What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
HOW HADITHA HAPPENED; WHY IT WILL
HAPPEN AGAIN
"You
live like an animal. You learn to like killing. .. Hate civilians.
Can't trust the bastards. You hate taking prisoners. You'd rather
kill them. Why?" Read Vietnam vet Marc Levy's extraordinary
Primer on the Whys and Wherefores of PTSD and understand what
is happening in Iraq. PLUS
Andrew Lack on the incredible frauds of the bottled water industry.
Why you should drink tapwater out of a glass and save your money
PLUS Jeffrey
St Clair on the deadly secrets of America's oldest bomb factory
PLUS Chris Reed on Eros
and Militarization: how Japan's sexpot schoolgirls fit into the
right's Re-Arm agenda. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers
each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the
subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
You have noticed, to be sure, how our
nation's politics gravitates to the binary position year after
year. Webster's dictionary defines "binary" as "something
made of two things or parts." So, parties, politicians and
voters are overwhelmingly either characterized as conservative-right
wing or liberal-left wing.
I've never thought the binary
approach was very useful; it is too abstract, too far from the
facts on the ground, too stereotypical of variations within each
category, and too constricting of independent thought that is
empirically nourished.
What helps keep binary descriptions
going, however, are desires for convenient narratives. So here
is one to ponder.
Different aspects of our culture
attract either mostly conservatives or liberals or, at least,
are identified with one or the other political philosophies or
self-characterizations.
Liberals are more identified
with popular music-the more risqué or hip-hop, the more
the label is applied. So too with movies on abuses of power by
corporations and government. The China Syndrome, Norma Rae, Grapes
of Wrath of years ago. Too many to recount today out of Hollywood.
When it comes to humor, the
leaning is liberal whether on the monologues of late-night entertainment
hosts, the John Stewart, and Stephen Colbert Shows, Saturday
Night Live or the Al Franken Show. It's harder to poke fun at
established power from a right-wing standpoint.
Documentaries are hands down
in the embrace of the liberal-progressive producers. Recent titles
include "The Corporation", "An Inconvenient Truth",
"Who Killed the Electric Car?", "This Land is
Your Land", "The Take" and, of course, "Fahrenheit
9/11".
The larger, more reported political
websites seem to lean toward liberal-progressive, the rumor-mill,
Matt Drudge Report withstanding. Daily Kos and The Huffington
Post are on the ascendancy.
On the other side of the binary,
the conservative-corporate worldview dominates radio talk shows
and cable talk shows. Just list the hosts Limbaugh, Hannity,
O'Reilly (though less so), and all the way down the ratings ladder.
The most politically motivated
and get-out-the-vote people in the neighborhoods, when the chips
are down, have been from the conservative communities. Ask the
Democrats who had to rely on imported activists (Ohio in 2004)
while their Republican opponents relied on people living in the
Buckeye State.
Politically-active church pews
are filled more with conservatives than with liberals. These
are the people who have partially taken over the Republican Party
and who supply the motivated cadres before election day.
Symbols of patriotism
often shorn of substantive followup belong to conservatives.
The flag, singing anthems, parading on the 4th of July, Memorial
Day and Veterans Day belong to the people who describe themselves
more on the right side of the binary, who would more often describe
themselves as conservatives. So too is the case with membership
in the American Legion and the VFW. So too as well with membership
in the Main Street service clubs Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions
International.
It is fair to say that since
1980, conservative candidates have been winning overall more
than have liberal candidates. From the presidency to the Congress
to the state legislatures to the governorships, this trend has
been much reported.
Moreover, the liberals who
do win, like Clinton, Lieberman, Bayh and assorted governors
are often more corporatists than liberals on major subjects such
as foreign policy, military budgets, the Federal Reserve, corporate
welfare, real regulation, tax policy and consumer protection.
It could be that more often
than is normally recognized, the self-described conservative
voters spend more time personally interacting with one another
in situations where "social" can easily move to "political."
More often than the liberal
voters, they participate in activities associated with clubs,
and churches where person to person conversations abound.
The above areas of liberal
domination involve more passive, spectator, celluloid or "cool"
internet occasions. And after a while a chronically humorous
way of looking at politics becomes a distraction, even though
it may be a style that avoids commercial media censorship.
Of course, money in politics
comes more easily to corporatist candidates, as does the media.
For example, extreme right-wingers get on talk shows, receive
media attention or have their own profitable shows like Pat Robertson
does. Who are the extreme left-wingers, who receive any press,
other than an occasional newspaper picture showing them being
dragged away from a protest at the IMF, World Bank or toxic dump
site?
The lesson? Politics, even
in an age of electronic supremacy, is still strongly moved by
the person-to-person, conversational, affinity, communal groupings
in our society. Big TV ads cost money and the corporatists can
buy them over and over again. But the word of mouth from friend
to friend, relative to relative, neighbor to neighbor and worker
to worker is not something anyone wants to sell short.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
