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"You Know, We're Standing on the Doorstep of a New Millennium": Hollywood and Politics

By Steven Lloyd Wilson | Posted Under Think Pieces | Comments (18)

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There must be elections coming up because Hollywood is reaching an upswing on its conversating about the politicking. Alec Baldwin hasn’t quite threatened again to leave the country if the election goes the wrong way, but he has been busy with American Airlines, so I’m sure that as soon as he finds time that he’ll get to telling us why the Republican Party is the current incarnation of fascism. Staying on target, Jon Voight and others have nobly kept up the campaign to remind us that the Democratic Party is both fascist and communist, with all the oblivious cognitive dissonance of a fifth grade bully chanting that his target’s mother is both fat and anorexic.

Movies themselves rarely get politics right. Of course, they rarely get anything right, which is why thousands of words are spilled every day ripping them apart from various angles. But the problem with films about politics is similar to the problem with films about romance. I wrote once that romantic comedies are pornography of the short cut. They focus everything on those fantastic moments of romance without any regard for the work that makes those moments more than flashes in a pan. They fetishize the moments at the expense of the years.

Political films fall invariably into the same trap. Whether cynical or optimistic, liberal or conservative, they hone in on critical junctures: the big speech, the temptation of corruption, the fiery debate, and of course the granddaddy of them all, the moment of election.

But political films don’t understand the import of that moment, of what makes an election matter. It’s in the interests of story to either play up the election as being between good and evil or, in the case of the cynical film, to argue that it doesn’t matter which of the bums gets the nod. The core though always rests in how the victory turns, when in fact what really matters is the moment after.

It doesn’t matter so much what we do when we win, as what we do when we lose. Democracy isn’t so much about elections or freedom or even apple pie and baseball. It’s not about the people being wise, or about the process somehow being a magical way of ensuring that the best leader rises to the top. Democracy is about losing.

There’s always talk on both sides about how at some point, enough will be enough, and the guns will come out. I’ve had people close to me say the world be better off if someone would just shoot Obama, and the same about Gingrich (though never Romney, the poor guy can’t even muster that kind of passion). It’s always said as if it would be a necessary evil, that crossing such a line would be the sacrifice necessary for a greater good. It isn’t though, it’s power, but it’s the fake sort, it’s the kind that kills what you’re trying to save.

It’s not that democracy is weak, but that it’s fragile, it’s an accepted peace pact between everyone who might hold power in society. It’s an agreement to walk out of the office when the rules say that your time is done. And every person who thinks that it would take bravery to break that rule, that it would be some sort of moral stand to refuse to yield the mantle to the other side is missing the point. No matter what the motivation is, no matter how convinced you are that it would be the end of the world if a contrary election result is allowed to stand, know that no leader can destroy democracy by picking up power, only by refusing to set it down. The moral courage of resistance is nothing compared to the moral courage of acquiescence. Every brute with a group of thugs at his back for the last three thousand years has had the moral courage to take power. The fact that entire societies have the moral courage to give it up is nothing short of a miracle.

The political film I want to see is the one that illustrates that, that revels in the moment of loss. Because being willing to lose is what makes us different.

Steven Lloyd Wilson is a hopeless romantic and the last scion of Norse warriors and the forbidden elder gods. His novel, ramblings, and assorted fictions coalesce at www.burningviolin.com. You can email him here.









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Comments

Boy do I like the way you write.

Posted by: twig at December 14, 2011 4:57 PM

Well said, up to a point. I think you give too much weight to the more extreme elements on either side - I have heard of few, if any, serious people advocating that it would be "some sort of moral stand to refuse to yield the mantle to the other side." Incumbents may do all sorts of distasteful, fraudulent, or corrupt things to influence the electorate to stay in office, but once the election is over, has anyone said "I refuse, for the good of the country, to recognize the results of the election?"

Posted by: Greedy at December 14, 2011 5:02 PM

Well said. I would also like to see that movie.

Posted by: Socraz6 at December 14, 2011 5:09 PM

... has anyone said "I refuse, for the good of the country, to recognize the results of the election?"

I thought that was Bush in 2000.

Posted by: Tonka at December 14, 2011 5:31 PM

Tonka, that doesn't really hold. As anachronistic as it is, the electoral college is the way we elect leaders in the USA. By verdict of the Supreme Court, Bush won the electoral college vote. Now, there are certainly legitimate arguments to be made about why that was a bad ruling (or should even have been ruled on at all), but none the less, the Supreme Court's word is the law of the land and it was followed by all parties involved.

Posted by: Socraz6 at December 14, 2011 6:20 PM

@Tonka: no, Bush won the electoral college vote. He won the plurality of votes in enough states (all but two of which assign electoral college votes on winner-takes all basis) required if not the overall popular vote. Besides, he wasn't an incumbent so doesn't apply to what's being discussed in the article.

