Movies Made to Satisfy Expectations

We rented Cowboys & Aliens. My experience was much the same as with many Hollywood blockbusters: the first act is quite good, suggesting interesting characters and unique situations to come. In the second act, everything quickly devolves into familiar clichés. By the third act I don’t care anymore. Cowboys & Aliens followed this pattern with a vengeance, weaving tired stereotypes in with the familiar clichés and piling on the unearned dramatic payoffs in the final scenes. This movie was not made to challenge or surprise, but to go exactly where the viewer expects it to go. I guess people like that. It’s certainly a good formula for making money. But, no one will remember this movie in five years. The memorable movies are always the ones with surprises.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’ve been thinking about the disproportionate effect a small number of billionaires has on our politics. This movie got me thinking, could the same be said of big-time producers and our culture? A handful of names crop up over and over in producer credits; Brian Grazer, Jerry Bruckheimer, Steven Spielberg, etc. Could there be a tiny cabal of producers who constantly give us the same movie, dressed up with different actors and sets?Are they restricting us to a diet of easy, familiar stories, when we could be consuming inspired, challenging surprises?

Well, not really. I looked at the top grossing movies of 2011, and didn’t find any big prevalence of my producer cabal. Most of the movies have half a dozen producers I’ve never heard of. If I was a diligent researcher I would look at top earning movies of the past 10-20 years, and track producers, directors, and studio executives, but I prefer to guess based on my initial shoddy search. My guess is, there are too many people involved in making movies to assign all the influence to the top dozen recurring names.

Anyway, there’s a big difference between politics and movies. Surprising, challenging movies get made all the time. Quality movies are out there for anyone inclined to do a little searching. (For sci-fi fans, I suggest Primer, Ink, Monsters, and Attack the Block, to start with.) They don’t tend to get big-studio funding or mainstream promotion, and maybe that’s wrong, but they also aren’t made to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which seems to be the focus of the big studio mechanisms. Anyway the big studios will only become less relevant as digital streaming continues to shrink their profit margins, and the technology of movie making becomes cheaper and more accessible.

So, a moviegoer can always go look for a better movie. Politics don’t work that way. We all have to live by the same laws of the land. We don’t all agree on what those laws should be, but no one gets to pick and choose which ones apply to their own life. So in a free, civil society, we negotiate and compromise. Unfortunately the bad billionaires are busy distorting those laws in their favor.

I can hear David Koch right now: “If you don’t like it, move to France!” No David, you’re the one who should move away if you can’t abide the little people having any influence.

Slow Critic on Tintin

Spielberg, Jackson, and Wright, I recant my previous statement. You guys absolutely get it.

I still would have preferred Tintin in 2D animation. (In fact if someone were to make a whole movie in the style of the opening credits I would be ecstatic.) However, the 3D characters felt entirely true to Herge’s books, porous skins and all. Any movie based on a book or comic has to be different than the source material in order to work as a movie, and when it comes to the characters, Tintin is different in all the right ways. While far fleshier than their pen-and-ink origins, they are totally convincing translations into near-real life. The designs and voices are spot-on, as are the choices, tactics, and reactions of Tintin, Haddock, and Snowy.

In typical Spielberg fashion, the action set pieces ramp up and up and finally go too far. Massive, wanton property destruction without consequences doesn’t fit in Tintin’s universe. But while the movie maintains a human scale, it works. The numerous easter eggs for fans of the comics were fun.

Unfortunately, Marcie found it tedious. That may be further testament to the movie staying true to its roots, which are aimed at young boys after all. But it suggests the movie won’t have a lot of appeal beyond kids and dudes, which is too bad.

When I was a kid, the magic of Tintin came from exploring our world with him. The first time I got on a plane to another country, I felt like I was living a Tintin adventure. Even when he visited fictional nations, the stories always spoke to real cultures and environments, and the richness of experience available in real life. It’s hard to see animated movies playing that role, when so many live-action movies transport audiences to exotic scenes. Still, I find myself eagerly awaiting the next Tintin movie.

Wrapping Up My Comic Buying Experiment

In September, I decided to get on board DC’s title-wide relaunch by subscribing to about a dozen comics through my local comic shop (see this post). In October, I learned that the store would be closing its doors January 1st. I’m very sad to see Karen’s Comics go out of business, but I wouldn’t have held onto my subscriptions for much longer anyway. The single issues are a nice way to get a wide sample of titles, but I much prefer to read and collect the trade paperbacks (single volume reprints that collect 6 or 7 issues, for the uninitiated). Of all the New 52 titles I read, here are the ones I would buy in trade paperback form:

Animal Man. The clear standout of the New 52, with sophisticated writing, wonderfully weird artwork, and building to a crossover with

Swamp Thing. The strange relationship between the monster and secret identity make the character more interesting than ever.

