Consumerism, The X Factor, and Dictatorship.

The capacity of "think tanks" to deliver utter reams of drivel is most certainly a main driving for of Bullshit Britain.

It could even be a major part of the "creative economy" they espouse, those like Tony Giddens whose speciality in gobbledegook is a speciality of his and all those who supported "rebranding Britain" in 1997.

One of the most odious examples is the pathetic Charles Leadbetter, he of the proposterous neoliberal tract Living on Thin Air about how Britain would live in a post-modern knowledge economy and who wrote late last year of how the X Factor talent show could rejuvenate politics.

Its interesting, as the X Factor is considered more important by many Britons than global heating, resource wars, Peak Oil or any cultural pursuit that involves having some form of inner life, that Leadbetter fails to understand that it applies precisely to democracy under New Labour.

But , of course, being praised by the slimy spin doctor Peter Mandelson as a visionary thinker, rather than a purveyor of fly-by-night pseudo-philosphies akin to New Age and "Third Way" crap, meant not criticising New Labour.

The X Factor recipe is known to political scientists as "authoritarian deliberation" ? the public deliberate on a set of options decided by a dictator. Whatever the public ends up choosing, the dictator always wins, just as whatever act we choose as the X Factor winner Cowell's record label is bound to win.

And this is now what passes for serious political analysis in The Guardian.

The point this half wit does not get is that in the UK we have a similar choice with "NuLab" and "NewCon" which genuflect to the money markets and offer slightly different consumer packages instead of allowing 'the electorate' to choose different policies.

"Cowellism carries strong echoes of Margaret Thatcher's authoritarian populism. Vladimir Putin skilfully deployed authoritarian deliberation to legitimise dictatorial rule".

Well, Putin is actually not a 'dictator' but a market authoritarian and populist who runs a nationalist government that is termed a sovereign democracy. Anyone who thinks Putin is Stalin or a 'dictator' lacks basic knowledge. Or is just a feeble propagandist.

And why hark back to Thatcher ?

The X Factor represents the 'entertainment economy' and it's epitomised by Tony Blair's tawdry Cool Britannia, the erosion of civil liberties and give the plebs their doltish drivel so they do not question what their rapacious manipulators are doing in their name.

Anyway, apart from that, the article raised interesting question posed by the late JG Ballard: could consumerism lead to a new form of Fascism ?

On reflection we can only be thankful that most politicians do not watch X Factor and still fewer understand its appeal.

Politicians do know about these kinds of things. That's what creepy little shits like Derek Draper are there to do: depth psychologise the national mood and script some balmy medoicre platitudes about Great Progressive Britain, the "feelgood factor" etc etc.

Politicians have aides who tell them to spout banalities, as William Hague did when he commented on the nation's mood concerning the seriousness of the death of Deidre Barlow's husband in the cliche ridden and mind rotting Orwellian prolefeed that is the soap opera Coronation Street.

In any case part of the problem is that politicians as politicians today do not matter that much. They are interchangeable and expendable as they reflect nothing more than corporate interests and the rule of money. As Ballard wrote, elections are nothing more than a folkloric ritual.

The real power of choice has gravitated to the shopping mall where the most important choice is what brand of sweatshirt the wholly empowered consumer is entitled to buy to consolidate his being.

Higher levels of consumer satiety breed a lethal boredom from which only the promise of voyeurism, cruelty, sensation and even violence can deliver them-hence the attraction of the Stag Nights, noisy pubs with telescreens, G 20 "Protests" and other ways of working up a sweat.

First written on Friday, 11 December 2009 and rewritten today.