Posted by: Martin at December 14, 2011 6:21 PM

Conversate is not a word.

Posted by: jeaux schmeaux at December 14, 2011 10:14 PM

Well recently the former prime minister of the Ivory Coast, laurent gbagbo refused to step down after an election, citing fraud and corruption in the process. That led to a civil war, thousands killed or displaced. But thats not exactly something any election in the US can compare to

Posted by: mike at December 14, 2011 10:15 PM

When Obama was elected, people in my neighborhood literally ran outside and danced in the street. (I live in inner-city Memphis.)

A political movie with a huge build to the victory that ended with the deflated balloons on the ballroom floor would be awesome.

Posted by: The Mutt at December 14, 2011 10:39 PM

Coming out of self-imposed exile/lurkdom to share that while at a law school event with Supreme Court Justice Breyer, who was not a fan of the decision on the Bush re-election, he said that that decision was one that shows part of what makes America great. Not the decision itself; but the fact that once it was decided, it was accepted, acted on, and, although grumbled about, American Democracy moved on. He said he got calls from foreign friends telling him seeing that kind of reaction from the populace is what makes America that beacon of hope we all still want to believe we are when we drop the cynicism for a minute. I think the above Ivory Coast example is a good example of what can go wrong when we don't have a belief that our systems will work, no matter how much hatred we may spout about the people in them.

Idealistic? Yeah. But I still loved hearing it.

Back to studying for exams.

Posted by: leuce7 at December 15, 2011 12:07 AM

Nice job Steven! Bravo!

Posted by: Melody Be at December 15, 2011 1:20 AM

The movie has been done. It's called "The Wave". There are acutally two, one US TV version from the 80es and a rather new German full length film.

You should rather read the book, though. The movie's not that good.

Posted by: FabMax at December 15, 2011 7:21 AM

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that will just be 'spectators' and ignored.

When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

NationalPopularVote

Posted by: toto at December 15, 2011 12:01 PM

Nice.

Posted by: Michin70 at December 15, 2011 12:19 PM

Very nice Mr. SLW.

Leuce7 has a point. In the US we pretty regularly manage peaceful transitions when some others would not. SLW nails why, I think - our mutual non-aggression pact that says "this is how we'll decide things together." We tend to respect that agreement.

I think there's three parts that let us respect our agreement enough to tolerate "change we don't believe in." First, the government can do some things, but not others. We don't have an *unlimited* democracy. So the knuckleheads, you know *those* people, can't do too much harm, at least under the rules. Second, our electoral process is biased to protect minorities of opinion. More on that in a bit. Third, we have an agreed way to change the rules if they aren't working.

@toto mentions the NationalPopularVote, which would be a rule change. Gripes about the electoral college come up every time there's a close election, past or anticipated. Contrary to intuition, having the electoral college doesn't narrow the contest, it broadens it. More precisely, allocating votes in chunks broadens the *opinions* that must be reconciled to get elected.

Chunking voting keeps things interesting the same way at bats, innings and games in baseball keep every pitch interesting or points, games & sets in tennis keep the tension on. It's hard to run away early & make the rest of the game irrelevant. Similarly, it's hard to run away with the election early and make the rest of the country irrelevant.

Having a few "Battleground states" is actually a symptom of the electoral college system working more like a direct election, not less. In a direct election there wouldn't be any battlegrounds & anyone outside the 50% plus one vote wouldn't matter at all. If the electoral college system worked perfectly, they'd all be battlegrounds, and we'd all have a voice. This seems backwards, but math is often like that.

It turns out a guy - OK a physicist working at MIT, but still mostly human - got curious & ended up developing a whole new area of mathematics to figure this out. Here's the story:
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/math-against-tyranny

Look, the price we pay for being protected from those other guys doing any damn thing when they're wrong is that we get held up doing any damn thing when we're right. The price we pay for having our minority preference tolerated and even considered is, well, those people also have some influence when they're the minority.

Slowing things down & spreading them out sounds bad, but do you really want American Idol-style voting to decide the spasm of the moment? We'd have Justin Bieber in the White House. Then Ke$ha.

Posted by: BierceAmbrose at December 15, 2011 2:39 PM

Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. That majority of electoral votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC wins the presidency.

National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don't matter to their candidate.

With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere would be counted equally for, and directly assist, the candidate for whom it was cast.

Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in the current handful of swing states. The political reality would be that when every vote is equal, the campaign must be run in every part of the country.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%.

Most voters don't care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was directly and equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans consider the idea of the candidate with the most popular votes being declared a loser detestable. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.

