hegemony...it's a trap!*

agatha

*Return of the Jedi reference

reading chris w.'s observations about the Tea Party, i just have to comment on how much i AGREE…now maybe this is because i just don't understand politics well enough, but it seems that inasmuch as the Tea Party claims to care about "returning political power to the people" (quoted from their own website, www.theteaparty.net) all i have ever heard them do is complain about Obama trying to give everyone a public healthcare option. my mother is a Tea Partier, in fact, which just about seems consistent with my view that i have never seen anyone vote so regularly against her own economic interest.

anyway, i wasn't going to necessarily make that the topic of my blog post...but i am intrigued by this idea now, in light of Thatcher's efforts to turn values and systems that more or less benefited a capitalist few over the many, into the "common sense" of the people, with this idea of the Tea Party. i suppose they might argue that those who believe in extended government, and social services and health care, are voting against their own interest if they don't use them personally. maybe? but on the other hand, i think of someone like my mother (sorry, mom, i don't mean to make you a scapegoat here, it just works so well...) who has, in fact, used such services, especially when my sister and i were younger and she was struggling to be able to raise us, and yet who consistently derails the government for getting involved in questions of social services. yet Gramsci comments that "an important phase of a social group is that in which the individual components of a trade union no longer struggle solely for their own economic interests, but for the defence and the development of the organization itself" (212). he is commenting on the formation of trade unions, in fact, but i would say that the passage is as true for Thatcherism and for the Tea Party. i wonder why the values of such groups gain such personal precedence for so many people, despite their actual applicability?

is it ever possible for hegemony to be about a system of values that really and truly benefits all groups in society? i'm just not sure. last class, Kathy commented that ideally, we might think of capitalism as capable of good things if we imagine that the most productive society is the one that is best taken care of. maybe. but i'm beginning to feel a bit nervous about that idea. it seems like capitalism is running right now at more or less the capacity it wants to run, while performing only the bare minimum for the majority of the people. those who come from the wealthiest families will go to the best schools, and into the highest-paying jobs, while the relationship between education and career compensation basically deteriorates from there until you get to the bottom of the working class, where laughably little funding in education and community resources guarantees that, for the least possible amount of money spent by the capitalist, you can get a return of a large new generation of workers who are perfectly intelligent, but find themselves unable to perform many other functions in society other than to work for the capitalist class. omg, maybe i AM becoming a marxist! no, wait, i'm not...yet.

but of course, i tend to vote democrat because i just can't bear to hear my mother talk any more about why Obama (aka "that man you voted for") is destroying our economy and any potential future this country might have, so maybe i am just as guilty of voting more or less against her vote.