Waking Up

As Bush's poll numbers slide, I sense growing energy on the part of those who disagree with his policies. Of course, there is growing energy on the part of the regressives, too--Rove talks openly of "finally burying the Democrats once and for all", and there is great danger that may come to pass. After all, the Democrats have been brain dead for years, with the exception of the small cadre of New Democrats led by Clinton. Let's be clear--the Democrats have taken a lot of stupid positions (opposing free trade, opposing the use of stock options, ending the draft after Vietnam--did they really think it would end war?), but on life or death issues like the environment, the war in Iraq, and now the teaching of science in schools, they have been more right than wrong. Today they are the only opposition standing in the way of complete disaster. So it is critical they get fired up.

It is striking to think back to the way political discourse used to be, and to realize how we have changed. Commentators like Limbaugh, Hannity and Drudge have inured us to hate and vitriol. Anyone who disagrees with them has been bludgeoned into polite passivity. Things have gotten so bad that the intolerance of the religious right is not even on the table for discussion--it is the rest of us who are having to defend ourselves against charges of intolerance, despite the truth that all we want is the right to think for ourselves.

Sometimes the RR are so rabid it is almost amusing. Look at their recurrent war on Disney--perhaps the most effective agency ever, for spreading American norms and viewpoints around the world. The RR have gone after them relentlessly, for the terrible sin of providing equal benefits to their gay employees. Never mind that Disney is a purveyor of the kind of bland, homogenized, mindlessly positive messages that the RR would prefer in all their art (for an example, read Michael Medved--an advocate of American Stalinist art if there ever was one). Ironically, the greatest source of traffic to Disney theme parks is our own Red States. Chew on that one!

And the war on Hollywood! Here is a community which churns out movies that portay America through relentlessly positive, idealized images, and it is not good enough for the zealots. The rest of the world considers Hollywood movies to be American propaganda. How is it our zealots see Hollywood as anti-American? Just what do they want? I am certain it is not more content--that is what the Europeans do, and aside from a few college students in bastions of "communism" like Boston and San Francisco, most Americans find it offensive.

Those of us who consider rationality a source of light have been under vitriolic and unrelenting assault for as long as I can remember, and we are paying a price for not having taken it seriously before. Some did not take it seriously because it did not seem possible that the most advanced country in the world could be taken over by troglodytes. Others looked the other way because they cynically believed that the troglodytes would vote for them without extracting a price. We had all better wake up before we really lose for good.