Action Comics. written by Grant Morisson, so you can’t go wrong. The focus is on Superman, but much of the DC universe mythology is rooted here, along with

Justice League. It’s more fun (and more economical) to get all the heavy hitters in one book, especially one written by Geoff Johns.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.DE. I really enjoyed the first four issues of this. I can see it easily going off the rails very quickly, but I’m hoping it doesn’t.

The Flash and Stormwatch didn’t grab me at first, but I ended up liking them a lot. Justice League Dark was also good. Those three I will try to get from the library as trade paperbacks. I liked the first issue or two of Batman, Green Lantern, Captain Atom, and The Savage Hawkman, but by issue 4 I didn’t much care anymore. It was fun reading all these books as they came out; I’m almost never up-to-date on my pop culture consumption. However it also became very easy to obsess over the books and the DC universe. I was reading lots of reviews as well as the comics, and feeling uncomfortably devoted to this strange, insular world of comic fandom, which craves expansion yet shuns outsiders. More on that later, maybe.

I feel I should also mention Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, which launched about the same time as the New 52. I always knew I would pursue this one in trade paperback, so I ignored the monthly issues at first, but they got such rave reviews and represent such a momentous shift (the first non-Peter Parker Spider-Man, who is a non-white Spider-Man to boot) that I ended up buying the first two. And I may go ahead and buy 3, 4 and 5 on Marcie’s new iPad. It’s really good stuff.

Tech Tornado, Cultural Inertia

Tech Tornado, Cultural Inertia

I don’t remember when or if I last posted about decade identifiers, the dangers of nostalgia, the end of history and all that kind of stuff…but this article from Vanity Fair pretty much nails it. (Thanks for the find Alyssa!)

Bad Billionaires

Some time ago, I read an article that mentioned in passing there are a dozen or so billionaires who wield greatly disproportionate influence in America. My immediate question was, who are they?

I haven’t been able to find a definitive list of the bad billionaires, so I’m trying to piece it together myself. Here are some initial findings, based largely on this site and this article. More updates will come as I stumble across them. Any helpful hints are much appreciated.

For the record, I believe that rich people are entitled to their views just as much as anyone. They are also entitled to express their views. They are not entitled to drown out the voices that disagree with them, and they are certainly not entitled to force others to comply with their views by making end runs around democracy.

1. Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch’s media empire (most egregiously, Fox News) has done more than any other institution to bring about the current media climate of misinformation and viciousness, enabling corruption and blocking reform.

2. The Koch Brothers. Charles and David fund a host of think tanks including The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and Americans for Prosperity. They like to dress up support for unfettered pollution and unrestricted money in politics as Tea Party populism. As hosts of a semiannual summit of around 200 rich, conservative activists, they play a large part in driving the right to ever greater extremism.

3. The Walton family. The owners of Wal-Mart are collectively worth $90-100 billion. Wal-Mart is bad for communities, bad for its employees, bad for our economy, and bad for workers and economies around the world, but it sure is good for making the Waltons rich. They use their fortune to keep banks powerful and politicians compliant. More on the Waltons here.

4. Pete Peterson. Ex CEO of Lehman Brothers, founder of the Blackstone Group, funder of endless think tanks and advocacy groups. Peterson plays a large role in skewing the current economic debate away from job creation and toward counterproductive austerity measures.

5. Philip Anschutz. Funds anti-gay initiatives, anti-science disinformation, and quashes pollution controls.

6. Stephen Bechtel Jr. Remember how we rushed to a war in Iraq, that seemed to serve no real purpose? That was thanks to the likes of Bechtel, who worked hard to get Iraq bombed so he could reap huge profits in reconstruction.

7. Joseph Craft. A large part of why anyone believes there’s such a thing as “clean coal.”

8. Stanley Hubbard. If not for him, most of us would never have heard of Michelle Bachmann. He’s also a Murdoch-esque media monopolist.

9. Kenneth Langone. A key figure in stripping the 2000 presidential election of its legitimacy.

10. Stephen Schwartzman. Another former Lehman Brothers CEO and current CEO of Peterson’s Blackstone Group; another architect of the crashed economy and advocate for solutions that help the rich and hurt everyone else.