NationalPopularVote

Posted by: toto at December 15, 2011 3:21 PM

Yes, that's the NPV and direct election argument.

Again.

Heard you the first time.

Look, there's no more point in getting all emergency spun-up about having an electoral college than there is in going all Steve Dallas(*) after discovering that there are godless communists within 100 miles of both US shores. We all know what happened, and it wasn't good(**).

It's actually a pretty good rule of thumb - when somebody wants to stampede you into something, all startled and twitterpated, shenanigans are most likely afoot. People who tell you only one side of an argument are not to be trusted. People who prefer not to let a crisis go to waste have an agenda. It's exhilarating as hell, and you're being jerked around by your adrenaline addiction.

Take a deep breath, and let's work through *all* the consequences to maybe making a change in the electoral system. This isn't nearly so exciting as declaring an emergency, but doing hasty stuff gets us into decade-long occupations on the other side of the world, or has us passing 2000+ page pieces of "legislation" nobody's read in the dead of the night. When we declared an emergency, Iraq & Afghanistan had been there for a long time. We'd been having nationalized health care-envy for decades when the other thing happened.

Nothing was going to go away if we thought things through for a bit. Like maybe having communication, occupation & exit strategies before you invade. (I know, crazy.) Or reading the thing before you have to issue - ?how many? - waivers because the rules you just invented don't work for piles of people. Lower income working stiffs, mostly. If it's that all-fired important, let's get it right.

Changes to the rules of the game, warrant *more* scrutiny not less, least we disrupt that cautious truce SLW so eloquently described, the one that lets us govern ourselves at all. Bamboozle or stampede people into a change & they'll reject the outcome. This, BTW is one benefit of all those pesky anti-democratic checks and balances in the US System. It's relatively hard for a plurality or even a slight minority to *run over people who think differently.*

So, read the article I linked, and if you're up to it read the stuff it references. There are *several*, *very specific consequences* to chunking things up in elections. *One* of them is occasionally declaring a winner who didn't win the popular vote (and not by much.) Then, if you want to propose a change, *address all the consequences*, including *the advantages of the current arrangement that we'd give up with your new plan.*

I'll note in passing that your second NPV post makes a direct-election argument for direct elections. So, piles of people agreed in some fashion with the *one* side they heard, says the guy advocating that solution. More important, numbers aren't an argument.

The US Constitution wasn't ratified directly but in chunks of people - colonies. Same with the EU (with some ratification shenanigans that they've been paying for since.) *Why?* as in *what was gained?* Think that through and you could figure out the up-side of chunked elections even without doing the actual math. Or read The Federalist Papers to get it spelled out in words.

None of this makes the electoral college the better choice. I am saying that sudden disgust at a surprising outcome that's been that way all along is a poor reason to make a hasty change. I am saying that stampeding people into a change explaining only half the consequences only pisses them off, later.

If anyone other than @toto cares to hear it, I'll fisk the abundance of factual errors, misrepresentations, and sleight of definition in the last post. Otherwise, no point in responding to a shill an advocate. Godtopus, I hate political operatives.


(*) Steve Dallas - a somewhat dim, hopelessly reactionary character from the consistently brilliant Bloom County, which everyone in the whole world should memorize. DeathTongue forever!

(**) Steve Dallas' discovery that the previously mentioned godless communists were just off the US shore, as they had been for decades, precipitated The Great LaRouche Toad-Frog Massacre, Penguin-led civil defense drills, and at least one unfortunate Noxzema incident.

The Steve Dallas Problem is memorializes (for me) the reactive need to *do something* - *anything* - about a fact that's been there all along, and with no regard for consequences. For Godtopus' sake, Steve's over-reacting inspired the mobilization of a heavily armed Rabbit & Groundhog.

When you declare "Something, must be done!" there's no telling what will happen.

Posted by: BierceAmbrose at December 15, 2011 10:40 PM

If anyone other than @toto cares to hear it, I'll fisk the abundance of factual errors, misrepresentations, and sleight of definition in the last post.

I'm in. If for no other reason than I don't think I've seen anything fisked before, and the voyeur in me is curious.


Indirect election of the President keeps the contest from being even more of popularity contest than it already is. If anything, I'd prefer to see an even greater disconnect from the Public's passions, especially during the nomination process (for instance, Lincoln would never have been President under the current way of choosing party nominees).

I'm inclined to chime in further, but anything I'd add would be parroting - poorly - BierceAmbrose.

Especially this:

Contrary to intuition, having the electoral college doesn't narrow the contest, it broadens it. More precisely, allocating votes in chunks broadens the *opinions* that must be reconciled to get elected.


Posted by: Greedy at December 16, 2011 10:32 AM