they promote the same political insights that Occupy put out there--the "1%" versus everyone else. The fact that the solutions offered are simplistic and juvenile takes second place to the fact that kids are grokking the nature of the problem (if only in a fairy-tale sort of way, maybe).

I believe people should be focused first and foremost on solutions.. as in eat, sleep, breathe them. But most people in a consumer capitalist society only want to be served goods and solutions as relates to themselves until the day pain makes them wake up and realize their focused self-interest was the ratchet by which the weathly bind us to squalor. There are no blueprints for fixing society even in that experience.

What 'gets you off' more when you're daydreaming? Skewering evil people or making the fossil fuel industry dig into their retirement plans early (with their political lackeys in tow)? I think it should be the latter ...even if only by a hair.

As the article points out America has a 'unique' culture based on a hero complex. We like our (super)heroes to pummel baddies all day long, to the point of becoming emotionally-delayed idiots with guns and collections of DVDs-and-dolls that could choke a dump truck (i.e. dangerous fantasists). And yes, that goes for the crowd who worship SuperJesus, too. Stand-your-ground laws and police executioners start to look reasonable with that cultural backdrop.

That's why it cannot be secondary, because we have to get our heads out of holes that megachurches and Hollywood dug for us.

It's like the reviewer didn't read the last 150 pages (ok the were pretty unreadable) but the theme was that simply toppling the evil oppressors wasn't nearly enough and that revolutions are hardly ever (or never) "simple".

The revolutionaries too often adopt the tactics and politics of the powers they are seeking to overthrow and risk becoming that which they are fighting against.

Any other reading of the books completely misses the point the author seemed like she was trying to make.

but seriously they should've applied the analysis to "The Amber Spyglas": it rides entirely on a jury-rigged adolescent rebelliousness, then flips back to passively accepting anything an outside authority is saying (as long as that authority is Saying the Right Things); His Dark Materials can't even imagine what its world will look like after the revolution--some idealized vision of the Netherlands?

the book's one of the biggest whiffs in literary history

Especially appropriate for DU.

We have our hero worshipers and our hero destroyers. The way to change is between them. I support Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders not because I think they can bring us a utopia but because I think they are fair-minded and will see to it that laws are enforced so as to make our society more inclusive, more just and therefore stronger.

Barack Obama is a good person, but has appointed corporate servants to positions of authority and responsibility for our economy. We need to have some thoughtful people who do not come out of corporate culture preparing some of our economic policy proposals. We don't have nearly enough of them.

Same for our military policy.

And not the books.