The other night my husband and I were watching The Return of the King (I lost track long ago of how many times we’ve seen this movie). Like all great moves, and books, there’s plenty that resonates and will for centuries to come. But the following exchange really hit home this time
Pippin (Billy Boyd): Tell me, Gandalf, is there any hope, for Frodo and Sam.
Gandalf (Ian McKellan): There never was much hope-just a fool’s hope.
Last Tuesday, I refused to tune in to any news. We live on the west coast, so there’s really no point until later in the evening anyhow. But my mother called at seven o’clock, and said that Obama had taken Pennsylvania and Ohio. "It’s looking good." she said. Even then, I refused to hope. I had been refusing to hope for months. That this long nightmare of the G. W. Bush Administration was ending, and would not continue under John McCain, was too good to be true. Not until nine o'clock was I finally able to let go and start dancing around the livingroom.
When I first heard the title of Obama’s memoire The Audacity of Hope, I thought, here’s another one of those titles that sounds good, until you pick at it, and then it doesn’t really mean anything. The other day, after the movie ended, I though about it again, and realized what a profound statement it is. What does make anyone think that anything will get better, especially after an eight-year crime wave?
Yet now, I too, am daring to hope. I hope that Americans have realized at last that we need grown ups in charge, not drinking buddies. I hope that the war against science and reason will come to an end, and we can begin a serious transition to alternative energy (everything thus far has been half-assed). I hope that Obama will once again ban torture, and restore the rule of law, which is what made this country so great in the first place. I hope conservatives will stop acting like anyone with a different opinion is an enemy who must be vanquished; we’re all Americans.
It's funny, because I've made this point in my own work, but before this election I never truly understood it. We're here, so we might as well try to make things better. Heck, I think we must be hardwired to try, and to hope, even in the face of calamity, or true evil, or perhaps worst of all, indifference. I am human, therefore I hope, and try. (I don't care what Yoda says; trying counts).
I also must be realistic. Obama is just a man, albeit a better one than many. I hope our faith in him isn’t misplaced, and that he can get something done, for the first time in a decade. People are eager for improvement, for better schools, for an end to a stupid, wasteful war, for an end to pointless bickering that’s more about the prestige of ones’ own clique than anything else. With all of that good will and energy behind, maybe Obama really can bring this country back to the light. And I hope that now I can get back to the business of writing, without worrying.
Boy, have I got a case of election fatigue. This has been going on for two years now. Two years of fund-raising, speechifying, non-announcements followed by announcements. Scandals and controversies (real or not). Now we’re down to the final week. If I’m wiped out, how must the candidates themselves feel? But a couple of things stand out:
1. This race has brought out some ugliness in people. The other week on NPR a woman said she feared that blacks would start pushing white people off the sidewalks ‘if Obama won’. (She preceded this by saying she ‘wasn’t a racist’). McCain supporters openly yell ‘kill him’ at rallies, while McCain just stands there with that inane, slightly gassy grin on his face. I once had a great deal of respect for John McCain; that’s evaporated in the last year. And when conservatives like Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley (William F’s kid!) throw their support behind the Democratic candidate, the entire GOP is in trouble. Few of them seem to notice. No, God promised them an election win. God knows what will happen if they don’t get it.
Now Republicans use the language of war to describe the election. Weirdly, they also use the language of victim hood, mistakenly believing that ‘persecution’ means not getting your way 100% of the time. They claim to represent the ’majority’ of Americans, but they’re constantly besieged by ‘the Liberal elite’ ( a term no one has ever explained clearly to me). They control two branches of government and most of the wealthy corporations, yet somehow they’re always being picked on. I don’t understand that. I thought only wimps complained of being picked on.
2. Elections are too long and too expensive. This sounds like a Big Fat Duh, but it can’t be said too often. The actual post-convention ‘season’ is much longer here than in Europe, where campaigns last eight to six weeks before elections. No wonder so many people don’t vote; by the time the election gets here, they’re too sick of it to care.
All of this campaigning costs money. Yard signs, placards, bumper stickers, TV ads, those slick mailers printed on that glossy paper in full color, buttons, field offices (even if most of the staff are volunteers). That’s why fund-raising occupies such a prime spot on a candidate’s to-do list. Watching all this, I realized that we’ll never have campaign-finance reform until we have campaign reform. I won’t hold my breath. But I will think of needy millions, for whom some of that cash could have done a lot of good.
Meanwhile, nothing gets done. Millions of people still have no health care, and in the self-proclaimed greatest/richest nation in the world, that’s worse than a disgrace. Roads and bridges continue to erode. College gets further and further out of reach of more and more worthy students. People here go without heat while Iraq sits on a huge surplus-and while the rank-and-file Iraqi still has no clean water. The list could go on for pages.
There have been a few instances of blog-readers (if this blog has any readers) getting annoyed because a writer ‘goes off-topic’. We’re writers, after all, not political pundits.
It’s not that clear-cut. Art and politics are inextricably tangled. You will never have one that’s free of the other. Human beings are political creatures; politics infuses everything we do.
I bring this up now because of two recent developments. The first is the release of a movie that questions the patriotism of lefties. The other is the increasing resemblance between John McCain’s campaign rallies and out-takes from Triumph of the Will.
The movie is, of course, David Zucker's An American Carol (I haven’t seen the entire movie, nor do I plan to). A thinly-disguised Michael Moore is depicted as a terrorist-loving, America-hating buffoon who wants to ban the Fourth of July; he turns into a ‘patriot’ after visits from the ghosts of George Washington and George Patton, among others. In the ruins of the World Trade Center, he finally sees the light and comes to love America and embrace war as the solution to all the problems.
This is all rather muddled. Clearly it didn’t occur to Mr. Zucker that this could be seen as a slam at right-wing paranoia: Oh, look, Lefties disagree with Bush! They must love bin Laden! Real Americans always side with their government! Except that we don’t.
Mr. Zucker says he made the film as an antidote to all the lefty-propaganda coming out of Hollywood, especially from Michael Moore. Except that Mr. Moore doesn’t support al Qaeda, and everything that shows up in his documentaries really happened. (Mr. Zucker complained that ‘prejudice’ made it difficult to get funding for this tripe, but the movie is dropping quickly at the box-office).
And why is Hollywood so full of lefties? Because movies and televison are creative pursuits (at least hypothetically). Creative pursuits don't thrive in places where there is heavy government oversight or oppression. Name any fiction, painting, or film from Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy that has true lasting value (Even the work of Leni Riefenstahl has more value as history than art). Ever try sitting through a Chinese opera written by a government sanctioned committee? All of the true artists in Soviet Russia were in constant hot water with the politburo. Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn paid with imprisonment and/or exile. Shostakovich and Eisenstein managed to keep their lives and some degree of freedom, although both knew that could change at any time. I can’t even imagine trying to create anything under pressure like that.
Which brings me to John McCain. If all of that fascistic, mob-mentality is any indication, what might we expect from a McCain presidency? Especially when his running mate approves of book-banning?
All creative types, from true artist to competent hacks to everyone in between, need to think about this. Think about a government telling you what to write, or banning your work if you refuse. It isn’t that far-fetched. Think of Chile under Pinochet or Greece under the Colonels-two open democracies that lost it all in military coups.
This, of course, is the worst case scenario. That kind of censorship would be more difficult to implement here in America. But it’s a fight I'd rather not wage. If everything I've mentioned continues, I'm afraid we will be waging it.
It is not acceptable to question the patriotism of people who question their government, which, after all, belongs to the people. Nor is it acceptable in a democracy to whip up mob-frenzy in the attempt to get votes. Let's call this what it is: Fascism.
