Another response to Libertarianism = Anarchy:

Correspondent Khan and I began a discussion on movies that quickly segued into politics:

>> That being the case, /theoretically/ (assuming McLuhan is right and not crazy), Republicans /could/ dominate in Hollywood. <<

One could make the case that conservatives already dominate Hollywood. Whatever their private political leanings, they make movies that appeal to Joe and Jane Six-Pack—i.e., middle America. This bottom-line mentality—giving people what they already know and like—is fundamentally conservative.

Ignore all the artsy and independent movies and concentrate on the mass-market movies that reach large audiences. What do you have? Comedy, romance, action/adventure, horror. All of these genres tend to concentrate on the personal rather than the political. All of them tend to end with the social status quo unchanged.

Take a blockbuster like "Revenge of the Sith." Lucas supposedly inserted some sly anti-Bush rhetoric as Palpatine envisioned an empire. But what is the meta-message of this movie? That the world is divided into two camps: good and evil. That life is a constant battle between fleets and armies and soldiers. That good triumphs through the force of arms, not through the force of moral superiority. (If Obi-Wan Kenobi isn't the best fighter of his time, the entire course of "Star Wars" changes.)

Needless to say, this is a profoundly conservative message, no matter how you dress it up. The liberal alternative would be to have some Jedi knight throw down his light-saber, refuse to fight further, and instead take up non-violent protest a la Jesus. Don't look for that to happen in any mainstream action/adventure movie.

Khan replies (7/26/05)

--- "Robert V. Schmidt" <robschmidt@compuserve.com> wrote:

>> One could make the case that conservatives already dominate Hollywood. Whatever their private political leanings, they make movies that appeal to Joe and Jane Six-Pack—i.e., middle America. <<

Right. Total agreement. The thing is, IMO, they tend to "get it wrong," because bottom line, we (in the entertainment industry) tend to be Liberal. We simply don't think like Joe and Jane Six Pack, so oftentimes, our attempts to appeal to them come off as "mocking" them in some way. There's a slight irony, IOW, to our attempts to do Joe and Jane Six Pack movies. My thinking is that if true Right Wingers like Bruce Willis and Schwarzenegger and Ron Silver and Tom Selleck and so on, chose projects, they'd tend to pick movies that were more like what Joe / Jane Six Pack were looking for, and would theoretically do better at the box office.

>> Needless to say, this is a profoundly conservative message, no matter how you dress it up. The liberal alternative would be to have some Jedi knight throw down his light-saber, refuse to fight further, and instead take up non-violent protest a la Jesus. Don't look for that to happen in any mainstream action/adventure movie. <<

And I just wanted to say that this was very well put. I hope you work it into a column or something some day. Goes into an ongoing personal dialogue I've been having of the lack of clarity of what's "Liberal" and what's "Conservative" -- that is to say, both ideologies are defined by their opposition (can't remember who said it, but I'm thinking of the famous quote "the Jew is the invention of the Anti-Semite"), so it's very difficult to communicate to Jane and Joe Six Pack what either is. My ongoing battles against Conservatives have centered around the idea that Rush Limbaugh isn't revealing some objective "truth" that only he knows and that Liberals are trying to conceal. 90% of the time he's giving SPIN -- /his/ spin, that he defines as truth, which is pretty much what we do on NPR as well.

I would love for the average person to be able to look at either ideology objectively and decide for him/herself, "this is what I believe." Instead, you have too much emotive language that creates the whole desire to pick a side in an "us v. them" struggle that assumes, as you pointed out, that there are "good guys and bad guys," and not just differences in opinion.

-Khan
Think It Would Improve Discourse In General, Across The Board, To Look At Life This Way

Rob replies (8/21/05)
>> And I just wanted to say that this was very well put. I hope you work it into a column or something some day. <<

That's why I save my outgoing e-mail. Perhaps I'll use the thought in a future Web page or newsletter.

>> Goes into an ongoing personal dialogue I've been having of the lack of clarity of what's "Liberal" and what's "Conservative" -- that is to say, both ideologies are defined by their opposition <<

Well, there's an ongoing dialog among liberals about explaining what we're for as well as what we're against. I think we as a party know what we're for, but we haven't articulated it well.

The conservatives have articulated what they claim they're for: small government, judicial restraint, family values. But they're hypocritical on all three issues. What they actually want is much different than what they say they want.

