Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Il presidenzialismo come surrogato della politica

Questa percezione di "stanchezza" dovrebbe essere un monito anche chez 
nous: il "duello" fra "capi" (e fra presunte "compagini ideali") occulta 
il quotidiano operare della politica, e nasconde la necessità logica ed 
il dovere etico - da parte dell'elettore - di scegliere materialmente 
(i.e. sulle cose), e non solo simbolicamente.
Namib
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/95987/there_is_more_to_a_democracy_than_the_office_of_president/
There Is More to a Democracy Than the Office of President
By David Sirota, Creators Syndicate. Posted August 22, 2008.
You have to hand it to John McCain -- his campaign ads are 
(inadvertently) the most incisive commentary on the death of 
Jeffersonian democracy ever broadcast.
Superficially, they lambaste Barack Obama's worshipful crowds and 
messianic promises that a heavenly "light will shine down" on his 
candidacy. But what the ads really lampoon is what Vanderbilt Professor 
Dana Nelson calls presidentialism: our paternalistic view that 
presidents are godlike saviors -- and therefore democracy's only 
important figures.
"The once-every-four-years hope for the lever pull sensation of 
democratic power blinds people to the opportunities for democratic 
representation, deliberation, activism and change that surrounds us in 
local elections," she writes in her new book, "Bad for Democracy: How 
the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People."
In a country whose anti-royalist founders constitutionally constrained 
executive authority, what explains the metastatic growth of 
presidentialism? The evisceration of journalism and social movements.
The media's Watergate triumph sired the current Age of Stenography. With 
personal glory the new priority, correspondents figured out that 
transcribing White House prognostication is a far easier way to gain 
notoriety than Woodward and Bernstein's shoe-leather investigations. The 
result is journalism run by grotesque sloth and vapid speculation -- the 
kind exemplified by The New York Times' top three political 
correspondents this week. As inflation hit crisis levels and the 
Russia-Georgia conflict inched the planet toward World War III, these 
"reporters" devoted a stunning 2,148 words to fact-free guesses about 
selections for vice-president -- a position with no power and zero 
impact on ordinary people's lives.
Media consolidation and cost-cutting have sped up this decline, turning 
many local news outlets into collages of wire copy and presidential 
punditry from D.C. bureaus. Meanwhile, the 21st century's most 
celebrated model of "grassroots" movement building is MoveOn.org -- a 
top-down group whose primary function is to land stories about itself in 
Washington gossip rags and send e-mail spam about presidential candidates.
The resulting noise reiterates one message: The only thing that matters 
is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Why is this dangerous? First and foremost, by ignoring local elections 
and issue-based organizing in favor of presidential politics, activists 
make presidential progress less likely. "Even the best presidents need 
social movements to accomplish transformational change," warns community 
activist Deepak Bhargava in The Nation magazine's latest White 
House-centric edition. "FDR could not have succeeded without the 
agitation of the unemployed workers' councils and the unions, and LBJ's 
greatest accomplishments were made possible by the civil rights movement."
Worse, presidentialism leads us to ignore the arenas where issues are 
already being sorted out.
For example, how many of the Democratic convention delegates incensed by 
the Obama-McCain energy brouhaha have any idea that just beyond Denver's 
Rocky Mountain horizon, a battle over Colorado's massive gas reserves 
will more immediately impact the national energy crisis than the inane 
presidential back-and-forth about offshore drilling? Better yet, how 
many Democratic enthusiasts donning Obama T-shirts know who their state 
representative or city councilor is -- or even what a state legislature 
or city council does?
In his upcoming book, "You Can't Be President," journalist John 
MacArthur ponders the depressing answers to these kinds of questions, 
reminding readers of Alexis de Tocqueville's 19th century writing.
"It is in vain to summon a people, which has been rendered so dependent 
on the central power, to choose from time to time the representatives of 
that power," he observed. "This rare and brief exercise of their free 
choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from 
gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling and acting for 
themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity."
Published 168 years ago, the passage is a prescient warning as the 
upcoming Democratic and Republican conventions toast presidentialism's 
conquest of democracy in America.


Cosa ti ha dato lo spunto?
Gli show del presidente ebreo di Francia?
Saluti
--------------------------------
Inviato via 
http://arianna.libero.it/usenet/