PUBLIC UPROAR
a journal for eclectic policy

APATHY OR THIRD WAVE GOLDMINE? 

What the average voter is witness to during an election year is a movement to the center. This movement is conducted by the candidates of the Democrats and Republicans, but is not what we expected. When people began talking about the movement to the political center in the early 1990’s, it was believed to be the end of ideology and the introduction of new ideas. Instead of the two monoliths of conservative and liberal, where there was no surrender of one to the other, there was the hope that the public discourse would deal with the issues that went beyond this limiting structure. We all thought that was the long-range effect of the end of the Cold War, itself a standoff of ideology. Now we realize that the movement to the center has just brought the two sides closer together, but still separated into two fortresses where no issue is free to roam beyond the perimeter. The same argument is repeated over and over with the two sides resembling each other more and more. It is no wonder that voter participation has dropped. This apathy, especially of the young voters who have no history such as the New Deal or the Sixties, is not a lack of caring. As voter turnout has dropped, volunteerism has rose among young people. Rather, what people are concerned about in public life is not discussed in the discourse of our elected officials during campaigns. There is a treasure trove of concerns and issues that reside in the center and can not be pinned down as liberal or conservative. The opinions of people are too divergent to be split equally down the middle. And so, this is the strength that any third party or a coalition of independent parties can use to enact a proper discourse and a proper campaign. Our past is riddled with third parties, and their importance historically is to introduce important issues into campaigns at the expense of not winning on the national level. Therefore, they were single-issue parties with a small life span. At this time, however, the non-ideological issues are too numerous and pressing for any third party to pass up. The immediate future, for all our sakes, must be the formation of new political parties that take up these discarded banners and win over the imagination of the average citizen.       

CONSPIRACY:
looking for the great white motive

The last quarter of the twentieth century has fulfilled the postmodern tendency of the last half of the century by being primarily concerned with the image. It is the commodity of the post-industrial, not to mention post-structural, age where media is everywhere and communication networks effect the information that is told. Here we live in a land of surveillance of all by all, and we tell ourselves stories of what we see. To say that chaos is a strong element in the last years of the twentieth century is an understatement. But what is important is how information networks and the primacy of the image has told the story of this chaos. For those who can remember, the first decline of the American Dream came with an assassin’s bullet to the head of President John Kennedy. Things were not the same after that, and many threads of our perception of America were unraveled for better or worse. In retrospective movements, the senselessness and mystery of that killing were stitched into a motive operated by a vast conspiracy. As a sidebar, a conspiracy has the nature of being kept secret yet involving an enormous group of individuals both famous and incognito. This occurs while connecting various seemingly unrelated organizations in one purpose. It goes without saying that the purpose is evil. Initially conspiracy stories were created to make sense of senseless public acts, but having too large of a lens on a vast pool of real data allowed for unreal connections and logic. The motive, which would inspire such an unreal construct, seemed superhuman in its scope and reintroduced good and evil into a world where relativism was a day-to-day fact of life. The two sides of good and evil give comfort and stability in their own special way. Presently, as in the case of Elian Gonzalez some months ago, motive was sought and defined in order to make the case clear and simple. Of course, both sides told stories of the past perceived information that was pure interpretation-in-itself. The only fact that could be concluded, outside of the commodity of the image, was that both sides in Elian’s custody battle were absolutely right and absolutely wrong at the same time. However, the commodity of the image circulating in information networks is all-pervasive and will permeate material reality as long as we have eyes to see and ears to hear. The summarization of conspiracy stories and motive assignment is as long as we have mouths to speak and tell what we think just happened.    
    
SIMULTANEAITY AND SACRIFICE

The introduction of the postulates of quantum physics into culture and everyday life evokes the very alien descriptions of the Parisian Situationists at the time of the Sixties. For them, reality became spectacle whereby all was sacrificed to image, and the production of the image was the inherent goal of all economic systems. Quantum physics evokes a world where parallel worlds and wrinkles in time are theoretically possible and therefore actually real. Both of these studies of reality involve a leap in how we assume the world operates from common sense. Now, in the culture and epoch of the image, the all-at-once possibility is even more apparent. Since simulations are mass-produced as befitting their nature, multiple conclusions can be drawn at the same time. Simultaneous truths can coexist because they are not only physically possible but perceptively possible. In the debate of truth, where truth is the cornerstone of how the dilemma can be solved but is appropriated by both sides, the simultaneous nature of simulation is rampant. It is at this point that there is a proposal to end the argument over abortion. Abortion is an issue where both sides profess to hold the absolute truth. Those that are pro-life contend that the fetus is alive so therefore abortion is murder, while those that are pro-choice contend that a woman has a right to decide over any biological function of her particular body. The Bible is on the side of the former while the spirit of the Constitution is for the latter. If irrefutable evidence appeared to determine if a fetus was actually alive independently of its mother, then those who were pro-choice would concede that they were wrong. For the abortion rights movement assumes that no murder is committed, since they would not advocate murder due to their nature and the other issues they might believe in such as anti-death penalty. The anti-abortion movement does not admit this fact, and assumes that their opponents are immoral. Neither will compromise their belief, since belief or faith itself can not be proven or disproven, and can not be forced into acceptance. Barring the discovery by scientific research whether a fetus is actually alive or not, there is a more immediate solution to this standoff of a debate. It can be concluded that a fetus is less developed than a born infant, in much the same way that an animal is less developed than a human. It is also concluded that humans have the ability within society to own animals, and to put these animals to sleep if the need arises. Therefore, it can be concluded that a pregnant woman would have the legal right to terminate a fetus, and that this fetus is definitely alive at the same time. What allows this simultaneous truth is the fact that while the fetus is a living being, it is not completely human. At the most it is partially human, since it can not fulfill the abilities that a complete human infant is expected to accomplish such as breathing independently or beginning to interact with the world. For either side of this brutal debate, no quarter is required to be given or expected to be requested. The only thing sacrificed in this solution is the simplicity of former beliefs in exchange for a more robust and intricate description of real facts and truths. It will be a benefit for all humanity in the long run.