“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals;we now know that it is bad economics.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
TALKING POINTS
As we approach the 2002 elections, each issue of the Uncommon Denominator will highlight a particularly resonant theme in American political culture. These are themes that cut across the ideological spectrum and across a variety of issues. What they all reflect is a widely held, deeply felt, set of beliefs or values on the part of the public – and therefore represent a powerful means of shaping debate on public policy. This month’s topic: Security.
For obvious reasons, the overriding political issue of the last year has been security – both national security and economic security. It is a remarkable paradox that the citizens of the world’s wealthiest and militarily strongest nation are showing feelings of deep insecurity: When and where will the next terrorist attack occur? How will my retirement account weather the next corporate scandal? Is the government doing all it can to protect my well-being – and what does that really mean? It is the insecurity of the king of the mountain, of those who by virtue of their success have the most to lose – like the glutted Roman general dimly fearful of assassination or reassignment to the Germanic frontier. At the same time, many Americans have immediate, more personal reasons for feeling insecure: unemployment, inadequate health care, discrimination, or poor local schools, to name just a few.
A desire for security – in the broadest sense of the word – may help to explain why President Bush’s approval numbers remain high, despite the fact that most of his policies remain unpopular and that the campaign against terrorism has met with only limited success. People need something to believe in, and when even baseball and Martha Stewart have been badly tarnished, the patriarchal figure of a “stern but caring” president seems an inviting place to repose our faith. In that sense, Americans’ insecurity might be likened to that of a privileged yet nervous child, seeking fatherly strength from one who will protect the home(land) – confronting intruders, admonishing the neighbors, reassuring us of our worth and safety. Though this country was born of a revolt against patriarchal authority, the desire for father figures has played a central role in our national culture, reasserting itself in times of crisis. Often those figures have been Presidents; but they have also included sports heroes (Joe DiMaggio), journalists (Walter Cronkite), preachers (Billy Graham), local politicians (Rudolph Giuliani), and others.
President Bush has two important advantages in this regard. One is institutional: our system of government has evolved to permit a strong executive, which means that all the ceremonial trappings and the real power of the office can be brought to bear in establishing his fatherly authority. The second is Bush’s personal inclination toward moral and philosophical simplicity. That can be more comforting than trying to negotiate a complicated reality with all its complicated problems and complicated solutions. Bush’s forte is that an analytical, thoughtful approach to interconnected systems and interdependent relationships is not his forte.
But actual security – on which psychological security has to rest – requires both us and our leaders to address the real complexity of our geopolitical and economic circumstances. We cannot play checkers (to borrow a useful cliche) in a world designed for chess, and to the extent that simplified political rhetoric produces simplistic approaches to the challenges we face, that is exactly what we are doing. The desire for security is natural and healthy – but not if it inhibits understanding. Thinking long-term, and acting in the here and now, have to go hand in hand. If we try to avoid the complexities of functioning in today’s world, we may find ourselves as individuals and as a nation less secure in the long run.
WIT AND WISDOM
U.S. Fast-Food Chains Agree to Voluntary Cheese Limits.
Fearful of the prospect of class-action lawsuits, seven of the nation's largest fast-food chains have voluntarily agreed to place cheese limits on their own sandwich items. "With Americans becoming increasingly health-conscious and litigious, the restaurant industry felt it necessary to protect itself with a self-imposed cheese cap," said Paul Conklin, president of the National Association of Fast-Food Retailers.
– parody, fresh from The Onion. Read more.
QUOTED!
“In contemplating college liberals, you really regret, once again, that [“American Taliban”] John Walker [Lindh] is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals by making them realize that they could be killed, too. Otherwise they will turn out into outright traitors.” – Conservative author Ann Coulter, CPAC conference, 2002.
EYE ON THE RIGHT
What Would Jesus Do? Maybe start his own movie production company. Since the late 1990s, conservative evangelical production companies have released several surprisingly successful movies nationwide, using mainstream cinematic genres, familiar actors, popular music, and sophisticated special effects to promote a right-wing political agenda.
