| Reframing The Debate By Peter Block,
09/29/08
...continued
The marketing tactics
are about attack ads, the high ground, the appearance of certainty,
toughness or humanity, the selection of photo ops that range from cow
barns to churches depending on today’s positioning. None of this has
anything to do with governance or our future.
What is really on the
line has to do with the worldview of the two candidates. McCain carries
the archetype of heroic individualism. He is a prisoner of war survivor.
He is a cultural celebration of the power of the individual to capture
the west, defeat the dark skin aliens once again, sustain the corporate
capacity to dominate control markets, the dominance of the United States
as a corporate capacity to dominate markets forces the one world power
in a universe of scarcity. War, polarization and dominance are the
context in which he takes his identity.
Obama is the archetype of the power of community. He is the community
organizer. He carries the image of the healing capacity of the
collective and has activated it. He promises to speak to the other side.
He talks of the accountability of citizens to create a different future.
He was born out of a union across national and racial boundaries. He is
the possibility of the United States becoming one powerful nation among
many in a world of abundance. Interdependence, collaboration and
communion are the context for his identity.
Now, here is the kicker. The media is not neutral in this contest of
worldviews. By tradition and training, by their own cynicism, by the
patriarchal nature of their own experience in a medieval industry, by
their corporate ownership and by the ratings economics of a shaky
business model, they continue to worship the individual, individualism
and the attraction of battle tactics and winning.
This is the challenge for those who see the possibility and necessity of
a more interdependent and cooperative relationship among people,
nations, and the earth. In this campaign all we are going to get is more
advertising and more tactical obsession with style. The issue of
worldview and the means out of which a truly alternative future can be
created will never be the narrative.
Unless we make it
so. At a conference recently I was asked what we can do now to change
the debate. There is no compelling answer to that in the short run,
other than working hard for our choice, knowing that the context of the
dialogue is corrupt. In the long run we can deepen our commitment to
shifting the context, enter more fully into the civic and public arena
and maybe, as a small step, patronize that media that has an interest in
reporting real issues (like Bill Moyers and Pressthink.org) and boycott
the rest.
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