Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Same Story, Different Ending


Dr. Strangelove (1964) -- Released the year before I was born, this parody of the paranoid style of American reactionary politics already saw all the angles -- of course, this weird scared authoritarian impulse mobilized McCarthy's witch-hunt, was dismissed by Eisenhower and forced to the sidelines by Buckley when it showed its unadulterated Bircher face, was deployed as a white racist muscular baby Jesusoid undercurrent in the frowny-face Nixonian politics of ugly resentment and the smiley-face Reaganomic politics of brutal denial, motivated the whiny white guys to vote for Gingrich's Contract Hit on America, and took over the whole show during the Death Panel Show Us The Birth Certificate Summer of Tea so that now this crazy nasty knot of right-wing ook has come at last to define the fulsome frothy center of the death-cult GOP, the better to be repudiated and decisively marginalized at last by a wholesomely diversifying, secularizing, planetizing America. Bring on the Happy Clappy Hopey Changey, Y'All!

No comments: