The Problem with (Contemporary) Moderates

Most of the media's talk during the past few weeks has concentrated on the problem with partisanship in America. However, I tend to think that it is not the partisans in the senate, but rather the so-called centrists who are doing more damage to American democracy.

Senators who are most frequently praised for bipartisan courage are the ladies from Maine, Arlen Specter (until his recent switch) and Bill Nelson. But since when have they cast a vote that they honestly thought would endanger their chances of reelection with their constituencies?

True, Bill Nelson's poll numbers have sharply declined since he sold his vote to Obamacare, but the Nebraska senator did try very hard to ensure that this would not happen--and, therein, is the problem: the centrist senators cast their votes, at least on the most controversial legislation, through a process of institutionalized bribery.

Olympia Snowe, for example, can sell her vote to the Republicans in exchange for a naval base remaining open or to the Democrats for priority high way work on the routes leading to Portland, but this is a sort of centrism that profiteers off partisanship. Were the senate not in veto-gridlock, there would be no space for this sort of "moderation".

This is not to say that there cannot be moderates with guiding principles. There have been. Senators Moynihan and D'Amato and Governors Casey and (Mitt) Romney all took positions that were somestimes more conservative or liberal than the mainstream of their party or in their state. But they were principled. Regardless of what one thinks of the rightness or wrongness of the positions they took, one could rest assured that these positions had their origin in these men's conscience, not their self-ambition for reelection.

Looking Good for the Fall, but Are They Even in Touch with Their Party Members?

It looks like the Republicans are already going to be heading into trouble if they voice too excessively their support for the Supreme Court's recent Citizens United decision. It turns out that the American people are overwhelmingly supportive of McCain-Feingold. And more importantly, Republican voters are in favor of it by a margin of about sixty percent.

Good-Bayh to All That

It is official: Evan Bayh has announced that he will not seek reelection. This may or may not be a wise move. After all, the mood of the country could easily swing in the opposite direction just as quickly as it has, as of recent, swung from left to right. The Republicans aren't particularly trusted right now, and it is telling that they are running not as "Republicans" but rather as "outsiders".

The more interesting question that the Evan Bayh retirement raises is this: President Obama more or less hung Democrats in moderate districts out to dry with his health care and cap-and-trade legislation. Is it possible that Bayh will return the favor and mount a primary challenge against Obama in 2011? It all depends on the mood of the country, but if it continues to shift rightward, I would rule it out.

Ideology really can make smart people stupid:

"There are many theories about the import of Scott Brown’s upset victory in the race for Edward Kennedy’s former Senate seat. To our minds, it is not remotely a verdict on Mr. Obama’s presidency, nor does it amount to a national referendum on health care reform"　

Ｔｈａｔ＇ｓ　ｆｒｏｍ　ｔｈｅ　Ｎｅｗ　Ｙｏｒｋ　Ｔｉｍｅｓ．　In all fairness, though, the same could probably be said about many-a-Republican.

The Obligatory Post on the Massachusetts Thing

No one thought the Sox could win, and they did. No one thought the Republicans could win, and they did. Massachusetts does still have a few tricks up its sleave.

Pat Robertson? Oh no.

Once again, with his Haiti comments, Pat Robertson says something which only succeeds in making him look ridiculous. If this doesn't make people run away from his political endorsements come '010, then nothing will. What I am wondering, though, is who is this hack co-anchor sitting with him? Doesn't she know to pull the camera off him or something when he says something like that?

Avatar: Film Review

At one point during the movie Avatar, I tried to brush away a fly but then realized that it was on the movie screen. This is what 3D graphics can do, and, I must say, the result is quite impressive. So are the shots of the flora and fauna of Pandora, the setting of James Cameron's new space-adventure/Cooperian-romance movie set sometime in the twenty-second century. One can always expect Cameron to outdo himself with all technical dimensions (pun intended) of the work; if only he had someone else to write his screenplays.

Anyone who follows popular culture may have recognized that Avatar has gotten outstanding reviews from most major publications: Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Yorker. But, in what Ross Douthat has referred to as a revolt of the fan-boys and nerds, there has been some blow-back on the internet. This is because, in spite of the film's technical depth, its characters and themes are as shallow as a water drop on oak.

The protagonist is a perfect example of this shallowness: His name is Jake Scully (given the film's ardent pantheism, something like Emerson Spinoza might have been more appropriate) and, apparently, he is a former marine. We don't know much about his service (or even if he was good at it), but the lifestyle appears to die harder than his legs do--in his human body, he's confined to a wheelchair (and, yes, if you're wondering, his skinny legs look more convincing than anything else in the movie). The only back story that Cameron provides is that Scully had a scientist brother who died at some point and that, at one point or another, he was in Venezuela (do I detect a Stone-ism here?)

Perhaps Cameron would object that he does not too overly-humanize the, well, human characters because they represent the assumed Military Industrial Complex of the Robber Barons, Corp. The problem is that when he introduces the indigenous tribe, they aren't really much more distinctive. Scully's attraction to them is predictable (after all, this movie was made after Dances with Wolves and A Man Called Horse) but also incomprehensible, given that there is nothing intriguing--or even attractive--about them. Their platitudinous speech is ridden with cliches one might expect from any Hollywood picture. However, they are unrealistic on a deeper level than their silly dialogue and cat ears would suggest. (They also have a tail, but that's not the strangest thing.)

What is least believable about the tribe is the love that all of them have for nature; this seems much more reflective of the tastes of the bourgeoisie bohemian producer of this piece than any indigenous tribe that has existed in any place in history. Love of nature is a product of urbanization; for those who depend on nature and constantly struggle against its darker side for survival, fear is the default position (and rightly so); it is true that nature yields plentifully, but it does not do so for humanity. To conceptualize of nature--as the Na'vi tribe in the movie does--as a maternal goddess is simply absurd.

To say that nature is cruel is, as Stephen J. Gould has pointed out, somewhat quaint, given that it occupies an entirely different wavelength of moral order; nature is neither cruel nor kind, but comfortably amoral and diverse (though, as Darwin argued in the Origins of the Species, it tends to be fairly intolerant of diversity within species--perhaps the reason why all of Cameron's Na'vi look pretty much the same.) Nature being what it is, humanity is almost a perfect corollary to it for, unlike nature, men progress by devolution rather evolution: the sword is made by the man who can't lift a stone, the bow by a man who can't wield a sword, the rifle by a man who can't pull a bow string and the nuclear weapon by the man who can't shoot straight. Nature is beautiful, as long as it is contained within the consciousness but the humanity which Cameron purges by the end of the film provide, by merit of being fully human, the only compass by which anyone's actions in the film could be gauged as moral or immoral.

Naturally, the most lasting feature of the film will not be these themes but rather the new technology that went into its production and created a fly so real that (as I noted at the beginning of this essay) I tried to brush it away. What can be said for this? Mainstream critics have already said it all so I will only add that I hope that filmmakers of equal technical talent as that of James Cameron and greater storytelling ability will, like that carrion fly I waved at, tear off some slice of inspiration from this production which may be tasty but also as dead as the carcasses which ultimately turn to nothing but a naked skull and rib cage.