5 Reasons Why My Suburb Doesn’t Suck

Yes, Tigard is on the hopelessly uncool west side of Portland. No, we don’t have the bike-friendly streets, the quirky cafés, the walkable communities of the east side. And the only thing resembling an art supply store south of Highway 10 is Michael’s. Marcie and I have lived here for eleven years (!!), and we’ve always said we wanted to move across the river, but now– blasphemy of blasphemies– I like it here! I know my east Portland therapist friends will put it down to cognitive dissonance, but I say it’s for these reasons. Which really are all one reason (spoilers): Tigard invests in itself.

1. The Library

When we first moved to town, Tigard had an eminently serviceable library, but it was old and inhospitable. In 2002, Tigard voters passed a bond to expand it. Two years later, the new building opened on the other side of Hall blvd, and it is an absolute gem. There are plenty of books, but that’s not strictly a characteristic of the Tigard library, because it essentially shares a collection with the whole county. Request a book online, and they will pull it from wherever it lives to your home library. It’s hard to pinpoint just what makes this library great; there are luxurious reading rooms, community rooms hosting events all the time, a large bank of computers for public use, acres of surrounding greenspace, a café in the lobby…but more than that, the whole place is just hugely inviting. I always believed in the idea of libraries, but I never went out of my way to patronize them before living in Tigard. If I could I would hang out there every day.

2. The Skate Park

I’m not a skater, I don’t know any skaters, but I’m happy to live in a city that sees fit to build a complex of ramps and bowls for skaters right in front of city hall. Kids and teens may not pay attention to bond measures, but they are bright enough to pick up on the attitudes expressed by a community’s actions. If that attitude is apathetic self-interest, guess what? You get bored, apathetic, self-interested kids. Besides, who wants to grow up in a place where there’s nothing to do? A skate park is a small thing, but it can do worlds of good.

3. The Wes

One of the best things about Portland is the Max, the mass transit light rail. It doesn’t measure up to, say, the Paris Metro, but by American standards it’s a pretty great system. It is expanding to more regions of the Portland metro area, but the process is slow. Tigard sits far south of the main Max line, and we won’t get a connecting line for 10 years or more. But all is not lost! The regular train tracks run north-south, right through downtown Tigard. In 2009, a heavy rail commuter train– the Wes– started sharing the tracks with freight trains. It runs from Wilsonville in the south to the Max line in Beaverton. It only runs during rush hour on weekdays, but it means we are connected to the Max system without having to go through years and years of costly planning and construction. The implementation of the Wes was met with howls of derision from all the usual suspects, but it immediately filled up with commuters and has increased ridership by 14% since 2009. Take note, haters; the Wes works!

4. Downtown Tigard

In it’s current state, Downtown Tigard does kind of suck. Our little stretch of Main Street is unfortunately not much fun to walk down. Still, the area has a lot going for it; several fabulous restaurants, a nice post office, the transit center with Wes and abundant bus service, my dentist which I bike to, a new off-leash dog park, and nearby trails. And, there is a plan in place to build on these assets and turn Main Street into “a vibrant, active urban village.”  The downside is, it will take 30 years. But it’s a gradual process, meaning little improvements show up over time. I doubt if we will still live here in 30 years, but if we do, we will surely be found wandering up and down Main Street on a regular basis.

5. Fanno Creek Trail

A permanent greenspace runs behind our house and through the neighborhood. Part of it features a bike and foot path where I get to walk the dog every day. This may be the thing I miss most when (if) we move away.

 

DC’s New 52, A Selection

For those of you who don’t follow comics and may not have heard: this month DC relaunched its entire line of characters, starting 52 comic books over at #1. Why would they do that? To sell comics, obviously, but it makes a lot of sense from a narrative point of view. Many of these characters have been around for decades, had dozens of writers, gone through many transformations, and wound up with such complicated (and contradictory) histories that if you haven’t been following the action for at least 5-10 years, you can’t understand what’s going on now.

I tried recently. I heard great things about what Geoff Johns was doing with Green Lantern, specifically the Blackest Night storyline. So I checked out some books from the library, and they were great, but a lot of the drama hinges on who has died in the past and under what circumstances. And there have been A LOT of deaths and resurrections and substitutions and inheritances. I tried to get a grip on the history reading some other large crossover storylines (basically anything with Crisis in the title) but it was hopeless.

