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8/25/2016 How Consumer Culture Is Killing Citizenship BillMoyers.com
http://billmoyers.com/story/consumerculturekillingcitizenship/ 1/8
DEMOCRACY & GOVERNMENT
How Consumer Culture Is KillingCitizenshipWe live in a society where market values spread without limit, in which we arebranding and selling ourselves along with everything else, including publicof᐀ce. How do we stop it?
BY HARRY BOYTE | AUGUST 25, 2016
Times Square, New York City. (Photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images)
8/25/2016 How Consumer Culture Is Killing Citizenship BillMoyers.com
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Donald Trump’s candidacy gives rise to many descriptors —authoritarian, bigoted, divisive. It is also the culmination of longdeveloping dysfunctions of a culture where market values havespread beyond appropriate limits and radically eroded citizenship.
Though many feel hopeless about changing this culture, resources areappearing for revitalizing citizenship and for building a movement fora deeper democracy, across party lines, after this sour and dispiritingelection.
Trumpismrepresents a modelof public life whichreplaces citizens asmakers ofdemocratic societywith a transactionalpolitics that asksonly ‘what’s in it forme?’
Susan Faludi describes the consumerculture well in her 1999 book, Stiffed:The Betrayal of the American Man.Drawing on interviews with groups ofmen from AfricanAmerican shipyardworkers to veterans to evangelicalChristians, she shows how ideals ofloyalty, team play and the mastery of avocation were replaced by “acompetitive individualism… robbed ofcraft or utility and ruled by commercialvalues that revolve around who has themost, the best, the biggest, the fastest.”Masculinity became something “todrape over the body, not draw frominner resources, to be displayed notdemonstrated.”
Trump’s public persona, winnerinchief, is a poster child for Faludi’s male. He surrounds himself withgoldplated trinkets. He seeks to brand everything he touches. He isalso a snake oil salesman, a figure familiar from American history.
8/25/2016 How Consumer Culture Is Killing Citizenship BillMoyers.com
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All these traits might be called Trumpism, not simply Trump.Trumpism represents a model of public life which replaces citizens asmakers of democratic society with a transactional politics that asksonly “what’s in it for me?” It is the mark of a society where marketvalues spread without limit, in which we are branding and sellingourselves along with everything else.
Outofcontrol consumerism sets in early these days. A decade ago,the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Advertisingand Children found that children viewed more than 40,000commercials each year. Our entire society is swamped withadvertising, as Louise Story described in her New York Times article,“Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad.” Research by theYankelovich group finds that people living in cities see up to 5,000ads a day.
Targeted advertising in the age of the internet can dissolve crucialdistinctions between evidence and image. As the AmericanPsychological Association Task Force warns, “Comprehensioninvolves not only the recognition that the advertiser has a perspectivedifferent from the viewer and that advertisers intend to persuadetheir audiences to buy their products, but also that such persuasivecommunication is biased.”
Trump’s posture — his constant pivots, his protean notion of “truth,”his baitandswitch changes in policy — embody the logic of a culturewhere differences between salesmanship and leadership disappear.
If Trump is the outgrowth of an everythingisforsale culture, hisflaws dramatize the need for revitalized citizenship. In Americanhistory, robust understandings of citizenship were associated with thelanguage of commonwealth.
8/25/2016 How Consumer Culture Is Killing Citizenship BillMoyers.com
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Commonwealth wasa theme not only forcivic leaders andcommunity buildersbut also for radicalsand activists whosought a moreegalitarian andinclusivedemocracy,challenging thenation in aprophetic voice.
Growing from English traditions,commonwealth citizenship meantpopular government based on thecommon consent of the people. JohnAdams proposed the designation forevery state. Four states today areofficial commonwealths: Kentucky,Massachusetts, Pennsylvania andVirginia. The term also encompassedthe shared public good that settlerscreated in communities across thecountry. For instance, BenjaminFranklin’s Leather Apron Club inPhiladelphia in the Commonwealth ofPennsylvania was dedicated to “doingwell by doing good.” It includedtradesmen, artisans and shopkeeperswho combined enterprise withcommitments to civic products andgenerated a streetsweeping corps;volunteer firefighters; taxsupportedneighborhood constables; health andlife insurance groups; a library; ahospital; an academy for educating young people; a society forsharing scientific discoveries; and a postal system.
Commonwealth, as a word and a sentiment, was a theme not only forcivic leaders and community builders but also for radicals andactivists who sought a more egalitarian and inclusive democracy,challenging the nation in a prophetic voice. In Minnesota, forinstance, “The Cooperative Commonwealth Program” of the FarmerLabor Party in 1932, growing out of populist farmer, labor and
8/25/2016 How Consumer Culture Is Killing Citizenship BillMoyers.com
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cooperative movements, helped elect candidates for governor, the
state legislature and Congress.
