What if Bush wins?

Bush has been a boon for many members of the creative class. Not that people needed a war on terrorism to find a reason to deride him creatively. Once he became the appointed president, all creativity broke lose. There's the art, banners, music, essays, blogs, plays, performances, concerts, documentaries, films, books. The list of creative activity goes on and on. If art is a means of communication, then we've been witness to the longest and loudest venting of creative discordia this country has seen in a long time.

Still, I am uneasy. A lot of the work I see out there comes across as reactionary; meaning, it may be art, but in the end, a lot of the work comes as out of a knee-jerk reaction against Bush. This is exactly what Roberta Smith picked up on in her recent article, Caution: Angry Artists at Work

The Republicans have triggered an intense reaction on several fronts, and one of them is artistic. The convention, which opens on Monday at Madison Square Garden, has stimulated the city's sprawling cultural sector at the grass-roots level. Or perhaps it has provided the context in which a grass-roots activism building since the 2000 election could come into the spotlight. Political fervor is being translated into art in mediums that range from painting and sculpture to Web art to political ephemera. At the moment, President Bush and the G. O. P. are the chief art-world targets: no one seems to have a critical word to say about the failings of the Democrats.

One could argue that NYC is awash in anti-Bush or anti-Republican sentiment due to the convention, but I cannot help but feel after the convention is over, the art installations put away, and the votes tallied, all this creative energy will be for naught. If change is about having a different face in the White House and not about changing the politico-economic system that gave us Bush, what if George Bush did win the election and, even worse, by an ample margin?

In AlterNet : Let Them Eat War, Arlie Hochschild makes the point that even though blue-collar jobs are on the decline, Bush could well be elected by a large margin of the 55% of voters who are blue-collar workers and considered the mythical swing voters that decide elections.

A full 49 percent of [men] and 38 percent percent of blue-collar women told a January 2003 Roper poll they would vote for Bush in 2004.

In fact, blue-collar workers were more pro-Bush than professionals and managers among whom only 40 percent of men and 32 percent of women, when polled, favor him; that is, people who reported to Roper such occupations as painter, furniture mover, waitress, and sewer repairman were more likely to be for our pro-big business president than people with occupations like doctor, attorney, CPA or property manager. High-school graduates and dropouts were more pro-Bush (41 percent) than people with graduate degrees (36 percent). And people with family incomes of $30,000 or less were no more opposed to Bush than those with incomes of $75,000 or more.

Hochschild describes in detail how Republicans have turned to the politics of feelings to return to the White House : By using the old corporate standard of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), the myth of patriotism and the Bush charisma to sell a war that is meant to maintain the jobless economic recovery just as it is. Even though the latest US Census Bureau: Income Report shows poverty went up in 2003, "Let them eat war" may well be the ticket to another four years of Bush.

In Get Mad. Act Out. Re-Elect George Bush. , Rick Perlstein makes the point that NYC 2004 is looking a lot like Chicago 1968. Not only are the legal wranglings over the counter-convention demostrations similar but Perlstein suggests the lack of political strategy within the left is about the same :

The War Resisters League, like A31.org, cites a Martin Luther King Jr. quote that includes these words, offered as if a taunt: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue."

It would have taken all of King's powers of Christian love, I think, not to laugh in these people's faces. King would never ever simply say, "We need to do what our conscience tells us is important to do," and somehow leave it at that. King planned his insurgencies with the strategic care of a military general, and with the characteristic obsessions of a top-drawer publicist: no risk of arrest, of violence even when arrest or violence was welcomed, embraced for its communicative power was never left to chance. (Today's protesters revel in their embrace of improvisation, as if it were a good in itself.) And he never left the field of battle satisfied with mere moral victory, that his side had demonstrated more righteousness than the other. He always had a concrete political goal, that concrete goal but [sic] a step toward his continually evolving transcendent goals.

In Chicago in 1968, and in New York in 2004, these are lessons forgotten.

Not only do artists and cultural creatives need to ask themselves, through this flurry of creative energy, what are their "long-term, concrete political goals", but beyond the thousands upon thousands of artistic interventions, how are they strategically important in communicating a long-term progressive plan for political and economic change that transcends political parties.

People get caught up in their righteousness [sic] which is easy to do: Demonstrators do no more "damage" to the Great Lawn than concertgoers. The conventioneers coming to New York are getting subsidized by tax dollars because they are seen as a boon to business, even though the protesters spat upon by the city carry money that is just as green. The city has become a censor. All of these things are true.

