Liberal Hollywood

Conservatives and their neo-con progeny are so very fond of accusing Hollywood of liberal bias. This often strikes us on the left as just a mite bit ridiculous—how does the mix of violence and sex that Hollywood sells have a liberal bias? What freaks me out is that when I think about it, I realize that, strangely, inexplicably, conservatives are right. Hollywood IS liberal, and does advocate liberal positions. They notice more than we do, because when they see it, it jars their delicate sensibilities. For us, it doesn't even register. The conservatives are right. Hollywood is liberal.

Not politically, of course. Hollywood as a whole cares about politics not at all. Hollywood is about profit, and, if you want to be generous, every once and a while it's about art too. But nine times out of ten, Hollywood is concerned only with making the most money it can. I’ll not argue the profit motive. They sure aren’t out to spread any ideology, unless there’s damn good money in it. And yet.

Wikipedia defines liberalism thusly: "Broadly speaking, liberalism seeks a society characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on the power of government and religion (and sometimes corporations), the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports private enterprise and a system of government that is transparent. This form of government favors liberal democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law, and an equal opportunity to succeed." The theme to focus on here is that of equality. Political liberalism "includes the extension of the right to vote to women, non-whites, and those who do not own property," and cultural liberalism "focuses on the rights of individuals pertaining to conscience and lifestyle, including such issues as sexual freedom, religious freedom, cognitive freedom, and protection from government intrusion into private life."

Liberalism is very much concerned with breaking down barriers. The liberal dynamic is the process of creating more freedoms, fewer restrictions, and more possibilities. Things like segregation, homophobia, and classism are all anathema to liberalism. They are all obstacles to be overcome.

So how does this have anything to do with Hollywood? Try this mind experiment: Try to think of any movie you have seen, ever, that did not have as one of its themes overcoming some social barrier, be it race, class, culture, sexuality, etc. Take your time, I’ll wait.

Persuasive, huh? I’ll not go out on the shaky limb of absolutism and say that there aren’t any movies that don’t have overcoming inequality as a theme, but even if they exist damn are they rare. Especially in romantic comedies, this undeniably liberal trope is nearly inescapable: racism, classism, cultural bigotry, homophobia, all are cast as obstacles to be overcome by our plucky hero and heroine. How often is the invasive government, the manipulative corporation, cast as the bad guy in thrillers? "liberalism seeks ... limitations on the power of government and religion (and sometimes corporations)." It is telling when you are watching a movie about the Crusades and your protagonist is an athiestic liberal humanist. It is uncanny, when you stop to look: Hollywood movies are built around what are essentialy liberal archetypes of overcoming inequality and fighting for freedom, even when those positions are anachronistic in the context of the story.

I have no idea why this is so stunningly pervasive a trend. I doubt that Hollywood is even aware that they are doing it. I could hardly believe it, when I first noticed it. And yet--there it is. Hollywood is advocating liberal values. Go figure.

Truth in Advertising

The simple fact is that being right and sounding right are two very different things, and the Democratic Party has too long thought that having good ideas is in and of itself a winning strategy. Unfortunately, you also need to convince the American public your ideas are good, and in this area Democrats are simply pitiful.

It is a matter of education versus persuasion. Republicans are very good at sounding right, at persuading with superficialities—but there's nothing to their positions other than kneejerk reaction. There is not depth to Republican positions, not anymore. Once upon a time, Republicans had policy too. No more. Whatever works, whatever gets the job done, whatever helps them win—that’s their only standard now. They have sold out their principles in favor of winning.

Democrats need to counter that by educating. The only way we can win, the only way we can win, is by making facts the issue. We need to make actually being right, as opposed to sounding right, matter. Republicans only win by keeping people from engaging critically with the issues. If we could get into even the same ballpark as them in terms of persuasive ability, we would wipe them off the mat.

This is where someone chimes in about egghead democrats trying to educate being the whole problem in the first place. To which I reply: there is a difference between education and condescension. There is a difference between lecturing at someone, and engaging with them. We have all had good teachers, and we have all had bad ones. We all know what a world of difference that makes—their knowledge is the same, but how they convey it is just as important, perhaps more. We need to teach effectively and persuasively, match our good policies with a persuasive conviction and enthusiasm.