The freedom movement against segregation, which I participated inas a young man in the 1960s, was suffused with such citizenship, asense of responsibility for the fate of the nation as a whole. Even theangriest of critics sometimes acknowledged the fact. “It’s ironical thatthe people who were slaves, the most beaten and despised peoplehere, are to be at this moment the only hope that this country has,”said the fiery writer James Baldwin after the church bombing inBirmingham, Sept. 15, 1963, which killed four young girls. “The onlypeople in the country at the moment who believe either inChristianity or in the country are the most despised minority.”
As people made the commonwealth and took responsibility for theircommunities, they became active citizens and gained power andauthority.
Young people’s response to Bernie Sanders’ campaign, championingpublic goods — from schools to parks, infrastructure to healthprovision — suggests a generation hungry for the commonwealth. Onthe Republican side, the number of leaders who refuse to back Trumpbecause of their commitments to values of civility and inclusionsuggests there’s hope for a revitalized politics of common decencyand the commonwealth, as well.
Young people’sresponse to BernieSanders’ campaign,championing public
In our own work at the Sabo Center forDemocracy and Citizenship atAugsburg College, we constantly seenot only young people’s hunger for apublic world beyond “everything forsale” but also their desire to help makesuch a world. In Public Achievement(PA), the youth civic education and
8/25/2016 How Consumer Culture Is Killing Citizenship BillMoyers.com
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The Fight For America’s Soul
MORE ON DEMOCRACY & GOVERNMENT
goods — fromschools to parks,infrastructure tohealth provision —suggests ageneration hungryfor thecommonwealth.
empowerment initiative I cofoundedin 1990, we saw a way to join the spirit,civics and political insights of the civilrights movement with the lessons ofbroadbased organizing and bring themto today’s youth. Such organizingcreates “universities of public life,” inthe words of organizer Ernesto Cortes,where people learned to work acrossthe most bitter partisan, racial,economic and other divides on publicprojects.
PA is active in communities acrossAmerica, as well as in other countries. In PA, young people work asteams coached by adults (often college students), learning skills tomake change on public issues they choose. From Minnesota andColorado to Texas and Georgia, young people are fighting demeaningdepictions of blacks and Latinos and Asians. They champion thedignity of women, LGBT people, poor people and those withdisabilities. They campaign for immigrant rights and against bullying.They create videos, songs and plays that convey the overlookedtalents of our youth. And they make many public resources, fromplaygrounds to recycling centers.
BY HARRY BOYTE | DECEMBER 16, 2015
8/25/2016 How Consumer Culture Is Killing Citizenship BillMoyers.com
http://billmoyers.com/story/consumerculturekillingcitizenship/ 7/8
TOPICS: DEMOCRACY & GOVERNMENTTAGS: 2016 ELECTION, CONSUMERISM, DEMOCRACY
The response to PA shows that young people want to be citizens everyday, not only in preparation for voting or on voting day — citizenswho are cocreators of communities in an ongoing way.
This idea of citizens as cocreators of communities is central to thetransdisciplinary field of “Civic Studies,” recently supported by a $15million endowment to the Tisch College of Civic Life at TuftsUniversity.
Tisch College is a leader in the field of civic studies, and it has beencentral to the growing movement for civic education and citizenshipthat points beyond elections. Working with the White HouseDomestic Policy Council, it hosted a conference for higher educationleaders in 2014. Last July, it helped to support a meeting of socialstudies teachers in the White House.
The House 2017 Appropriations bill includes the first funding forcivics and American history in years. The bill includes $6.5 million incompetitive grants to improve instruction in American history, civicsand geography, with a particular emphasis on schools in underserved rural and urban communities. The bill also provides forAmerican history and civics academies that will offer professionaldevelopment opportunities for teachers.
These are intimations of a movement for citizenship and reneweddemocracy across party lines.
For all its dysfunctions, the Trump campaign can be a wakeup call.Only such a movement will reverse public squalor in the midst ofprivate affluence and revitalize a democracy for the 21 centuryworthy of our country’s ideals.
st
8/25/2016 How Consumer Culture Is Killing Citizenship BillMoyers.com
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HARRY BOYTEHarry Boyte is an architect of the Sabo Center for Democracy andCitizenship’s public work approach to civic engagement anddemocracy, and the creator of Public Achievement. Boyte served as asenior advisor to the National Commission on Civic Renewal andpresented research ᐀ndings at a Camp David seminar on the future ofdemocracy. He is the author of nine books on citizenship, democracyand community organizing, including The Citizen Solution: How YouCan Make a Difference (2008) and Everyday Politics: ReconnectingCitizens and Public Life (2004). Follow him on Twitter: @HarryBoyte.
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