcopy snail mail to the campaign P.O.Box  (not even a fucking street address).  Not once did I get so much as a robo-reply.  Not once.

Of course, if you donated money, you got a chance to write something in a comment box.  But if anyone thinks that anyone gave the comment five seconds for $27.00  he or she needs her I.Q. checked. 

Bernie's windowless Webpage was state of the art.  It even sent out pretty please requests to answer questionnaires asking for your views.  Click.  Up popped a window asking four questions:  (1) do you want Medicare for All; (2) are you concerned about the climate; (3) do you support free tuition; (4) do you support a livable minimum wage.  Now, how about donating... HERE. Pure Pogey Bait for political junkies.

This was far more denigrating than the New York's Slime's thank you for writing we haven't got time for you.

At around the same time, I sent two email "feeback inputs" to my state senawhores.  The one who was running for re-election robo-replied with a one page non-answer. The one who was not running for reelection did not bother to reply at all.

No... the windowless ministry is ubiquitous. Every institution, every corporation, every organization, every political or religious agroupement shields itself behind impenetrability, pretending to be open and engaging but hiding the "inner Us" from the rest of "Us."

What this actually reveals is the total breakdown of civil society. Everyone is selling and pushing and getting their message out.  The illusion is bi-directional but the reality is uni-directional.  Citizen Q exists to be prodded and plucked but not to be heard.

It will be said that it is physically and temporally impossible to listen to everyone, to engage with everyone, to answer every letter or comment.  That may in fact be true, but such an answer only reveals that our society is no longer built to human scale. 

The lack of human scale shows itself in our buildings, in our one way media, and our webpages and, increasingly, our algorithms.  We are in fact no different that Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.  The citizen exists merely as a receptacle for one way communication.  There is no engagement, no burgertum.

Madison wrote that the Republic he envisioned presupposed a certain limitation in size and extent; and, among historians, it is commonplace that burgertum ended around the time of Woodrow Wilson.  In many respects the United States did a decent job of masking the realities of a mass society. This was due in part to the agricultural nature of American society and to small towns in large spaces.  It was also due to the fact that "society" in the United States always meant a very small segment of the whole which might be summarized as "college and above." The World War (2nd) and the post-war consumer society put an end to that.  When the internet burst on the scene in the 1990's the hope was that it would re-open and equalize civil society.  Alas, the oligarchy found a way to make the internet an instrument of mass control and exclusion.

The question now is not how to improve or reform this mass configuration but how to abolish it.  That is not a progressive task but a humanist one.

©WCG, 2020