A Poetics of Resistance

"Yes. I think it’s that they chose to create a myth in which they rooted their story. I’m very interested now in the deeper psychology of change. As Democrats, we don’t have a champion for change, but change is coming to people faster than they know what to do with. The question I think for a lot of Americans is what do you hold on to? Where do you stand? Where do you take your stand? Sure. People resist change even when they seek it. Everybody wants to look like a supermodel or an Olympic athlete, but nobody is doing the stuff that would actually get them to look that way because it would require a lot of change. So even the most desirable change we don’t chase after too hard, let alone adapt to change that we didn’t ask for. I think we have to look at other countries, other cultures, and at how they use their ancient stories in a modern context. That’s what I’m most excited about. Understanding the Zapatistas in particular, I wanted to pick a provocative book so that people say “what the heck?” and maybe they’ll go look at it, because the book isn’t about the insurgency, it’s about the poetry – and the poetry actually did a whole lot more than anything they did with their very few weapons. In fact there are many, many bigger armed rebel forces in the world, but nobody with a bigger imagination. I think so. I think that’s a big part of Barack Obama’s success. I think it’s a big part of the Tea Party success. I think Barack Obama embodied the kind of melting pot, big salad myth, but more importantly in its strong form that’s expressed as e pluribus unum . When he says we don’t have any red states, we don’t have any blue states, we’re the United States of America, that’s not a statement of fact, it’s a statement of aspiration – an invocation of our founding myth. Exactly. And the fact that we fought a war over that principle – are we one country or are we two? And so he’s standing there at that moment in a mythic posture, invoking the founding incantations of the republic and you get goosebumps even remembering it. That’s a very powerful gesture. Then you have the Tea Party doing a very similar thing, invoking an American value of liberty and opposition to tyranny, and you saw a very strong reaction. Americans fought a war over liberty as well, so our two big wars kind of face off each other – Obama representing e pluribus unum and the desire for us to be one country, and the Tea Party imagining that there’s some freedom and liberty that is imperilled, and some tyranny that must be opposed. In fact, there’s no threat of tyranny from the federal government, but there is a need for a populist uprising – not against mythical government elites that are trying to hijack the economy, but the reverse. There’s an actual corporate elite trying to hijack the government. Citizens United is a much bigger threat. If there’s a threat to liberty, it’s from Citizens United. It’s from the corporate sector trying to grab the government, it’s not from the government trying to grab the corporate sector. But the implication of the myth mobilises people. I think that progressives spend a lot of time talking about policy, cap-and-trade, the public option and the subcommittee vote, all that kind of stuff, when I don’t know if that’s really what moves the country."