Some will argue that in order to balance out the Republican’s disregard for truth, Democrats need to follow suit. They will say that educating the American people is a lost cause. Only for a short while, they say, just until the Repbulicans are defeated. Then we can go back to being principled. In considering whether it is possible to adopt a win-at-all-costs, opportunistic attitude without fundamentally and irrevocably damaging the Democratic party, this question keeps coming back to me:

Do you believe that every Republican is an amoral sociopath motivated purely by a desire to win, or do you think that, by and large, they are relatively principled individuals who have been convinced by a minority of amoral sociopaths that it is necessary to (temporarily, of course) set aside those principles in order to regain unfairly-lost power?

Personally, I think the latter. Remember, Republicans used to stand for something--a lot of the same Republicans who are still in power. Somewhere along the way they were convinced that winning, at least this once, was more important than preserving their principles. And they still haven't found their way back.

Are Democrats somehow less susceptible to the lust for power than Republicans? I think history suggests otherwise. Do you really think we would be able to put our amoral, successful tactics away once Bush was gone? I have my doubts.

"Port-gate"

My reactions go as follows:

-The deal doesn't actually pose any new security threat, beyond the administration's continued cavalier attitude towards port security.

-Bush is threatening a veto because a) one of his pals stands to make a lot of money off of this deal and/or b) he damn well feels like it. I'm going with "and."

-The huge media uproar about the whole mess is driven by the anti-Arab fear-mongering of the past five years, not any serious concern about foreign governments running U.S. ports. See: China, Britain. It's kind of poetic, seeing Bush's terror tactics biting him in the ass like this.

-There are legitimate security issues to be raised here concerning whether or not we should be out-sourcing national security to foreign nationals of any stripe. This is where I would like to see the Democratic response coming from--it would segue nicely into a more general discussion of Bush's utter failures re: actual Homeland Security.

-This is not, as some are suggesting, some intricate Rovian plot to give Congressional Republicans some media distance from an increasingly lame-duck president. That said, if they play their cards right, it could work like one. That is why the Democrats need to stake out some territory here right away, to keep the Republicans from recovering from this fumble.

Choosing the Terrain

Republican...personalities, for a lack of a better word, have gotten extremely good at setting the parameters of the debate before their opponents (i.e. us) even show up. By the time the debate begins, we are already at a huge disadvantage--we spend the whole time just trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Unbeknownst to their opponents, they have decided to play a decidedly different game than the traditional form of debate that their opponents (i.e. us) think they are getting into. Instead of debating facts, they are debating opinion. Instead of constructing arguments out of logic, they construct them with emotion. Emotion, being more primal than logic, catchs their opponents (i.e. us) wide open and unprotected, cutting us off at the knees. It is the debate equivalent of bringing a baseball bat to a chess match.

Think about how the media has been reduced to a tawdry he said/she said pseudo-parity. Facts are no longer the focus of the story: what is important is how everyone feels about it. And if they are shouting their opinion louder than we are, they win. Nowadays liberal or conservative isn't about what your beliefs happen to be; all that matters is whether or not you like Bush. And if you don't like Bush, then any facts you may have don't matter, because facts only matter as a way to express and defend one's opinion. The very idea of opinions deduced from fact is anathema. Any attempts to break this narrative are met with the metaphorical baseball bat to the head.

And here's the REALLY shitty part: we can't bring to bear any baseball bat of our own. One of, perhaps THE fundamental tenet of our political beliefs is the importance and primacy of fact. Once we match dirty trick with dirty trick, we have already lost. Remember, we are the reality-based community. If we give that up, how are we different than them? We will have become Eastasia to their Oceania. This isn't a fair fight; and it wasn't designed to ever be one.

If we ever want to get America back, we need to disarm the right-wing. They can only wield that bat because the audience, AMerica, has been carefully conditioned to think that bats are okay in a chess game. It is a carefully maintained illusion, and we need to break it. Instead of sitting there and moving our chess pieces about as they smack us around, we need to call them on it. We need to start asking, "What the hell is a baseball bat doing in a chess game?" "What does my personal opinion of Dick Cheney have to do with the fact, the fact that he shot a man in the face?" Remember, the true battleground here is in the minds of the viewers: they can smack us around all they want, but if the American people stop thinking that that is fair, they will lose.

Testing Testing One Two Three

mic check hah

with this mic device I spit non-fiction
who got the power, that be my question
the mass or the few in this torn nation
the priest, the book, or the congregation?