I believe that Democrats have had a can opener the whole time
But they were convinced it was a bad opener, compared to the nice new one that movement conservatives had assembled. As a result, they ignored it, or even boycotted it long enough for it become a mass of rusty metal, that doesn't work very well, and simply requires some oil, steel wool and a good sharpening.
We have a lot of factions, from the green movement to LGBT issue politics, social justice and Public education, among many others. What we need, more than a can opener, is the ability to get our two hands to work on one action.
The can opener is urban America, and a little political Jujitsu reversing the momentum created by the "Culture War" waged by conservative America (or, as they say, "Real" America) on "the other" America is long over-due.
All of the separate factions of the Democratic Party are united in large urban areas, whether they like it or not, it's where they live. The little blue islands are our home "bases," in a physical sense, and they are in need of the focus of our National Party. They are the fulcrum of the can opener, and, for that reason, are the most obvious cause for building a "movement."
Liberalism primarily evolved out of the city-based "middle classes", based in trade, small-manufacture and the professions--the bourgeoisie, although skilled workers (Tom Paine, anyone?) and even freed slaves (Frederick Douglass) played a part as well. In turn, socialism/social democracy evolved primarily out of the working class, although disaffected members of the bourgeoisie (Marx & Engels, anyone?) played a significant role as well.
I'm writing this diary just over an hour before the premier of season two of Dollhouse. It looks like the new season has at least one new drama that holds some real promise in terms of an overtly progressive narrative framework, and I wanted to say a few things about it before I get all overtaken by the complexity of Joss.
FlashForward is loosely based on a 1999 science fiction novel of the same name. In both, there is a blackout experienced by everyone on earth (well, almost) in which they experience a common period of time in the future. (It's 21 years in the future in the novel, just 6 months in the tv show.) What was it all about? What does it mean? What can or should be done about it? And, in general, just WTF???
It remains to be seen how much the thematic material of the novel will make it into the tv show, but for starters, in terms of progressive narrative preconditions we have:
(1) The fact of a global threat of some sort and shared experience relating to it providing a foundation for potential cooperation and shared intentional effort toward a common goal for the common good. This is all very straightforward.
(2) Not so straightforward, and much more narratively interesting: The main protagonist motivated at cross purposes. As the lead investigator trying to figure out what's going on, he is best served by the hypothesis that it is an accurate picture of what the future will be like. But in his personal life, he very much hopes that it doesn't as (a) his wife sees herself with another man--something she doesn't want to share, but he forces her too and (b) he sees himself drinking heavily, which as a recovering alcoholic is that last thing he wants to see--and dovetails with his wife leaving him.
(2a) I was intensely struck by how this is like the progressive community seeing all these terrible things--global warming being ignored, counter-productive war on terror (now under a different no real name, but still basically unchanged), multiple other failures to even begin to come to grips with problems--which we can just see leading to all sorts of disaster, yet really hoping that we are wrong.
And, of course, there's a deeper level at which this sort of dual consciousness is inherently part of the progressive heritage (see Souls of Black Folks, for one), quite the opposite of the standard conservative action-hero setup, where you just need to slaughter all the bad guys and everything will be all right.
(2b) Anytime the issue of free-will vs. determination gets raised in popular fiction it's inherently progressive, since it involves questioning the basic nature of our capacity for freedom. Bonus points for making it psychologically and dramatically so integral to the core of the show.
(3) Courtney Vance. What more do you want? Well, yeah, Michelle Forbes...
If Lou Dobbs could wave a magic wand and make all those pesky undocumented workers disappear, he'd do it in a heartbeat. And while that might be a triumph for law and order, it would also be kind of a hollow victory--pretty soon our empty stomachs would begin rumbling, and we'd be grumbling:
Who's going to pick our produce?
Who's going to pluck our poultry?
Who's going to chop up and stir-fry our chicken and broccoli?
Who's going to deliver it to our door?
Millions of illegal immigrants make enormous sacrifices-leaving behind loved ones and paying smugglers a fortune--to come to the U.S. and work long hours for low pay doing lousy jobs. You probably don't give that a whole lot of thought when you dial the Chinese restaurant down the block to order your won ton soup and lo mein.
Filmmakers Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou are out to change that with Take Out, a day-in-the-life saga about one of those guys you grab your bag of food from and hand a dollar to before you shut the door and forget his face. The film opened last Friday at the Quad Cinema in New York City, where Take Out takes place, and illuminates the lives of an ignored but integral segment of our population.
Take Out stars Charles Jang as Ming Ding, an illegal Chinese deliveryman who pedals his way through a drizzly day made more dismal still by ruthless loan sharks. Ming's morning starts with a bruising wake-up call from his debtors, who barge in to the cramped apartment he shares with umpteen other immigrants and demand that he come up with $800 in interest on the massive debt he owes his smugglers by the end of the day.
STATE BLOGS
