America's hopeless politics and Muslims

American politics is a "field of desperate politicians" in which, on the surface, political participation is extremely open to everyone, but in which, with regard to political programs that have become part of the system and gained untouchability thanks to technical shared assumptions, a real change has likewise become extremely impossible. (No harm, you may think of this with all the associations of desperate housewives.)

The illusion that the channels of politics are very open is created in part by the great demonstrations and shows in the very long election processes. Since presidential candidates become candidates after competing with their rivals state by state, region by region, in front of party members, a party's candidate is determined by the base.

On the surface this seems to guarantee an ideal participation for a democracy. Indeed, it could be so if other factors did not come into play. But as we said before, the black holes of American politics do not hold back from working so as to pull into themselves these participation channels too. To succeed in this race, there is a widespread ideology to which all the candidates virtually compete in loyalty. What controls this ideology is not the state, as in our own official ideology process, but the lobbies that are effective in the society's media, economy, universities, and certain centers.

The activity of the lobbies turns the Foucauldian process of power into a pressure that penetrates upward while feeding it from below. After a while an ideological (discursive) environment forms in which it is impossible to understand what is defended because of pressure and what is defended out of real belief.

What first comes to mind with the word lobbying is without doubt the Jewish lobby. The marking tactics and pressures this lobby applies on members of the Senate and Congress deserve study in every respect as an incredible technique of producing power. These lobbies, which I have chosen to call the black hole of politics, can in a way also be seen as a very different channel of political participation. Seen from that angle, lobbies can be understood not as what kills politics but, on the contrary, as an alternative channel in which politics is possible.

Jewish lobbying has probably even constituted a source of inspiration for many other groups for political participation. Of course the only way to take part in American politics is not to join parties and follow a course there that extends to Congress or the Senate; instead, being effective through lobbying activities seems to be an important and shortcut route. Facing the lobbies of certain ethnic or religious groups, as well as especially the lobbies of certain circles of capital, all the fields of politics seem in a way already sold in advance for senators and members of parliament.

Of course with this we are not saying that political choice is in no way possible. But in American politics, an extremely expensive profession, it is very hard to raise a different voice that is opposed to, an alternative to, the prevailing powers. This lays bare what kind of wall the things told about pluralism in democracies hit at this point.

Whenever the presidential system is debated in our country, the US comes to mind as the place where it is applied in its most ideal-democratic form, and it is cited as a reference. Yet here, nearly all of the president's dispositions vis-a-vis Congress and the Senate are under what can be considered excessive oversight. That is why chronic problems in American politics cannot even be solved because of Congress's opposition. For example, Obama's record-setting success regarding health reform, which was nearly the dream of the nearly twenty presidents before him, this time got stuck on the veto of the Constitutional Court.

Of course, whether Obama or Bush is in power still makes quite a difference, but only up to a point. Analyses such as "the end of politics," which have become quite fashionable lately, are probably made by looking at these "desperate" positions of the president or other politicians in America. All the big issues within this politics, such as Israel and the Middle East, have been "bought" in advance. What remains for politics are attitudes at a more micro level; endless subjects of debate like abortion and same-sex marriage are among the most fundamental topics of American politics.

It is interesting from this angle to see that a debate from America on abortion and gay rights has also entered among Turkey's main political subjects. If we take American politics as the basis, we can judge that Turkish politics too has "normalized" with this agenda. Because abortion is one of American politics' most important problems, never solved for centuries and unsolvable. Because what everyone says and will say on this is known. In fact no one is debating on this; each merely states their view according to the camp they belong to. Those who immediately cling to their chronic worries in the face of the debate coming onto the agenda at this level in Turkey evidently know nothing of the world.

Erdoğan Gürmen Hoca, who gave a presentation at the Wisdomnet meeting, drew attention to another face of America, in its aspect that concerns first-hand the Muslims living here, whose numbers are estimated to vary between 7 and 8 million. In this, I learned for the first time of the information he gave. America is the country in the world with the most detainees in its prisons relative to population. And the great majority of its detainees are black. The white/black ratio in prisons is around 1/8.

Meanwhile, about 30 percent of the Muslims in America are Afro-American or African, and among these the spread of Islam happens most in prisons. However, after September 11, the speed of Islam's spread has fallen considerably, contrary to what is supposed or to what some have calculated. Even so, the number of Islamic centers together with small mosques, present in all the states, still reaches 3500.

In these centers Muslims are trying to find an Islamic way of life under American conditions, under the responsibilities these conditions produce. In recent years, particularly through the extraordinarily sincere and self-sacrificing efforts of Murat Güzel and his friends, Wisdomnet has continued on its way, linking this search to the dimension of wisdom.