The Silent Ones of the West – Folha de S. Paulo, November 19, 1972

 

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

 

Speaking to the entire nation shortly before ending his campaign, Nixon outlined his ten-point program, which I summarize below.

Imagine the effect of each item in this summary on the centrist and conservative electorates:

1. Peace with the world in a world of peace. Establishing an era of friendship and cooperation among all peoples. Uniting humanity in a new alliance against its common enemies: poverty, adversity, and disease; 2. Abolishing discrimination based on race, sex, and religion; 3. Eliminating hunger, disease, and drug abuse; 4. Fostering good schools; 5. Prosperity: fair taxes, full employment without inflation; 6. Restoring and protecting cities and the environment; 7. Progressively abolishing crime and corruption; 8. Freedom and self-determination; government closer to the people; 9. Pluralism and openness; 10. Strong families and uninhibited patriotism.

This list of goals seems designed to dazzle centrist conservatives. A staff of skilled propaganda experts could not have imagined anything more appealing.

The presidential candidate added to this program all the prestige inherent in his high office and the advantages that power naturally confers on those who wield it.

Therefore, it was natural that he would bring to the polls all or nearly all of the voters whose support he sought to win.

* * *

In the United States, what could be called the right wing has little electoral weight. Besides the center, the only major political force is the left.

On the left, George McGovern was as attractive a candidate as Nixon was to the center. I will refrain from reproducing his program here, not least because, for leftists, who are adventurous by definition, programs are much less important than they are for serious-minded centrists. The leftist electorate is drawn in proportion to how much it senses communism in a candidate. Roughly speaking, McGovern had calculated this dose well, because, while perhaps a little too intense to attract unwary centrists, it was nevertheless strong enough to excite leftists. Therefore, it would have been natural for McGovern to bring the entire left to the polls.

In short, almost the entire electorate should have voted.

This was all the more plausible given that the last election campaign was the most expensive in American history, costing $270 million. The propaganda was therefore spectacular.

In short, nothing was lacking to draw the entire nation into the great and peaceful contest.

Nothing, really, except the interest of the voting public.

With a total of about 110 million registered voters, and given that only 77 million of them voted (these data were obtained from the United States Information Service, USIS), it can be concluded that approximately 30% of registered voters did not vote!

Furthermore, according to the press, with 140 million Americans of voting age and only 110 million registered voters, it can be deduced that 30 million Americans did not register to vote. Although there were many reasons for this abstention, the gap indicates a significant degree of disinterest.

That said, I ask my reader: how can this double track of disinterest be explained? Obviously, because a transformation was unfolding in the deep, silent layers of the American masses, one that politicians and experts failed to notice or interpret correctly.

Propaganda is wearing thin as it becomes omnipresent, uninterrupted, and overly exciting. Politicians have worn themselves out even more than propaganda. For example, during the election campaign’s peak, California television stations interrupted their regular programming to broadcast an interview with Kissinger about the Vietnam War. Viewer protests by phone showed such disinterest that the stations had to cut the interview short: not even Kissinger is interesting anymore!

* * *

A pocket of disinterest is forming at the heart of the agitated, noisy, and chaotic American society. It is a vast pocket that has already driven a significant number of voters away from the polls. It is a silent disinterest that has revealed its strength only through omission.

What is the cause of this phenomenon? Let us say, first of all, that it is not an exclusively American phenomenon. Its scope is universal. It can also be felt in Brazil.

For this very reason, it would be futile to seek a local explanation for it. Only a universal cause could have produced it.

Listening to this apathetic silence as it presents itself in our country, and taking it as a sample of universal silence, I believe I can identify some explanatory factors.

First of all, there is immense fatigue. At every moment, people receive news that either dazzles or frightens them, but in any case leaves them feeling a sense of vibration. At every moment, too, a song or slogan is thrust into their ears. For any purpose, they are confronted with statistics or a questionnaire that reveals a new problem and asks for their opinion. At all costs, they are forced to “participate” in everything. Modern people are thus called upon to live an intensely collective life. Docile, they vibrate with all the news, listen to all the songs, absorb the slogans, examine all the statistics, and worry about all the problems.

But from the depths of their souls, a feeling of maladjustment, anguish, and emptiness gradually emerges. This is because, before being raw material for sociological or political propaganda, man is a rational and free being with an inner world. This inner world is either cultivated with love and care or transformed into an internal jungle from which the most unexpected ghosts emerge. Deprived of his inner and personal center of gravity by excessive “participation,” man goes mad.

To defend himself, he loses interest in everything, falls silent, and withdraws.

In Western society as a whole, these silent people are something like the Church of Silence in the communist world. Not because they are silenced by police violence, but because no one notices, understands, or represents them. Only the noisy have citizenship. Marginalized, they remain silent.

But that’s not all. There is immense perplexity among the silent ones in the West. The farandole of crazed ideologies, the frenzied dance of thunderous contradictions, aggressive shamelessness, and delirious costumes all raise a question in many people’s minds, one few dare to express because it is not “modern,” yet it torments many: where will all this lead? What cataclysms are we being dragged into?

The silent ones are not merely tired. They are perplexed and bewildered.

Are they on the margins of life?

I don’t think so. They represent what remains of common sense in humanity. Contemporary life is on the margins of common sense.

Such is, in my view, the deeper meaning of this striking advance of silence in the West.