"Remember the words that we say tonight/But don't say a word once we're in the light" (Kelly Willis "Wait Until Dark").
What lies in the darkness; waiting, cloaked, hidden, is our fear, or rather, fear itself: The root of fear is uncertainty, a queasy feeling that something is going to come and upset our little patch of the world as constituted by its phenomenological experience, or, in other words, what we think we know about our reality based on our being part of it.
It is what we have gleaned from being an agent in phenomenological space that we create from our experience in order to understand the "world". However, there is another space enveloping this narrow, solipsistic space which transcends our experience, yet is very much present in it, something we know exists, could exist- a contingency, if you like, but we are either in denial of, or made ignorant of, by Ideological State Apparatuses, such as religion, government, and media.
Sartre would argue that we are unaware because we wish to be, and thus, his concept of Existential Angst is tantamount to denial of trancendent, yet very physical, reality. Gramsci and the Marxists would argue that it is by virtue of a metaphysical class consciousness, reinforced, and constructed by the Ideological State Appartuses, that we are made unaware by design. Both thinkers have commented at some length about problematic, if not impossible, escape from what Sartre referred to as "facticity", or the material conditions of existence, which, by extension, must include Ideological State Apparatus.
By ostensible contrast, the Right (capitalists, neoconservatives, the religious right, free marketers, economic libertarians and readers of Ayn Rand) put themselves, philosophically, in opposition to the above, asserting free will and free thought, the freedom which comes from an unrestricted, unregulated market, the transcendence of reality that stems from the accumulation of wealth, the trancendence of death that stems from believing the above. The Right would assert that Existential Angst is exclusively to atheists, and it is only in a Marxist-based society,that we find such a thing as an Ideological State Apparatuses, because, in a free country, no such thing can exist, because we are all masters of our own destiny, and our success, or failure, is contingent on faith and will; faith in the market, faith in a deity, and the will to pursue both at all costs.
This affirmation of Right world view is, of course, an affirmation of their ideological underpinning for this reality, and, by extension, an assent to the oppositional nature of their world view to that other, the left in total: afterall, it was Lucifier, the Son of the Morning Star, who sat at the left hand of God, and look how that turned out...
In affirming this opposition so totally, the right wing uncovers its own contradiction, and unwittingly shakes it for the world to see in a grotesque strip show: The farther right they go, the more they show. If, as they claim, we are a Judeo Christian Nation, and, as an extension of that faith, evolution is untrue, as at least three of the presidential candidates plus the sitting president claim, then how can this monolith be anything other than an ideological state apparatus posing as God's Law? Indeed, if we are masters of our own destiny in this Judeo Christian Nation, then why the rush to legislate morality if this is not the work of an ideological state apparatus?
Indeed, in the post industrial, informational late stage capitalism that is the United States in this first decade of the new millenium, the right wing has effectively spun a reality different from the one the rest of the world lives and loves and toils and suffers under everyday. But this isn't the Matrix: This is denial, a purposeful ignorance, and a negative assertion of will. The true believer denies evolution because it contradicts the ideological construction which gives them a sense of purpose, comfort, in a confusing world. Unable to negotiate the phenomenological space in which they are presented with choices, unable to reconcile their own impending death with the responsibility of actually doing something for themselves, asserting their will positively, they retreat into religion, into paranoia, into idealogy, becoming ministers, criminals, or radio talk show hosts, what ever dulls the pain.
There are, however, other types of agents and thus, agencies, which operate in the Ideological States of America, on the right wing, and these agents are, in fact, not true believers at all, though, like Dr. Zaius, they defend the faith at all costs, knowing the terrible secret in the cave, knowing the illumination reveals, hidden in shadows, the mechanations, the gears, the circuits, of the Ideological State Apparatus; a human doll that talks is equivalent to a myth of free will, for example, and without this myth, the claims of the Right as being the defender of liberty, of the real America, of free will, must be exposed as for the terrible fraud it is. The infection of the machine is not with religious zealots, but cynical opportunists, furiously pulling levers, pushing buttons, and desperately trying to seal the cave up: Afterall, "there is no contradiction between faith and science-true science".
Part III: The Ghost of the Machine.
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