Slavoj Žižek's critical examination of today's liberal-democratic capitalist ideology highlights the phenomenon of “cynical distance,” namely, a position where the individual consciously professes disbelief in relation to the status quo system while nonetheless behaving “as if” he/she really accepts the authority of this system. Unconsciously, such cynical subjects, Žižek maintains, are fervent believers in the ideologies that they overtly claim to disregard. Drawing on Marx, Freud, and Lacan, Žižek scrutinizes the structural relations between cynicism, disavowal, and belief in order to show how commodity fetishism and the attribution of one's unconscious beliefs to others enable one to ultimately accept acquiescence to the reigning state of the situation. However, in both decoupling Marx's descriptive-diagnostic discourse on capitalism from his positive prescriptive program as well as basing his own political thought on the Lacanian notion of the Act, Žižek's thought is itself in danger of falling into the trap of cynical distance.