This represents a tactical change in the Christian Right’s cultural struggle with Hollywood. The days of Christian boycotts and picketing are over, according to Producer Matthew Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Gener8Xion Entertainment: “Instead of doing something like a protest and organizing 25,000 people to set upon Universal Studios over here,” Crouch told the Los Angeles Times, “just make a movie and support it and vote on it at the box office.” The strategy seems to be paying off. Crouch’s 1999 end-of-times thriller The Omega Code, starring Michael York, was the year’s #1 independent film, grossing over $14 million. Its sequel, Megiddo, a dramatization of the battle between God and Satan described in the Book of Revelation, was released shortly after the terrorist attacks last September and earned $6 million in four months.
Now, the Christian Right movie business, inspired by the success of Omega Code, is beginning to compete on Hollywood’s own turf, vying for the hearts and minds (and pocketbooks) of American movie-goers. Among the offerings:
- One Day in May (Double-Edged Entertainment). Soon to tour the film festival circuit, this youth-oriented anti-abortion melodrama is touted as “Gen X Breakfast Club meets the ANTI-Ciderhouse Rules.” Although pitched as a “debate” about abortion, the film’s website contains only extreme anti-feminist and anti-choice propaganda linking abortion to pedophilia, crime, drug abuse, and suicide.
- Left Behind (Cloud Ten Pictures; grossed $4.2 million). Based on the best-selling book series by Moral Majority co-founder Tim LaHaye and conservative evangelical Jerry Jenkins, this right-wing interpretation of Biblical prophecy is billed as an “X-Files type thriller.” The object of its paranoia? Omnipresent, satanic, world-government conspiracies. TV actor Kirk Cameron stars.
- Hometown Legend (Jenkins Entertainment; grossed over $96k). Produced by Jerry Jenkins and released by Warner Brothers, this saga of a high school football team called the Crusaders is set in contemporary small-town Alabama. Its focus on “faith, football, and family” harbors a nostalgic longing for a simpler, more conservative era (i.e., the Reagan years).
And more are in the works. As audiences for these films grow, mainstream movie companies are taking notice. Recently, Artisan Entertainment announced that it has acquired the North American rights for the upcoming Jonah—A Veggie Tales Movie (based on the hugely successful children’s cartoon promoting a “Judeo-Christian worldview”). The creator of Veggie Tales, Paul Vischer, does not grind the same ideological ax as some other Christian producers, but he does share their evangelistic mission. “What media can do is affect our entire culture on a massive scale,” Vischer told Home Life magazine. “My goal is to take our entire culture and push it toward God. My long-term goal is to reintegrate the religious core of America with the media lifestyle of America.”
CHECK IT OUT
Do S.U.V.s bother you? Do you resent not being able to see traffic in front of them when you’re caught behind them? Are you concerned by the fact that their bumpers are at about the same height as your head? Perhaps you have more philosophically or politically informed objections: they contribute to global warming; they enthrall us to the Middle East; they symbolize gluttony....?
If not, please skip to the next section. If so, you might want to check out the following:
Earth on Empty. A guerrilla team that “tickets” S.U.V.s. Their faux “violation” notices, which resemble parking infractions, are intended to open people’s eyes to the destructiveness of these oversized vehicles. Many of those ticketed react with anger, but some have responded positively – and the idea in either case is to stigmatize S.U.V. ownership as a morally questionable behavior. You can order tickets through their website, or write to Earth on Empty, P.O. Box 400561, N. Cambridge, MA, 02140.
Friends of the Earth. They operate a site called http://www.suv.org/, where one can buy anti-S.U.V. bumper-stickers (e.g., “Support OPEC. Buy an S.U.V.”), or send a ready-made postcard to automakers which reads: “Next time I shop for a vehicle, I would like to buy a car with the lowest emissions, highest fuel efficiency, and cleanest production processes technologically possible. Please provide affordable clean green cars for consumers like me as soon as possible.”
