Cel­e­bra­tion plays The Troc tomor­row night. How they end­ed up on a bill with Blood Broth­ers and And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is beyond me.

Nan­cy Pelosi com­ment­ing on The Col­bert Report:

“I watch it all the time,” said House Minor­i­ty Leader Nan­cy Pelosi (D‑San Fran­cis­co), “and I think, ‘Why would any­body go on there?’ ”

Am I alone in think­ing that this was the quaint­est elec­tion in mem­o­ry? I can think of few things that sound more like a Pyrrhic vic­to­ry than tak­ing back Con­gress, espe­cial­ly since the exec­u­tive branch has cir­cum­vent­ed it so eas­i­ly in the past. Even as exit polls showed a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans sup­port some form of troop with­draw­al from Iraq, Howard Dean addressed the ner­vous media to say that no such thing will hap­pen on a Demo­c­ra­t­ic watch. The midterm elec­tion pro­duced the most con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus in mem­o­ry, rife with “blue dogs” and re-brand­ed, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly vacant New Dems.

How­ev­er, a num­ber of pop­u­lar memes were debunked in the course of the night thanks to the mixed sig­nals the elec­tion sent. The polit­i­cal schiz­o­phre­nia that char­ac­ter­izes a new gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can vot­ers still holds sway, rang­ing from absurd­ly xeno­pho­bic [see Ari­zona] to cau­tious­ly opti­mistic, often in the same state. The USA is not only con­ser­v­a­tive, but it’s also wild­ly reactionary.

It’s been said in the past, but it’s worth repeat­ing that the fear-mon­ger­ing red/blue divide does­n’t hold; Amer­i­can pol­i­tics lacks that sort of sharp-edged con­flict. Instead, Amer­i­can politi­cians cater to the least informed, most reac­tionary cohort — the soft mid­dle — and hedge their bets accordingly.

That said, it’s great to see fright­en­ing nation­al fig­ures like Rick San­to­rum go. Yet as go light­ning rods like San­to­rum, so goes much of what foment­ed bur­geon­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion. It’s a shame that so much polit­i­cal cap­i­tal [blech!] was wast­ed on Sen­a­tor-elect Casey, Jr. As the war rages on a whole new gen­er­a­tion will be sub­ject to a seem­ing­ly end­less aus­ter­i­ty binge. Yet Repub­li­cans will return to their chick­en lit­tle pol­i­tics of para­noia and woe-is-me mar­tyr­dom. Smug, self-sat­is­fied lib­er­als will rest on the lau­rels of unseat­ing San­to­rum as though they brought about revolution.

In times like these timid lead­er­ship will accom­plish noth­ing. Expect noth­ing less.

On tap this week:

• Review of Grails at Cir­cle Thrift and Cel­e­bra­tion at The Trocadero.
• Review of Schlon­dorf­f’s Coup de Grace.
• Upcom­ing pieces for Philly Week­ly, Paper Thin Walls and City Paper.
• A few words about the amaz­ing UT reis­sues on Mute.
• Tomor­row: vot­ing, ear­ly and often.

The Lost Hon­or of Katha­ri­na Blum. Direct­ed by Volk­er Schlöndorff and Mar­garethe von Trotta.

In an inter­view fea­tured on the Cri­te­ri­on edi­tion DVD, Schlöndorff him­self rec­og­nizes post‑9/11 USA in his adap­ta­tion of The Lost Hon­or of Katha­ri­na Blum. It’s not hard. At the height of Baad­er-Mein­hof hys­te­ria, young Ger­mans affixed stick­ers read­ing “Ich gehore nicht zur Baad­er-Mein­hof Gruppe” to their cars to avoid police harass­ment, just as Sikh and Mus­lim cab­bies draped their taxis in the Stars ‘n’ Stripes to demon­strate their patriotism.

When Katha­ri­na Blum finds her­self the vic­tim of a polit­i­cal intrigue involv­ing an activist on the lam, she’s a polit­i­cal naif who’s hard­work­ing and dis­creet about her pri­vate affairs. Once impli­cat­ed, her life is torn apart by a police-state fever­ish­ly pur­su­ing all leads at any cost, and a tabloid media dogged­ly feast­ing on the scraps. As Blum strug­gles to pre­serve her dig­ni­ty, her rad­i­cal­iza­tion is imme­di­ate and total and it gal­va­nizes her against what’s to come.

An out­stand­ing exam­ple of both social iso­la­tion and psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ment, The Lost Hon­or of Katha­ri­na Blum remains a tes­ta­ment to the state-spon­sored para­noia that char­ac­ter­ized the after­math of the New Left.

Schlöndorff and von Trot­ta, like author and Nobel lau­re­ate Hein­rich Böll, were taint­ed as spir­i­tu­al god­par­ents of Baad­er-Mein­hof. They were all avowed pacifists.

While I regain consciousness:

• Grails, w/ Kayo Dot, tonight at Cir­cle Thrift, 2007 Frank­ford Ave.
• Psy­chic Ills — Ear­ly Vio­lence & Dins
• Hud­dled beneath the thick, warm, & fuzzy blan­kets of feed­back and reverb: Aso­bi Sek­su & Evangelicals
• Plague Songs - Wyatt, Eno, Scott Walk­er & Lau­rie Anderson.
• Sunn o))) & Boris — “Her Lips Were Wet w/ Ven­om” on 2 disc edi­tion of Altar [which iTunes mis­took for Ter­ry Riley’s “In C”]