So I was happy to hear DC was starting everything over, and giving me a chance to get in on the ground floor. I even went to my local comic store and subscribed to a bunch of books, something I haven’t done in about 15 years. Here are my findings within a more or less random sample.

THE GOOD

Justice League. The flagship book, launched all by itself the last week in August. I enjoy these characters most when they interact with each other, rather than having solo adventures. This book has all the key players, and Geoff Johns’ writing, so it’s clearly a keeper.

Action Comics. Superman at the beginning of his hero career, as written by the ever-imaginative Grant Morrison. A fresh take on the character, and on his home city. Makes it easy to stick with what DC calls the foundation of the new universe.

Animal Man. My favorite new title, and a big surprise. It just happens to have the best art, and Jeff Lemire’s writing is reminiscent of DC’s Vertigo imprint, best known (by me) for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles.

Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE. Also written by Jeff Lemire, the perfect blend of monsters and superheroes.

Green Lantern. Geoff Johns writing his signature character, so I have to stick with it, even though for a reboot it seems to carry a lot of history I’m not privy to.

Swamp Thing. Written by Scott Snyder, also very Vertigo-esque. The first issue raises lots of intriguing questions, and some implication of an Animal Man crossover.

Batman. Also written by Scott Snyder, and the only one of the 7 (!) Batman or Bat-family books I’m reading. In the old continuity Batman was always fairly straightforward, but Robin has gone through many different incarnations. This book got me up to speed on the various Robins in one full-page panel. That’s how to do a reboot! The rest of the pages were cool too.

Justice League Dark. I don’t much like the title, and I’ve never liked one of the characters (Deadman), but with the magic/occult themes this one seemed likely to be another Vertigo-style book, so I tried it. And I like it.

The Savage Hawkman. I don’t think any old-continuity character had a less coherent history than Hawkman. I tried to get on board with him, had to check Wikipedia to get any kind of foothold, and found that even with parallel universes and reincarnations no one has been able to reconcile his divergent origins. So I wanted to see how he would be handled with a clean slate…and it’s pretty cool.

Captain Atom. I decided to pick one title I had absolutely no history with…and it’s pretty good. It’s really good actually. A hero who’s immense powers are a danger to himself, and somewhat unorthodox artwork. I’ll stay with it for awhile.

THE BAD

Stormwatch. This is the only title I followed before the reboot–or more to the point, I followed The Authority, which is what Stormwatch turned into and where Apollo and The Midnighter came in. And these are the characters that I feel like the reboot has gotten all wrong. I was eager to see how the Martian Manhunter would fit in with this group (Stormwatch started out under the Wildstorm imprint, not part of the DC universe at all), but it’s all pretty lackluster.

OMAC. This…uh, thing (it’s a character now, it was more of a group before) seemed to loom large when I was trying to catch up on the previous DC universe, but I could never get a handle on what it was about. Apparently it’s just some crazy genetic cyborg. Not too thrilling.

I, Vampire. I read some reviews giving this one high praise, but I found it to be fairly tired war-of-the-vampires stuff.

The Fury of Firestorm. Here’s another one I checked out because I never quite got the old Firestorm. Now that I get it, it’s not that interesting.

Legion of Superheroes. This was a longshot for me, and it didn’t pan out. I remember enjoying LOS when I was in like second grade, with their vaguely uniform outfits and their outer space exploits. The reboot updates that whole scenario about as well as can be expected, but there’s no compelling reason to come back for another issue.

THE MIDDLING

The Flash. The art is good, the layouts are interesting, but some of the events don’t make a lot of sense, and the story just didn’t grab me. I think I’ll be happier following Flash as a member of the Justice League.

Legion Lost. A small group of the Legion of Superheroes travels back from the 31st century and gets stranded present day. This is a much more engaging take on the Legion, but by the end of issue 1 both my new favorite characters are dead. They’ll probably be back, but aside from that their are some common time-travel pitfall that bug me (why did they have to arrive in the past AFTER the bad guy the are chasing from the future? Hello, time machine??) I may stick with this for a few issues, but not for long unless it improves.

Justice League International. Lots of characters I don’t know too well, some squabbling and secret manipulation, generally fun. Batman makes a gratuitous guest appearance. If I had unlimited funds I would keep this subscription, but more likely I will drop it after a couple more issues.