Our New York readers might be interested in Stay Free Magazine, which issues tickets to S.U.V.s in the Big Apple. The various possible infractions on their tickets include everything from “endangering other drivers” and “polluting twice as much as regular cars” to “compensating for lack of manhood” and “holing self up in two-ton metal fortress.” Order online at http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/suv.
For the more serious-minded, a useful resource is the Green Book, a publication of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy that provides information about the energy consumption and exhaust output of a variety of vehicles. Even if you’re not in the market for a new car, pass it on to people who are. They can find it online at http://www.greenercars.com/.
READY TO GO
Helping people communicate with their elected leaders or with the media is a central part of how the Commonweal Institute plans to contribute to a vital democracy. This month, the Uncommon Denominator offers a sample letter-to-the-editor on the continued deforestation of the Amazon basin.
The Commonweal Institute claims no proprietary rights over the text of this letter. Feel free to use all of the text verbatim, or portions of it, as you see fit – or you might just use the letter as a starting point for your own piece.
“Dear Senator/Representative ________________:
The ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest is not only a moral obscenity but a tangible threat to the well-being of people around the globe. It is time to do something about it.
In Brazil, the rainforest is disappearing at the rate of more than 6,000 square miles a year: about the size of Connecticut. Even so, the government – as part of a massive development program called Brazil Advances – has plans to build a paved highway through the center of the forest. Although Brazil has instituted a radar system to help monitor illegal development in the forest, it’s not at all clear that the government is committed to enforcement. It is clear that commercializing the forest for short-term gain will result in an incalculable tragedy.
Why does the Amazon basin matter so much? Because its rainforests are the lungs of the world. They are the primary means of regulating the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is rising with every passing year. That means that although most of the Amazon is located in Brazil, it belongs, in a moral sense, to all of us. We need to question whether Brazil’s sovereignty should continue to shield its destruction of the rainforest any more than the sovereignty of Rwanda shielded the massacre of Tutsi or the sovereignty of Yugoslavia shielded the massacre of Bosnians.
So what should the United States do? Reward Brazil when it takes positive initiatives. Help it to achieve a program of sustainable development. Impose penalties for raping the world’s rainforest. Set an example by reducing our own environmentally destructive activites, by taking sustainable development seriously, and by championing, rather than subverting, international agreements that will benefit all of us in the long run.
For the sake of future generations, please raise the priority level of these matters. We’ve heard a lot about “preemptive” action against terrorist regimes. An equal if not greater challenge is to preempt the irreversible loss of an invaluable natural treasure.”
HAPPENINGS
The Commonweal Institute would like to welcome several new members to its team. The latest addition to our advisory board is Jeffrey S. Karan, Managing Partner of Woodside Capital Partners, a technology investment bank that provides merger and acquisition advice, outsourced corporate development, and financial strategy to visionary, high growth companies. Previously, Mr. Karan was the founding CEO of OneDemocracy.com, an Internet e-commerce company. Our new full-time Associate in Menlo Park is Dave Johnson, formerly the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Gobe Software, a start-up high-tech company in Portland, OR. Finally, the Uncommon Denominator is thankful for the volunteer contributions of Dwayne Eutsey, communications coordinator for a non-profit health-care company in Maryland (and an amateur Twain scholar, peace activist, and student of world religions), who researched and wrote this month’s “Eye on the Right” segment.
Radio exposure. On August 26, CI’s Director of Development, Katherine Forrest, gave an hour-long interview on the Women's Voices program (hosted by Page Prescott) on KZYX, an NPR station in Mendocino, CA. A day earlier, President Leonard Salle gave a half-hour interview on KPFA, a Pacifica station in Berkeley, CA. Mr. Salle’s interview will be available on our website later this month.
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© 2002 The Commonweal Institute
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