VOLUNTARY SUBSERVIENCE AND CAPITALIST RELIGION IN THE ERA OF REALITY TELEVISION POLITICS

In the Media 2.0 era of reality television politics and Donald Trump, democracy and community are being eviscerated and replaced by a type of vacuous media/techno-fetish and the neoliberal struggle to gain an approving nod from the corporate elites, whether those elites are in the privatized public schools, the corporate universities, or the business world. Whether that desire for the nod is a good grade, an award, a raise, or a promotion, it is ever present. This hopeless culture of silence and acquiescence slithers through our everyday existence. Many have capitulated to the mindset of this hopeless, loveless, corporate behavior, a type of “intellectual chloroform” (McLaren, 2015, p. 2). This insidious corporate mentality reigns. It is a type of “capitalist religion” (Benjamin, 2004). It is what Deleuze and Guattari name as the central political question. It is the question and mystery of voluntary subservience and a type of religious obedience. Power operating is not simply a matter of “coercion or repression, the domination of one group of people by another… power requires a degree of complicity on the part of the ruled to function” (Buchanan, 2008, p. 14). This chapter will be divided into three sections. First, there will be a description of the current historical moment with a discussion of voluntary subservience, technological obsessiveness, confession, and the quest for fame. Second, the chapter will discuss the necessity of critical media literacy and its opposition to the current state of acquiescence, corporate media, and capitalist religion, which is reinforced by media(s). Third, the chapter will discuss the ways in which a practical, hopeful struggle of chaotic disruptions can be waged for a dynamic democracy that works for social justice, a better education, and a better world.