Across the Great Divide

[BOOKS] ACROSSTHE GREATDIVIDE HOWTOWINAFIGHTWITHALIBERAL byDanielKurtzman,Sourcebooks,Inc.,2007 HOWTOWINAFIGHTWITHACONSERVATIVE byDanielKurtzman,Sourcebooks,Inc.,2007 ReviewbyPaulLewis T hese are rollicking times for political satire in the United States. The rise of figures like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert , and Michael Moore on the Left and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Dennis MillerontheRightsuggeststhatobviously flawed politicians have been working overtime to create material for wags at both ends of our political divide. While these less-than-ideal leaders often inspire hilarious riffs—think of Limbaugh’s song parodiesontheClinton-Lewinskyaffairor Stewart’s celebration of Dick Cheney’s huntingaccident—theyalsoproducedarkly comic examples of the degraded state of discourse in a country founded by such deep thinkers as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. This is the sharply satirical and consistentlyfunnypointDanielKurtzmanmakes in How to Win a Fight with a Liberal and How to Win a Fight with a Conservative, twin books that provide mirror images of what passes for argument in the United Statestoday.Ineachofthesevolumes,partisans are encouraged to understand their own core beliefs, know their enemy, and avoidbullshit.Kurtzmanisparticularlyeffectiveinidentifyingandcondemninglog icalfallaciesandinventedfactsincommon usage.Theidealshepromoteswillseemfamiliar to anyone who has ever studied logic: avoid emotional appeals, hateful invective , and sweeping generalizations. In place of these “habits of ineffective partisans ,”Kurtzmanurgesustofollowthe“Ten Commandments of Partisan Warfare,” which include: “3. Frame the Argument to YourAdvantage,4.FindCommonGround, … 8.MakeYourOpponentLaugh,[and]9. BeOpen-Minded.” Forthemostpart,Kurtzman—whofollows the daily production of political argument from his perch atop http://political humor.about.com/, the ever-expanding and wildly popular website he edits for the New York Times Company’s About.com network—is going for laughs. Still, in the processofrecommendinglogicandfact,he exposes the manipulative and deceptive practices in widespread use by both politiciansandpundits . The America Kurtzman describes is M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 8 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 73 CULTURE community. There it took an exhausting public struggle to halt the plan. Foiled in Wisconsin,NestlemovedontoMichigan. By the time you read Thirst, many of the corporate names will be outdated. For you can’t generate constantly rising profit rates by delivering clean water to everyone inacommunityyearafteryear.Sothecommon business plan in the United States seems to be: buy a management contract, cut staff and raise prices, then sell the system back to the government when the watergetsunacceptablydirty.Youcanalso sell off an asset, like the land around the reservoir, and deliver the one-time cash to shareholders,thensellthesystemtosomeone else. Sometime after I demonstrated againsttheFrenchcompanySuez,itsoldits U.S. holdings to the German company RWE. Bergen County’s water system has yet another owner today. When no bold privateer can think of any further asset to strip,thepublicwillhavetotakeitback. Unfortunately, the only asset worth stripping,inmanyplaces,isthewateritself. India,with18percentoftheworld’shuman population, has only about 4 percent of its fresh water. That’s why some Indians are furious about water sales to Coca-Cola (Dasani)andPepsi(Aquafina).Itisimportant to note that pumping contracts can give bottlers access to all the ground water in a region’s aquifer. Imagine: a private company has the right to sell away the underground water, before then shared not only by humans but also by the region’s vegetation. Indian environmentalists have called for a boycott against all bottled water. That means that they’re organizing onourbehalftoo. It is certain that the bottling barons won’t give up on us easily. Science fiction writers have fantasized the bottling and selling of air in some future dystopia. But water, too, is life, and bottled water is already here. We’ll have to hone the tactics documented in Thirst, and invent some newonestoo,ifwe’retofoilthistheftofthe commons. I Barbara Garson is the author of the play MacBird!, and the books All the Livelong Day: TheMeaningandDemeaningofRoutineWork, andMoneyMakestheWorldGoAround. 9.Culture_2.qxd:MA 2007 2/10/08 3:20 PM Page 73 vatives are warned not to “stand over a deceased liberal saying, ‘Let’s see if that affirmative action plan helps get you into heaven now.’” A set of contrasting views juxtaposes the way liberals imagine the conservative utopia and vice versa. Newspaper headlines that liberals believe conservatives would “love to see” include “SchoolsReplaceMathwithFaithBased ‘Intelligent Counting’; WitchTrialsRecommence,Hillary...