Stand Up
To watch and listen to the Democratic Party and media establishment scramble to find scapegoats for their loss to the Republican right-wing is to forget that there are two distinct revolutions going on at any given moment. One, the short term one, is political. In the United States it comes to a head every four years and generally it migrates across party lines every generation or so. To focus entirely on the cycles of political power is to fall into the danger of becoming humorless. The post election hysteria of the Democratic establishment is epitomized in an Associated Press feature article prominently featured in our local paper on Thanksgiving. It trashed Michael Moore and all of the "self-absorbed" Hollywood elite, blaming them for creating a cultural backlash that led to John Kerry's defeat. All of the over-the top Bush bashing by wealthy movie stars apparently offended the conservative middle of the road geeks that dwell in the so-called 'heartland.' The heartland, we are to understand, is Iowa and Nebraska and Texas.
If one were to pay too much attention to these breast beating revisionists we'd have to hearken back to pre-World War II Germany. The Social Democrats, much like our Democrats, in the face of a Great Depression, desperately tried to appear socially concerned while protecting every bit of their long standing economic and political power. They actually stood up against the 'extremist' populist movements of the time, playing into the hands of the National Socialists (Nazi) Party who, like our present day Republicans, appropriated the language of class struggle to divide the downtrodden masses from the intellectual leadership of the left.
But, these times are only superficially like that. The right-wing this time has managed to take the political and economic wheels of power at the BEGINNING of a long-term decline, therefore making it harder and harder to transfer blame to the opposition. Secondly, real progressives are more organized than ever before, and this election should have showed them that they are better organized than the establishment Democrats. Third, but most important, the OTHER REVOLUTION, and the greater one, is cultural, and that's ongoing and shows no real signs of going backwards. It must be remembered that almost all of the movies and television shows watched in Iowa, Nebraska and Texas are made by liberal 'elites' on the coasts. So is most of the music and virtually all of the popular literature, including every single magazine we see in every single grocery check-out line. In short, popular culture was, is and will continue to be in the control of left leaning creative people who, one has to admit, are less boring than the middle class. They are the people that middle class children aspire to become. Sure, a bunch of rednecks have taken control of a a lot of very powerful television and radio networks and syndicated columnists. But who really eats this stuff?
The truth is that in America everyone dreams of becoming the elite. Everything in our culture promotes the exceptional over the mundane. Only during and immediately after elections are we told by media promoters that 'real' Americans want only to be boring and ordinary. My message to the west and east coast liberal 'elites' is to stand up and be proud of what you are. All of those people in the middle who've hocked their communities to Walmart and sold their culture to the corporations only to be abandoned for the sake of outsourcing, dream only that they can be smart, creative and part of a prosperous community, JUST LIKE YOU! Instead of humbling yourselves and acting like victims, or pretending to be just like everyone in the mainstream, follow the path of the true American, walk tall and proud and continue to be the quirky, self-absorbed, passionate, creative, weird, exceptional individual that you are.
1:43:09 AM 
|
|
