US Presidential Election 2012: Post-Truth Politics
In the September 2012 edition of Political Insight, I wrote an article on the political decay of the two main American political parties and their disconnection with the lives and anxieties of ordinary people.
The opening paragraph of that article is pasted below and shows that the 2016 election process, and the sheer vitriol, anger and resentment, and deep ideological divides it has made apparent, has been coming for some time, has gathered real momentum and is unlikely to fizzle out any time soon; more likely, there is a political explosion on the cards unless the next president fashions a new political bargain at home and abroad - one that focuses on redistribution income, wealth and power away from Wall St, and reduce US global military, financial and political commitments overseas.
"There are many issues in the 2012 US presidential election campaign that are central to understanding US politics generally and US power today, such as money, national security and religion.
The US may be suffering from high unemployment levels, spiralling home repossessions and increased wealth and income inequality, yet the politics of the world's lone superpower seem almost entirely removed from the lives of the mass of ordinary working Americans. On the face of it, the US appears to have fully embraced ‘post-truth politics’, a condition in which practically anything may be said and taken seriously about almost any subject regardless of its connection with reality.
The leadership groups of both the Republican and Democratic parties are implicated in a politics seemingly disconnected from reality. They are both more or less equally committed to a politics dominated by Big Finance rather than popular sovereignty; to an economic philosophy obsessed with the market mechanism, regardless of its utility to the broad mass of Americans; and to a foreign and national security perspective more suited to the interests of a global imperium than its own, let alone the world's, people.
Both parties are heavily invested in the Lincolnian belief that the US is ‘the last best hope of earth’."
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