THE ATROCIOUS

Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws. This whole reboot SHOULD have been the moment when DC turns away from rank exploitation in their portrayal of female characters, but it wasn’t. I didn’t read the books in question, but Laura Hudson makes a convincing case that they blew it. So does this seven year old girl. and this comic critique of DC’s math skills is just awesome. I wish DC would get the clue, but it doesn’t look like they will. It sorta makes me feel like a sucker for buying any of their books.

Worldcon 2011: The Hugos

Yes, the Hugo awards, voted on by Worldcon attendees and presented Saturday night. I enjoyed the ceremony this time much more then at Denvention in 2008. In fact all the major events seemed better organized and more hospitable. Mad props, Renovation peeps!

The Hugo Award is always a sleek rocket, but every year it gets attached to a different base. As part of the awards ceremony, they brought out the artist behind this year’s base and had her talk about her inspiration and process. I was really glad they did that, because her ideas and execution were brilliant. Inspired by recent photographs of geysers on Enceladus, Marina Gelineau used layers of scored and painted glass to represent the surface of an icy world, with strange life forms beneath the surface. (Click here and scroll down for a blurry photo.)

For in-depth analysis of the Hugo outcomes, visit Erik’s blog. The full list of winners is here. I’m just going to talk about some of my favorites.

For best novel, I voted for The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. This vote was pretty much a foregone conclusion ever since I heard the author read some excerpts at my last Worldcon in Denver. I also really liked N. K. Jemisen’s The 100,000 Kingdoms, which built a compelling, original mythology and put the gods in the action with the mortals. And I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Feed by Mira Grant, a.k.a. Seanan McGuire. I’m generally not a big fan of zombie stuff, but her scenario was different than the standard undead apocalypse and offered some significant surprises. But after reading all three, I still liked The Dervish House best. The other two entries I didn’t finish. Not especially cool, I know, but I had a lot to read in a short span of time, and after getting about 100 pages into each I could confidently rank them fourth and fifth. (Connie Willis won with her 1000-plus page epic in two volumes, Blackout/All Clear.)

I really wanted Bryan Talbot to win best graphic story for Grandeville Mon Amour. It’s a steampunky murder mystery in a world of anthropomorphic animals, where France has colonized Great Britain (and renamed it Grandeville, also the name of a 19th century illustrator known for animal characters.) However the Hugo went to Girl Genius by the Folgios, as it has every year since the category was added. I’m a longtime fan of Phil Foglio, but it would have been sweet to see Grandeville Mon Amour win. Oh well.

In the end my only vote for first place that actually won (besides Inception for best long-form dramatic presentation, a shoe-in) was Shaun Tan for best professional artist. He’s more of a cartoonist than the book cover artists he was up against, so I was surprised but psyched to see him win the Hugo.

So now, as a member of this year’s Worldcon, I get to nominate works for next year’s Hugos. I’m going to make an effort to read books that actually come out this year. I’ve already read China Mieville’s Embassytown, and it’s one of the best sci-fi books I’ve ever read. I’m still working my way to A Dance with Dragons, but I believe George R. R. Martin has taken himself out of the running. The HBO series is probably fair game, though.

Got any other suggestions?

This was given to me while waiting to board the plane home. (I was reading the book.) Thanks Brigid!

 

Worldcon 2011, part 1

I’m not going to give a day-by-day accounting of the world sci-fi con in Reno, like I did for Denver. Just recapping the highlights this time. Or lowlights. Most-interesting-lights.

I flew in from Portland and my brother Erik flew in from Denver. I started reading A Game of Thrones on the plane. I wanted to have a nice fat book for the trip–reading in airports and on planes is no fun when you have to pace yourself so as not to finish the book with hours of travel time left over. And I’ve been hearing good things about the HBO series, although I won’t be seeing it until it’s released on disc. Still I was glad to have jumped on the Song of Ice and Fire bandwagon. The popular series always loom large at these events–Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. Being a lately converted George R. R. Martin fan made me feel that much more plugged in.

The first evening, Erik turned me on to a new writer, Lauren Beukes. I read the first few pages of her book Zoo City, and promptly bought it and her other book, Moxyland. Am I too quick to judge? Probably. But it usually doesn’t take more than a few pages to know if I’m going to like an author. Mira Grant is a notable exception- more on that later. Anyway, we signed up for a Literary Beer with Beukes. The Literary Beer is a gathering of one author and 10 or so fans, much like the Kaffeeklatches, but with alcohol instead of caffeine. As with the Ian MacDonald Kaffeeklatch in 2008, this was one of the most rewarding experiences of the con. Beukes is a South African journalist, and she shared some of her remarkable experiences that inform her writing. I’ve been home for a few days now, finally finished Game of Thrones, so now I’m reading Zoo City for real. (I did run out and buy A Clash of Kings, but I’m taking a break between Ice And Fire tomes. Otherwise I’ll be reading nothing else for the next year.)

