The recent Hollywood studio-funded big budget re-imagining of Planet of the Apes points out an unspoken rule in American culture. Some topics are still just too touchy to confront directly. The original Planet of the Apes was an extended metaphor for both race relations and the legacy of slavery presented as escapism to a 1960s audience tired of dealing with those issues directly. The new version, a better movie at least technically (but without the kitschy gravitas of Heston) takes a more scattershot jab at unintended consequences of the pharma-industrial complex.
There are two subjects "liberal" Hollywood has never, and will never, commit to film as serious historical drama: The Nat Turner rebellion, and the military suppression of the Bonus Army during the Great Depression. Never coming to a suburban multiplex near you, though you can get "Django Unchained" and "Mandingo" on DVD now if you want the defanged, non threatening version of Nat Turner. 1939's "Grapes of Wrath" (after recovery was well underway) was one of the few movies made during the Great Depression that directly confronted it without metaphor. The eccentric rich who make movies, and publicize their politically correct causes, seem to believe they need "the system" they pretend to loath for profit in order to subsidize their "art."
Given all that cultural inertia, the business establishment in the US (that same business establishment that gets blank check government-funded bailouts for its biggest, and growing bigger, banks and largest corporations, but wants to abolish the Small Business Administration, and make government-guaranteed loans for start up companies virtually impossible) should feel pretty confident they can deliver a Hillary-JEB! matchup, and thus give themselves either a 95 percent (with Hillary and Bill), or 100 percent (with JEB!) chance they will control the next occupant of the White House.
But what if all this burgeoning talk of "populism" is more than just idle pundit chatter? Why should anyone believe a genuine populist movement is likely to get off the ground? The "occupy" movement, with its hippie drum circles was a sorry (and well funded by the eccentric rich) safely-valve inchoate excuse for one. Who would fund a real one? Certainly not oil and gas welfare queens Charles or David Koch, or financial speculator Soros. Could one sustain itself organically without wealthy patronage, and their expectations? Could JEB!, as an obvious plutocrat candidate, be beaten by someone like Elizabeth Warren if Hillary imploded a second time? Unlike Hillary, Warren probably wouldn't get much corporate money to fund her campaign, and it's unlikely she could build as ruthless a dirty tricks operation, unlike Hillary, to counter Rove's well-funded character assassination machine. What if Warren could build a grassroots movement, something like a center-left version of the tea party, an actual organic movement, fund it via (lots) of small donations, and present a clear alternative to JEB!? Only as a metaphor in a Hollywood script.
Warren is far from a perfect candidate. She was actually a Republican until just a few years ago, and its not exactly clear if she is a genuine critic of plutocracy and crony capitalism, or just an ambitious political opportunist. One way to gauge that is if indeed she would be frozen out of all corporate campaign money, or if the careful investigative journalist could document a steady flow of "green" or "socially responsible" institutional money flowing her way. If the latter occurred, anti-plutocracy advocates should not get their hopes up.
