Deception, Delusion, and Division in American Politics: Fruits of the Contact Zone

The U.S. political system has become strangled by the misconceptions, dishonesty, and unfounded beliefs held and espoused by the opposing political parties. The truth is hard to come by, and even harder to recognize in the current political climate.

In her essay, The Arts of The Contact Zone, Mary Louise Pratt, a member of the Modern Language Association,  relates the challenges of politics to the concept of a social space where “cultures meet, clash and grapple,” (501) accordingly termed “contact zones”. These zones are, clearly, points of contact between two different cultures, and involve certain dynamics, such as an imbalance of power between the two. An example of a modern contact zone exists in American politics, and specifically between the Democratic and Republican parties. From this constant and dramatic interplay, the culture itself becomes larger-than-life leading to the self-deception of the members of the culture who are invested in a set ideology as part of their self-image. If members of a contact zone, marginalized and dominant, imagine their communities as unified monocultures, then self-deception will almost certainly occur.

Pratt describes the idea of “imagined communities” as illusory boundaries that are drawn by peoples who cluster together as one. Quoting Benedict Anderson, Pratt writes, “human communities exist as imagined entities in which people “will never know most of their fellow-members, meet tem or ever hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion (Pratt 504).” This means individuals buy into the idealistic notion that solidarity necessarily exists between the members of their community. The striking consequence of such a conceptual entity is the un-shattering extent to which peoples identify with these communes that are comprised of many individuals, whom they will never come to meet or exist with. The idea of a monoculture is relatively the same concept, where essentially the members of such a culture live inside a bubble. The culture is homogenous since every member is relatively similar.

The Democratic and Republican Parties respectively manifest their own descriptions as monocultures, where the opposing party holds little to no value, truth, or aptitude. Each firmly believes the legitimacy of itself and therefore the illegitimacy of the other. Individual citizens, who might share all, many, few, or even none of the beliefs of a party, will align themselves with that party based on suppositions and therefore become part of the imagined community. A faithful Christian citizen who declares himself a Republican will most likely be disturbed when they come into contact with a pro-choice Republican senator, and the same goes for a gay couple who side Democrat and come into contact with a Representative of their party that opposes same-sex marriage rights. Those instances do occur, and they only contribute further to the idea that it is easy to be self-deceived by one’s identification with “imaginary” structures that are larger-than-oneself and larger-than-life. When this delusion of separateness occurs and reigns over what is thought, said, and done, what kind of world is created? This is an important question to entertain, and will be addressed later.

The historical evolution of both parties has included tremendous growth, transformation, and tension. The idea of transculturation, where “members of subordinated or marginalized groups select and invent form materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture” (Pratt 505), describes this progression on behalf of both parties since at a certain point in time one is subordinate to the other, most notably when the party rules the Presidency and/or Legislature. Pratt states, “While subordinate peoples do not usually control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what gets absorbed into their own and what it gets used for (505)”. What this means is that the marginalized culture has no say in what manifests from the dominant culture, however they possess and exercise the power to utilize and employ those manifestations in progressing their own cultural identity. For example, during the Presidency of Republican George H. W. Bush, the President made various grammatical mistakes in delivering some of his speeches, which were then used against the Republican Party by Democrats to emphasize their “educated, and highly skilled and sophisticated” party identity. Another example was the curious actions that took place in the Oval Office between Democrat Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky during his presidential term. This sent not only the Republicans but the entire country into shock, which then progressed into anger, disappointment, shame, and embarrassment.

This caused the Republicans to accentuate their “moral character”, which is dominantly Christian, and their steadfast commitment to the ethical responsibilities of government, society, and the individual. In both cases, the phenomenon of transculturation took place yielding more and more refinement of the parties’ ideals and image. Even the original “meanings” of terms such as “Republican” and “Liberal” have evolved dramatically- one could even say they’ve reversed. A Republican in the time of the Civil War in America actually implied a socially liberal individual, whereas presently that outlook is characteristic of the Democratic Party. The original, classic definition of “liberalism” had to do with commitment to laissez-faire economics and social agendas, which assured small government and extremely limited government intervention. The present view of liberalism is more along the lines of neoliberalism, and is viewed as in support of “big” government. The political spectrum has become completely redefined in terms of labels and philosophy(s). The significance of this in relation to the phenomenon of self-deception is the expansion on Pratt that transculturation is mutual and constant. At some point the gears are going to shift and the power structure will reverse, whether it be once or many times during the life of the contact zone. This eliminates the absolute need for a contact zone to be evaluated only at a certain point in time regarding the alignment of power between cultures. The issue then again returns to the ideas the members of such cultures claim of themselves and of others, and how and why those conceptions, or dare I say misconceptions, lead to identification, clinging, and delusion.