We kept busy attending panels. As in Denver, there were a dozen rooms of programming throughout every day of the con, with subject matter ranging from writing tips to hard science to scholarly critiques to fun goofiness. (One panel we went to posed the question, which historical events are so unlikely they are clearly the work of time travelers from the future?) Due to the panels I attended, my experience had a strong political theme. Some socially-minded panels I sought out (Social Justice in Science Fiction, Revolutions in Science Fiction, for example), others just bubbled it to the surface (The Far Future, How To Draw People of Different Races, The Future of Cities, F&*# Your Knight and the Horse he Rode In On, and others).  My next big project was on my mind, and I want it to address inequality and corruption in the real world without degenerating into a mere screed, as my past satirical efforts have tended to do. I picked up some strategies that seem promising.

Some people wear costumes. The majority of costumes I saw were steampunk in nature. There were lots of steampunk books and artwork as well, but the prevalence in costumes really struck me. I think we’re looking at a 3rd phylum of fanciful tales, alongside Science Fiction and Fantasy. Steampunk could be considered a subset of either sci-fi or fantasy, but it sort of has to pull elements from both, and it has its own distinctive aesthetic and tropes. It also contains a wide variety of sub-types, as sci-fi and fantasy do. (Does everyone really hate the term “sci-fi?” Too bad, I’m using it anyway.)

I didn’t wear a costume. I took advantage of the venue to wear dorky clothes I would wear everyday if I wasn’t self-conscious; leathery flight hat, big round goggles, pockety vest. I added a BPRD patch to my vest, so if anyone asked I could say I was dressed as an agent of the organization from Hellboy. My specialty: archaic cosmologies. Or silly drawings. Yes, I’m a nerd, we’ve established this, if you don’t like it read some other blog.

Next: The Hugo Awards

Dear Tea Party

Dear Tea Party,

you claim to defend America. You claim that your whole raison d’etre is to defend our country from freeloaders and socialists. Well, I have some bad news for you. You are the ones who are damaging America.

We are a large society. In a large society, people have differing opinions. We are also a free society. In a free society, people are allowed to have differing opinions. People are even allowed to live by their differing opinions and beliefs, to the extent that it doesn’t hurt someone else or infringe on an other’s liberties. That’s the goal, anyway. On top of that, we are ostensibly a self-governed society, meaning that we the people have a say in how we are governed. Getting a society to function that is large, free, and self-governed is miraculous. It never functions quite like anyone wants it to, but in America we come closer to the ideal than many countries, thanks largely to the Constitution.

You are standing in the way of this ideal. You represent a small minority of the population, and through belligerence and intransigence you seek to impose your will on the rest of us. With the debt ceiling debate, you succeeded. You held the country hostage, blocking a measure that is routinely taken to prevent economic catastrophe, and demanded an extreme right approach to the national debt, with no concessions to the center, let alone the left. You won. Congratulations, you broke America.

You silenced the voices of your fellow citizens who elected the president and the majority of congress. Your fellow citizens, who work just as hard as you do, who love their families just as much, who struggle with all the same  home budgets and job insecurities and personal tragedies, who strive for the same simple measure of contentment, were all summarily kicked out of the clubhouse because of you. Is that your vision of America? Because it certainly wasn’t the founding fathers’.

I know you feel that you’re the victim, that taxes are too high and thus infringing on your liberty. But in a large, free, and self-governed society, you don’t get to decide taxes all by yourself. We decide together. You don’t get to ram through what you feel is the right choice, no matter how convinced you are of everyone else’s ignorance or corruption or both. You have to argue your case. You have to present the facts and convince people you are right; you don’t get to just yell and scream and steamroller your way through. You have to work with people of opposing views, and try to find common ground. It’s an excruciating process, but it’s the only way for the majority of a large society to remain free and self-governed. The alternative is tyranny.

I know I’m simplifying and idealizing. There are a million systemic obstacles to true reform, a million ways we are all disenfranchised. But you can’t build a legitimate free society by trampling on the views of others. Your vision for our country is out of step with the majority of the population. That doesn’t mean there’s no place for you at the table. There is a place for everybody. That’s the whole point. If you don’t allow your opponents to have their say, you have no business being in America.