Socrates: Picture American voters dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern.
Conceive them as having their arms, legs, and necks fettered, so that they remain in one spot, able to look forward only.
Conceive of their chains secured tightly to mainstream media propaganda, student loan debt, precarious employment, and medical debt, so that they are never able to turn their heads.
Glaucon: All that I can see.
Socrates: Do you agree, dear Glaucon, that everything they know about American politics originates from the images cast on the cave wall in front of them?
Glaucon: Most certainly, Socrates.
Socrates: Imagine now, Glaucon, a wall behind our fettered voter-prisoners, and a source of light emanating from a fire burning higher up behind them.
Socrates: Imagine that this fire is fueled by heaps of burning cash. The fire is tended ceaselessly by corporations and billionaire oligarchs, who dump billions of dollars in cash onto the heap.
Glaucon: By Zeus, I can see it, Socrates.
Socrates: See also, then, political consultants and political candidates drinking wine with the oligarchs in our cave.
Glaucon: By the god! It’s a wine cave, Socrates!
Socrates: Follow me further, Glaucon. These consultants and political candidates carry past the top of the wall implements of all kinds that rise above the wall.
Socrates: Finger puppets of human images, which cast shadows on the wall before our voter-prisoners.
A puppet show of citizens engaging in democracy. Also shapes of congressional chambers and elected representatives conducting the political work of the republic.
Glaucon: A strange image you speak of, Socrates. And strange prisoners!
Socrates: Strange, and yet like to us, Glaucon!
If our voter-prisoners could talk about politics among themselves, do you imagine that they would speak of anything other than the shadow images cast before them?
Glaucon: How could it be otherwise, Socrates, if they were compelled to hold their heads unmoved throughout life?
Socrates: And yet these political images they discuss are but shadows cast from the fire onto the wall in front of them?
Glaucon: Necessarily.
Socrates: And if we could unfetter our strange voter-prisoners so they could leave the wine cave to see the true light of day, what do you suppose they would see Glaucon?
Glaucon: By Zeus, Socrates, they would first discover that what they took for democracy was simply gas-lighting by plutocrats. Second, upon leaving the wine cave they would discover that the entire world is burning thanks to rampant and unconstrained global warming.
Socrates: Like to us, Glaucon!
