From Grand Theft Politics: Should Democrats look to video games for inspiration? -

In a new book, _Dream_, NYU media professor and political activist Stephen Duncombe laments that progressives have become … well, tedious. The people who built the New Deal and led the civil rights struggle are now engaging in old-fashioned, top-down political practices.
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If progressives ever want to set the national agenda, Duncombe insists, they must embrace what he calls dreampolitik, a politics that “embraces the dreams of people and fashions spectacles which give these fantasies form.” With the exception of street activists at the far fringes—he praises Billionaires for Bush, Critical Mass, and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping—progressives remain convinced that “their sense of superior seriousness will win debates, convince the public, and lead them back into the halls of power.” Talk about fantasy! Witness the last presidential race, when stagecrafted spectacles that associated President Bush with military prowess trumped the sober-sided efforts of John Kerry to win debates and votes.
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How can progressives invent a political process that figuratively and literally involves us?
Duncombe’s answer is something he calls the “ethical spectacle.” Unlike the unethical kind of spectacle, which conceals a rotten state of affairs, and which demands passivity and acquiescence from spectators, an ethical spectacle promotes progressive ideals of egalitarianism and inclusivity. It models at the level of form what progressive politicians promise in the content of their speeches: demonstrating the ideals of its participants, none of whom are relegated to the role of sign-toting spectator. Duncombe, slipping into hortatory mode, makes some grand predictions about the progressive movement of the future: “Our spectacles will be participatory: dreams the public can mold and shape themselves,” he claims. “And they will be transparent: dreams that one knows are dreams but which still have power to attract and inspire.” This is not a wake-up call—what Duncombe asks of progressives is to dream better.

What do you make of this idea of “ethical spectacles”? I’m confused by this idea. Isn’t the idea of a “participatory spectacle” a contradiction in terms?

Last night, I went to the Minnesota Twins’ opening game. (They won - go Twins!) But through much of the game I felt neauseated by the extreme commercialism of the ballpark. I couldn’t look anywhere without seeing an advertisement for some stupid commodity - sausage, health insurance, beer, trucks, american flags. In reaction to this perhaps “unethical spectacle,” I participated in a little “dreampolitik” in which I imagined every one of the 58,000 people in the audience getting out of their seats, marching out of the Metrodome, walking to the poorest neighborhoods in the city, and talking with the people on welfare, the recent immigrants from Somalia - just getting to know each other, asking how they could help each other make their lives a little better - building a community that could span from the inner city to the suburbs. But that’s just a dream… The most ethical spectacle that really happened, the best part of the game, was when in the ninth inning, a drunken fan ran onto the field, and the crowd cheered him on as he taunted the security guards chasing him around the field, until they tackled him.

I heard the press conference today. Let me get this straight, the president seems to be saying that if funding for his war is cut he will react be cutting all sorts of things and extending tours. But he won’t withdraw. So he is going to use the troops as a blackmail tool?