In 1967, Guy DeBord published The Society of the Spectacle, a critique of consumer-capitalism’s effects on the mass psychology of the Western world. DeBord argued that once capitalism reaches a post-industrial stage, the mass of First-world society shifts from jobs of production to jobs of service as the Third-World takes on our industrial burdens.

In a country that produces nothing, society seeks comfort in symbols, expressions, and other cultural representations of reality. As capitalism expands, it seeks to find ever more markets in order to keep pace with the inflation and debts created through wealth inequality. The focus shifts from exploitation of the natural world to exploitation of the mind and of the very culture itself.

The spectacle refers to veil produced by the reorientation of life purpose around commodities and the shift from use of reason to emotional appeal as the dominant mode of deduction.

Contemporary American culture is the rampant manifestation of DeBord’s nightmare. The values espoused by our leaders; Careerism, self-interested competition, respect for authority, civic identity, materialism, the nuclear family and professionalism; are not American values. These are the values of the corporate state pervaded through mass society to appear as the dominant values of the past 20th century.

American culture has become sensationalized through symbols of advertising and …

We have become alienated, not just from our labor, but also from each other and reality.

Screens dominate our perception of reality. Televisions, smart phones, tablets, e-billboards, laptops and movie screens dictate how we receive our information. Everyone walks around with their faces buried into their monitors, mesmerized by the banality of Internet culture.

More high school students report being more comfortable texting than calling, limiting their ability to develop meaningful inter-personal skills. Corporate culture produces generations of socially isolated husks without any ability to communicate or organize with their fellow human beings thus making it easier to exploit them.

Mass media best represents the militant promotion of the spectacle. The 24-news cycle has turned the industry of journalism into a disturbing hybrid of entertainment and propaganda. In an effort to fit material into an entire day’s worth of time, media companies focus on reporting on cat videos, endless speculation about unknowable tragedies and staged debates simple-defined issues. All of this in done in the name of ratings.

Unfortunately, media sensationalism hides stories of importance, such as document revelations that detail Bill Clinton’s collaboration with Wall Street, and creates a misinformed public. A public that does not have an accurate perception of reality cannot participate in democracy. This is why the corporate elite has such a stranglehold over our elections.

The modern election has become an embodiment of the spectacle itself. Candidates are handpicked by coalitions of wealthy businessmen and political bosses from two-dominant parties with different takes on the same ideology. Billions of dollars are thrown at these candidates. They travel the countryside hosting lavish donor dinners and million-dollar conventions. They talk about issues in vague terms and exclude the direst of crises from debate.

The media increases its sensationalism during the election cycle. Roundtables of pundits feverishly debate their respective talking points often shouting down dissent thus turning CNN into ESPN. Potential voters are bombarded with colorful graphics and fed endless numbers of data polls from their TV sets.

Our elections are a façade of democracy. The two-party elections only produce representatives from the American aristocracy who only differ in terms of the gradualism of which they intended to expand the corporate state.

Until we pull back the veil over reality and expose manifestations of the spectacle in our everyday lives, we will be doomed to collective ignorance as society collapses around us.