Rae Valentine is even right, in a cosmic sense, when she says that "people understand that the so-called chaos of streets being shut down by protesters or even a window being broken is nothing compared to the day-to-day chaos and destruction of people being able to afford housing, or health care. That's where the real violence in the system lies."

But she is not right in the sense that matters: the political sense. "I think people understand," she says. Linger on that formulation. It is only inane arrogance that gives someone the confidence to pronounce that, magically, "people will understand." They might not understand at all. Instead, what they might understand is: "Bush is better than anarchy in the streets." It ain't fair. But if it all goes down as unplanned, there'll be a whole lot more unfairness coming down the pike in the next four years.

We really need to pause on these words because they relate to Hochschild's cautionary tale of electoral reality.

Hochschild built his article upon George Lakoff's work as a linguistics and cognitive science professor and co-founder of The Rockridge Institute. Lakoff has been detailing the success the right wing and conservative movement has had in taking command of the way we speak politics in the United States. They've poured billions of dollars into achieving this and Lakoff finds it frustrating that liberals don't get they need to do the same in order to win back the way we as a country speak not just about politics but about life in the public arena.

They don't get it at all. But they're in a funny position. The framing changes that have to be made are long-term changes. The conservatives understood this in 1973. By 1980 they had a candidate, Ronald Reagan, who could take all this stuff and run with it. The progressives don't have a candidate now who understands these things and can talk about them. And in order for a candidate to be able to talk about them, the ideas have to be out there. You have to be able to reference them in a sound bite. Other people have to put these ideas into the public domain, not politicians. The question is, How do you get these ideas out there? There are all kinds of ways, and one of the things the Rockridge Institute is looking at is talking to advocacy groups, which could do this very well. They have more of a budget, they're spread all over the place, and they have access to the media.

Right now the Democratic Party is into marketing. They pick a number of issues like prescription drugs and Social Security and ask which ones sell best across the spectrum, and they run on those issues. They have no moral perspective, no general values, no identity. People vote their identity, they don't just vote on the issues, and Democrats don't understand that. Look at Schwarzenegger, who says nothing about the issues. The Democrats ask, How could anyone vote for this guy? They did because he put forth an identity. Voters knew who he is.

In other words, we need to ask ourselves, the question many dare not even think : What If Bush 'Wins'?

Hochschild makes a point about the current administration that echoes Walter Benjamin's essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction : The point of Power is self-preservation. Power will not change the political and economic systems that sustain it. Power makes sure those without power find a means to expressing themselves. It is a small price to pay to keep things just as they are. Give them the feeling of doing something about it. That'll divert them from concretely effecting change.

When the political process is not founded in the activity and involvement of people, it becomes a slogan, a sound-bite, a metaphor, a feeling. Politics become an act instead of action. And this is Perlstein's point : All this protesting, counter-conventioning and even artistic interventioning is part of Power's game plan for winning and we are blindly falling for it.

So the question remains, what are the long-term political goals of artists and cultural creatives? What are we to do, regardless of whether Bush wins or loses the election?

I do not purport to have answers but I believe cultural creatives can effect change with how they choose to produce, develop and distribute their work.

For example, when Lakoff says, "Other people have to put these ideas into the public domain, not politicians", I don't just think of the artistic or creative possibilities of this statement. I think of how blogs can circulate more efficiently memes as opposed to static websites. But, and here is where the "lead by example" comes into play --the choice of the software is not enough. The choice of open source vs. proprietary software; the choice between copyright and open-use content; the choice of pay-per-view and open syndication; the choice between "closed" content and "commentable" content; all of these choices are opportunities for advancing progressive social, political and economic practices; at least when it comes to art and cultural production on the web. This is the kind of doing and not just saying that cannot be left to politicians.

Ten thousand artistic interventions are not a bad idea. On the contrary, I believe this unleashed creativity is but the beginning of a real democratic movement for change. The issue comes again to this : If Bush wins, can we take all this creative energy and use it for the structural changes needed to ensure concrete political change? I believe we can --and in the coming weeks I will be highlighting projects and people who are already doing so.

In the meantime, I will march tomorrow and you can certainly find me guerilla dancing around New York City. All for a good cause.

[Visit c u l t u r e k i t c h e n for more of my rants, musings and raves.]

Posted by Liza Sabater at August 28, 2004 11:20 PM | TrackBack
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