>> 90% of the time he's giving SPIN -- /his/ spin, that he defines as truth, which is pretty much what we do on NPR as well. <<

You could say most commentators, both liberal and conservative, put their spin on the issues. The difference is, conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and (especially) Bill O'Reilly claim to operate in a no-spin zone. In contrast, liberals routinely acknowledge contrasting viewpoints and shades of gray. We're all about understanding the complexity of an issue, not rendering it in black and white.

Khan replies (8/23/05)

--- "Robert V. Schmidt" <robschmidt@compuserve.com wrote:

>> Well, there's an ongoing dialog among liberals about explaining what we're for as well as what we're against. I think we as a party know what we're for, but we haven't articulated it well. <<

Yeah, I was hearing about that the other day. For me personally the problem is that IMO, Liberalism is very diverse -- people like me, for example, are pretty moderate, and aren't big on certain issues (in my case, environmentalism, for example) as others are. That's why I still thik the Black community /should/ be the model for the Democractic Party, if the concern is winning elections -- they're as Liberal as the day is long, but they're by and large religious and otherwise socially Conservative. IMO, there's a reason why Barack Obamba /annihilated/ his competition in Illinois on the night John Kerry and every other Democratic candidate got their asses kicked.

>> The conservatives have articulated what they claim they're for: small government, judicial restraint, family values. But they're hypocritical on all three issues. What they actually want is much <<

How so?

>> different than what they say they want. <<

What do they actually want?

>> You could say most commentators, both liberal and conservative, put their spin on the issues. The difference is, conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and (especially) Bill O'Reilly claim to operate in a no-spin zone. In contrast, liberals routinely acknowledge contrasting viewpoints and shades of gray. We're all about understanding the complexity of an issue, not rendering it in black and white. <<

Also well put. More than that, we don't argue that we're stating fact, nine times out of ten, and Conservatives do.

-Khan
At My Dream Job

Rob replies (8/23/05)
>> IMO, there's a reason why Barack Obamba /annihilated/ his competition in Illinois on the night John Kerry and every other Democratic candidate got their asses kicked. <<

I'm for whatever it takes to win elections. If the Obama model proves to be a winner nationwide, I'd say go for it.

Hillary seems to be following this model, at least to some degree. She's playing up her moderate positions on social and religious issues.

By the way, Democrats won in 2004 at the Congressional and state levels. The overall results produced a modest shift in the Republican direction, not a landslide. There was no shift at all in California, which remains solidly Democratic.

As in 2000, a good candidate like Bill Clinton would've slaughtered George W. Bush. Bush was lucky to go up twice against a loser in the Mondale/Dukakis/Dole mold. None of these candidates inspired their supporters.

>> How so? <<

The government is at its largest ever, with world-record deficits. That's the opposite of small government, and it's totally under the conservatives' control. They're intentionally enlarging government to reward their backers in the military-industrial complex.

The courts used judicial restraint in the Schiavo case and conservatives screamed like stuck pigs. The Supreme Court intervened actively in the Florida recount, stopping it when there was no need to, and conservatives applauded. They care only about the results, not about their so-called judicial philosophy.

On stem cells, abortion, gay marriage, assisted suicide, and right-to-die issues like the Schiavo case, conservatives are telling us how to run our families. In every case their position hurts families by reducing their choices and making people suffer needlessly. How is hurting people ever a "family value"?

>> What do they actually want? <<

Small government if it's controlled by Democrats; big government otherwise. Judicial restraint if the issues are liberal; judicial activism otherwise. "Family values" if the values reinforce the Biblical/traditional notion of families; no family values if they help the rest of us.

In short, they're all about exercising power, not about achieving their stated goals. This is patently obvious when you look at how Bush is governing. He blatantly lied on the campaign trail when he said his goal was to unite, not divide. He doesn't try to achieve consensus on an issue; he plays to his conservative base and hopes to eke out a 51-49% victory.

Too bad we kicked his ass on Social Security and we're kicking it on Iraq. I'm glad his philosophy is to stay the course and not worry about the polls, since his present course is into the toilet. We can only hope he drags his whole party down the drain with him.

Related links
America the conservative
America's cultural mindset

Join our Native/pop culture blog and comment   Sign up to receive our FREE newsletter via e-mail   See the latest Native American stereotypes in the media   Political and social developments ripped from the headlines

. . .