Written by Paulina Ukraine’s
Yesterday, I was trying to navigate the overwhelmingly crowded aisles of King Soopers in search of a carton of milk smaller than half a gallon, when suddenly my eyes caught sight of something that I never knew existed: powdered mashed potatoes.
There they were, nonchalantly leaning against hundreds of other sachets with different flavors and varieties: bacon, “chicken-y flavor,” and so on. I picked one up and turned it over. On the back it read: “Made with real potatoes!”
Authenticity is so easy to find these days. Or, rather, not as easy to find as it is to invent; to slap the labels of “real,” “authentic,” “natural,” or “honest” onto absolutely anything, whether it deserves the title or not. In a culture where you can go into a supermarket and find over 200 varieties of dinner that you can make with only water and a microwave, lack of choice is not the problem. The problem is that choice not presenting itself for what it is, not being honest about what it’s really made of.
This past Monday was the day of the Iowa caucus. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz overtook Trump by 3.3 percent, but on the Democratic side, the gap between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was much smaller; Clinton led by only 0.3 percent. According to an infographic by the New York Times, a large number of democratic voters diverged over what mattered to them the most in choosing a candidate: electability, or honesty and trustworthiness. While 77 percent of Clinton’s supporters consider electability the most important factor in choosing a candidate, 83 percent of Sanders’ supporters consider honesty the most important trait.
The current image of modern-day United States revolves around consumerism. As I walked through the aisles of King Soopers, I experienced sensory overload from the abundance of choices I had. Every packet, carton, and bottle screamed at me, telling me to choose it because it was “hand-made with care in the valleys of Alabama” or because it “contains 20 percent more Vitamin C” than its competitor.
I picked up the overwhelmingly Vitamin C’d bottle of orange juice and brought it to the check-out counter, where the girl didn’t ask me anything other than, “cash or card?” And why should she? She is only here to earn money, and most likely as is everyone else who had anything to do with producing the bottle of juice I am holding. Nobody in the headquarters of the juice company realistically cares how much more Vitamin C I get; they care about overtaking their competition, getting more money, and thus ensuring the successful continuation of the market economy. The values that humanity theoretically holds in such high esteem, honesty and integrity for example, only come into play on the labels and in the PR campaigns of these products.
Is it so surprising, then, that Sanders was only 0.3 percent behind Clinton on Monday? People have slowly begun removing the “consumer” from their identity, and have started realizing that it’s not how many choices you have, but what those choices are, that matters.
Sanders identifies himself as a “democratic socialist,” and that terminology puts a lot of people off. Since the rise of the Bolsheviks, the term “socialism” has carried negative connotations for many Americans. However, according to the OED, socialism is “a theory or system of social organization based on state or collective ownership and regulation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange for the common benefit of all members of society,” with “common benefit” of all members of society playing a key part in that definition.
Socialism undoubtedly entails less choice even in its democratic form –– Sanders has said that he wants to implement Medicare-for-all, which would severely impair the current market-based system of health care, thus giving the consumers little or no choice about what sort of health care they receive. But, even though in this scenario you as a consumer may not end up having many options, everybody will have access to free health care; physical health will become an option for the 29 million Americans that are currently without health insurance.
Is this potential decrease in choices so scary, then? I don’t know about you, but I would be happy to live without 20 percent more Vitamin C or having my powdered mashed potatoes taste like chicken if there was some common benefit to all members of society, and not those just lucky enough to have a choice.