REAL ART (and politics and culture)

From the American Prospect:

Culture Before Politics

Yet as progressives watched Democrats suffer the worst election loss since the Republican collapse of 1948, they seemed to be back where they started. Just as in 2004, many have blamed the losses on ineffective Democratic campaign messaging. The problem, however, runs much deeper. Electoral and Beltway politics are episodic, short-term, and transactional. Movements, however, are long-term. "Public sentiment is everything," Abraham Lincoln once said. "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed." In other words, movements must change hearts and minds in an enduring way. They must change the culture.

Culture is the space in our national consciousness filled by music, books, sports, movies, theater, visual arts, and media. It is the realm of ideas, images, and stories -- the narrative in which we are immersed every day. It is where people make sense of the world, where ideas are introduced, values are inculcated, and emotions are attached to concrete change. Cultural change is often the dress rehearsal for political change. Or put in another way, political change is the final manifestation of cultural shifts that have already occurred. Jackie Robinson's 1947 Major League Baseball debut preceded Brown v. Board of Education by seven years. Ellen DeGeneres' coming-out on her TV sitcom preceded the first favorable court ruling on same-sex marriage by eight years. Until progressives make culture an integral and intentional part of their theory of change, they will not be able to compete effectively against conservatives.

More here.

The essay goes on to observe how Democrats have for decades been mired in wonky policy discussions, aiming virtually all their efforts at getting candidates elected and legislation passed. Meanwhile, since at least the Reagan era, Republicans have been speaking to men's hearts. The inevitable result is that, no matter how good Democratic candidates and policy are, Republicans ultimately win the day, no matter how bad their candidates and policy are. And don't get me wrong: it's not as though Democrats actually have been offering good candidates and policy; they've been playing on what is now essentially a Republican field since I was a teenager, which has made them constantly water down their ideas, constantly concede conceptualizations about the way the way things are to the GOP. That is, they've allowed Republicans to go crazy on American culture, and it has rendered the Democrats nearly ineffective.

This is probably the thing I hate most about the Democrats. This is also probably one of the main reasons I try to concentrate on politics from a cultural and artistic perspective: that's where the real action is. And the Democrats seemingly want to have nothing to do with it. Until Democrats, and the left more generally, start to look at politics from the culture/arts perspective, they're doomed to fail. I mean, sure, they're going to win some battles here and there, but the war has already been won. People think like Republicans, buy their stupid and easily disproved ideas because that's what has captured their imaginations. Dry arguments won't do it.

We've got to capture the soul.

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