When FDR said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" he could have been summing up what faces Americans today. The TV news networks are all pushing interviews with Senators and Congressmen (mostly Republicans) who tell us that the Christmas Eve flight bombing attempt, the shutting down of our Yemen Embassy (apparently not abandoned by cut off from any visitors), the killing of CIA people in Afghanistan and other events and rumors of events are reasons not to close Gitmo and to increase military presence in...gosh, how many countries?...Yemen and other spots.
Of the countless movies made since 9/11, this new Batman film might have the most accurate depiction of the political and social climate of the world as it is today. A world largely uncontrolled by law and order, instead run by criminals, who are in turn pursued by vigilante heroes who stand in for a largely ineffective law enforcement. This leads to feelings of great fear and insecurity among the people of Gotham.
In The Dark Knight, Gotham is faced with its most treacherous villain yet: The Joker. Heath Ledger's brilliant and maniacal anarchist clown should be remembered one of the finest movie villain performances of all time. Ledger's Joker eschews all order, whether it is the power of the state or the invisible hand of capitalism. He appeals to a side of humanity more disordered than even the basest most animalistic parts of our minds. His complete unpredictability becomes a power that he uses to control the population of Gotham, much like the specter of terrorism has dominated the American psyche since 9/11.
Batman, our hero, who, in the time between the first movie and this one, has fought to put most of Gotham's big villains behind bars. He's done so as a vigilante and without much support (and a little disdain) from the people of Gotham City. While much of the film focuses on Batman's trying to reconcile the good that he's doing with the hate he incurs from the public and it's elected officials, the film's true protagonist is the people of Gotham City, whose mood, almost like that of a Greek Chorus echoes throughout each scene.
Back on the day Open Left launched, I produced a piece called The Self-Identified Progressive candidate, which looked at how often Democratic candidate websites used the term "progressive." My basic theory was that "if you can't say it, you can't do it." In other words, unless a candidate was willing to as measly self-identify as a progressive, the most popular ideological term in America, it was unlikely s/he would be willing to stand with progressives in more politically important situations once s/he becomes President.
Here is an update on that post, but with a twist. In addition to the number of times each candidate self-identifies as a progressive on his or her website, here are the number of times the word "bipartisan," is used...
Chris went on to compare how frequently Republican candidates used "conservative" vs. "bipartisan" and not surprisingly they were far more eager to be ideological.
I followed up Chris's diary with one of my own, which combined those searches with "Social Security," to see how much this imbalance carried over, both by individual candidates and overall between the two parties. The result was "Social Security And The Ideology to Bipartisanship Ratio". I decided to expand this survey, and cross-check with a number of different terms: Iraq, "terror" and "terrorism," immigration, "health care," "global warming," "climate change," abortion "gay(s)" and/or "lesbian(s)," and poverty. The results of my study are presented in table form, with brief commentary, on the flip.
STATE BLOGS
