My Critique of the New York Times Article on US as Banana Republic

My facebook friend and fellow Sociologist, Lesliegh Owens wrote on Facebook comments to my New York Times Blog entry:

"Pattie, I'm intrigued by your comments about cultural production and social infrastructure. Would you please expand a bit? Huge thanks!"

I could write a whole lot on this, but suffice it to say that ownership of production includes ownership of cultural production such as media, education and the arts. This means that, as Gramsci noted, the interests of a very few are being served up hegemonically as being "American" interests. Thus, what feels natural or normal by the vast majority of Americans is actually only good for a very small percentage of Americans.

As far as infrastructure goes, we saw in this last election a group on the right who looked like a grassroots movement, but were highly funded by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch along with puppetmaster, Karl Rove, and a group on the left who looked like a grassroots movement, but were highly funded by billionaire George Soros.

With the ridiculous Supreme Court ruling that corporations have freedom of speech, we now have a select few who are funding and influencing a chess game of politics using "common" folk as pawns. Everyone wonders why this midterm election seemed so visible when most midterm elections are usually dull with little turnout. Well what we are seeing is an election battle between two billionaire camps, that top 1%. It is interesting to consider the election in light of the NY Times article.

If you saw, Capitalism: A Love Story, you know about the Citigroup plutonomy memo which lamented the fact that we have voting rights. Well, I think we just witnessed in the past two years exactly how the rich are going to handle the voters -- fund them and get them riled up through media.

By concentrating so much on the personal aspects of these inequalities, I think Kristof missed some real structural and cultural changes that this inequality is creating and the very real ways it is changing our so-called democracy into something very undemocratic.