By Alexander Perepechko
Published on November 23, 2014
Why did Barack Obama not take the initiative in reforming the American ruling class? Why could he not find ways to reach consensus among clashing political elites? Why did he choose to abandon normative politics and switch to post-modernism? Are theorists of elites right that in a multi-racial, multi-religious, multi ethnic or socially complex state the ruling class should be recruited almost exclusively from the dominant majority? Although his campaign was monitored and analyzed by innumerable observers of all calibers, one can hardly find answers to these questions.
In reality, freedom of speech and political discourse in the United States are framed by a two-party system: to criticize American politics one has to take a stand for one of the two major parties and direct his or her critics against the other major party. One shortcoming of this approach is that Democrats avoid criticizing Republicans (and Republicans avoid condemning Democrats) when the critique can be used against their own political party. The Machiavellian school allows one to overcome this and some other drawbacks while studying politics in this country. The Machiavellian approach already helped us to discern (see my October 15, 2012 post) that beliefs and doctrines in America quickly lose meaning. At the same time, norms, institutions, and changes in the ruling class increasingly fall behind the changes in beliefs and doctrines. Instead of reforming old norms, institutions and the ways in which elites renew, the American ruling class empties beliefs and doctrines of their original meaning. Drained of a “political epistemology”, a citizen might find it difficult to grasp the meaning of some of the moves of the American ruling class and key political actors. While the White House team prepares its lame duck agenda in the aftermath of the 2014 election, we will scrutinize Obama’s maneuvers through the lens of the theory of elites.
Continue reading Why did Obama not find ways to reach consensus among clashing political elites? (Part 1)