Pleasure and Progress

As a rule it was the pleasure haters that became unjust. -WH Auden

Allow me to pleasure myself by quoting me: the side that has the most fun tends to win.

Now I don't recall a presidential election when I was this pleased with the candidates. Even as someone who thought early on that John Kerry was the strongest candidate against Bush in 2004 (it is not to be forgotten that he was a stone's throw, or a day later or earlier of winning), I am thrilled to get beyond the Mondale/Dukakis/Kerry wing of dour, nagging, abstemious Democrats.

Complain all they want, one reason the Republic party hated Bill Clinton was that he was a stark reminder that people like big-hearted, back-slapping liberals more than rapacious, amoral businessmen and death-worshiping evangelical buzzkills. This principle interestingly enough, does not extend sufficiently to Senator Clinton. But boy wonder Edwards has grown up, Obama is a rock star, Bill Richardson is the teddy bear with (actually) the best resume, and Gore, peaking in popularity is the ringer in reserve.

Lesson: you can be as radical as you can be if you keep it fun, and more importantly, inviting. Americans want to be part of a great nation - and will generally RSVP when invited to come along. It was true of the New Deal, it will be true of global warming if we don't give in to despair.

I have a recommendation based on the minor earthquake that Comedy Central has been in the politics of the United States. Even if progressives can count a thousand gaping black holes of human suffering, and know that the doom of the species lurks around the corner of Hubris and Mine, our hearts must be light, our parties must welcome everyone (BYOB); the progressive and liberal movements must become the inflatable bouncy castle of democracy.

It's time to take advantage of a small but critical cultural shift, the reconquering of political comedy. First to go is the impression that progressives are surrounded with eggshells. This is a social: do not make people regret or fear talking to you.

Living inside the American progressive movement's skull is a scrawny, puritanical troll in a cordory sports jacket obsessed with self-denial as a path to purity, who beats on the inside of the skull with a hickory switch when ever he senses temptation. This troll resembles Ralph Nader.

Banish this troll to East Lansing, feeding it only vegan oat-bars.

Whosomeever wears the cape of Captain Buzzkill will lose the people in the long run, and for good reason. The hatred of pleasure - particularly in others- is the mark of an ideologue, and a potentially brutal one at that. It was why the anarchists and the communists were busying shooting each other when they should have been offing Franco's goons.

The feeling progessives should create for voters is the feeling of going to a dreadful office party that turns out to feature an introduction to your favorite movie's writer, your six best friends from college, and an impromptu ceiling rope performance expert all-girl retro-burlesque gymnasts on open bar night. There must be dancing. There must be responsibly excessive drinking. There must be smoking, at least in the parking lot, and only with American Spirit cigarettes.

If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution. -Emma Goldman

I'll take decadence over ideology any day. We are our best social and economic reformers when we embrace humanity rather than nag it, when love of human beings motivates us, not the dry, usually insufferable satisfaction of moral advantage.

(Not that we at Isengard.gov ever indulge in that sort of thing.)

This pans out in policy by concentrating on building humanity rather than correcting it. The CCC created brotherhood in desperate economic circumstances. The ill-conceived housing projects of the sixties were like writing a check to assuage guilt. We must choose social justice over disengaged policy. We must


Pleasure. Love it or leave it.