"Capitalism is spreading like a tumor in US society and the key is to cut out its ability to convince people that there are no other alternatives." (Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: skez, JoesSistah)The right-wing Republican sweep of Congress testifies to a massive memory and educational deficit among the US public and a failure among progressives and the left regarding how to think about politics outside of the established boundaries of liberal reform. The educative nature of politics has never been more crucial than it is now and testifies to the need for a new politics in which culture and education are as important as economic forces in shaping individual and social agency, if not resistance itself.

The cultural apparatuses owned by the financial elite are largely responsible for the political and social darkness that engulfs the American public. Americans are shaping a new moment in history in which the symbiosis among cultural institutions, power and everyday life has shaped the very nature of politics and the broader collective public consciousness with an influence unlike anything we have seen in the past. Economics drives politics and its legitimating apparatuses have become the great engines of manufactured ignorance. This suggests the need for the left and their allies to take seriously how identities, desires and modes of agency are produced, struggled over and taken up.