this election is about who controls the Democratic Party

So says actor Ron Silver, celebrating last night at Lieberman HQ, and I think he’s right. It is conservative Democrats who carried the party to its win in the House (the Senate is still up for grabs as I write):

[video removed]

A personal note: I met Silver a few years ago at a book publication party, a couple of weeks after the U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam. War was very much the topic during our long conversation, and at the party. I found him to be very well informed—I was, frankly, surprised by that, though I shouldn’t have been—intensely political, and deeply committed to liberal values (as he and I grew up understanding them).*** We had a lot to talk about.

Like me, he couldn’t understand our cohort’s antipathy to the idea of toppling Saddam. It didn’t make sense to him that the committed liberals, internationalists, and sophisticated thinkers in his crowd were so much, and so reflexively, against the war.

I like to think that perhaps I had something to add to his understanding when I floated my insight—that American anti-war sentiment was not about Iraq. Anti-war sentiment as expressed primarily by our cohort was primarily a culture war issue: for them, it was about their own self-image. They were afraid that expressing war-like sentiments would make them look bad. (To whom? I wonder). They were American narcissists, self-involved, and most of them couldn’t give a shit about Iraq, about which they knew nothing (ignoring the fact that in our globalized world, the status of Iraq, among other Middle Eastern nations, is about America). They cared what their friends and peers thought about them. In America, it is always about peer pressure.

Anyway, in the YouTube clip, Silver states his position clearly. (It’s mine, too): Since 9/11 there are those who think we’re in a war and those who don’t think we’re in a war. He supports those who think we’re in a war, and he hopes that others come around.

Well said.

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***Here’s a 2004 piece about Silver in the Washington Post:

“I want problems to be solved in a fair way, and if I think there is a solution to a problem then I really don’t care what label it falls under. If people choose to find it somewhat confusing or a little too nuanced for them, then that’s not my problem.”

He is equally unapologetic when it comes to airing such views in the company of Hollywood liberals. In a deftly delivered dig, Silver told whooping and cheering delegates Monday night, “I find it ironic that many human rights activists and outspoken members of my own entertainment community are often on the front lines to protest repression, for which I applaud them, but they’re usually the first ones to oppose any use of force to take care of these horrors that they catalogue repeatedly.”

Such pronouncements have not exactly endeared him to the Hollywood set, leading to distinctly frosty receptions at several dinner parties, Silver says. “I don’t really feel like a pariah, but I know my opinion isn’t appreciated by a large section of my own colleagues in the entertainment industry, although I trust we’ll get over that,” he says, smiling.

“People are dismissive. It’s all ‘Come on, Ron, you’re too smart for that. Come on, Ron, you must be kidding.’ There’s no engagement. No one is willing to really discuss the issues.”