Duncombe’s Dream: Reimagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy is a book which I am enjoying reading far more than any of the other readings for our class. The chapters that we have read so far are about identifying with your audience’s emotions, hopes, and dreams. Not looking at them as the other, but as someone who is you and you are them. While reading these portions of the book, I came to realize why I actually like this book so much. I feel as though Duncombe is speaking to me. I am the public. I am the citizen who wants to make a change in the world, create greater possibilities and a beautiful world for all that I share it with. I also want to enjoy nightly cruises on a six-cylinder car and eat lavishly at restaurants which serve animals cruelly farmed to tend to its customers’ appetite; me.
Duncombe does not antagonize me for my innate desires which are so often acted out due to the acceptance and strategic marketing of these desires by mainstream media. People gravitate towards acceptance. Someone who makes you feel like you belong and that you are cared for, even if that someone is a money-hungry corporate power.
I feel that the spectacle put on by the Billionaires for Bush was absolutely brilliant. Given the chance, it excites me endlessly on the possibilities of creating/starting something with the brilliant minds which are at work in our class. The hope is not to suppress the viewers’ (hopefully participants as well) innate desires, but to appeal to and utilize those desires to benefit us all!
you got, it. nice post.