The Invisible Counterpoint

Andrew O’Hehir wrote: […] Instead, I’d rather go beneath the surface to look at the structural function of these stories – the role they play in the cultural economy – where I think we can identify even more intriguing similarities. Both “Divergent” and “The Hunger Games” are fundamentally works of propaganda disguised as fantasy or science fiction. They’re not propaganda on behalf of the left or the right, exactly, or at least not the way we generally use those words in America. They are propaganda for the ethos of individualism, the central ideology of consumer capitalism, which also undergirds both major political parties and almost all American public discourse. It’s an ideology that transcends notions of left and right and permeates the entire atmosphere with the seeming naturalness of oxygen in the air. But at least if we acknowledge that it is an ideology, we can begin to understand that it limits political action and political debate, and restricts the heated warfare bet...

Salon's Elias Esquith recently wrote this: With the political world talking more about  the tidal wave of anti-LGBT Jim Crow legislation  popping up in conservative legislatures all over the country, it was only a matter of time before the patron saint of unreconstructed right-wing bigotry, Pat Buchanan, weighed in and set the new standard in the right’s effort to roll back civil liberties in America. Well, the wait is over:  Buchanan’s written a column  and the standard has been set. Using the brouhaha over Arizona’s anti-gay law as a springboard, Buchanan argues that it’s time for America to get rid of civil rights laws — all of them. Granting that it’s “a radical idea,” Buchanan writes, “Suppose we repealed the civil rights laws and fired all the bureaucrats enforcing these laws.” “Does anyone think hotels, motels and restaurants across Dixie, from D.C. to Texas, would stop serving black customers?” he continues. “Does anyone think there would again be...