At times it seems every blogger on the Huffington Post except me has either just published a new book or is just about to publish a new book. And here am I resting on withered laurels. Could be sour grapes then, I suppose ('No, no' I hear my dear readers protest) to wonder out loud whether there is any point to books any more (with the exception, of course, of the new book from our lovely leader Arianna).
This is complete heresy I know. I mean all of the people who visit Huffington Post, except the trolls and the fundies, believe fervently in books and literature and the power of the written word (mightier than the sword and all that). So why am I proclaiming the end of literature?
Well, as the man said, the neo-cons have put themselves into the position of creating reality while the rest of us can only look on. They act without interest in the facts, blindly following ideology, even when they continue to fall over cliffs that weren't mentioned in the neo-con's bible; march, left right, left right, that cliff is a figment of the liberal imagination. And they have been able to continue to do this by packing every government organisation with their ideological but unqualified friends (think Bo Derek. OK now stop thinking Bo Derek and pay attention). No facts will emerge that contradict their ideology. These are not people who look at all the facts and try to decide the best course of action, as most governments in the past have done, these are people who mold the facts around their intentions.
As well as packing government agencies they have also stacked the courts and gained control of legislatures everywhere. And, perhaps most seriously, they have control of the main stream media (and yes, you at the back there, that does still matter). With the screaming virulence of people like Coulter and Hannity, wailing banshees constantly heard in the background, they have almost complete control of public discourse. So waddya going to do, write a book about it? Go for it big fella, see if I care. Because books now of course, are a commodity like newspapers and tv and radio. They have no influence on public policy or even discourse. If they manage to get published among all the celebrity ghost written tell all autobiographies and conspiracy theory whodunnits and the latest diet fad, they will be turned out in small print runs, receive no publicity, and have no impact beyond the readership of HuffPo or The Nation, an audience already onside.
Forty years ago books could change lives, overturn governments, arouse public conscience, change beliefs. These days the Right have proved that you can get by and indeed thrive without reading, or writing, anything more sophisticated than My Pet Goat. If we want to change the world again (and people like us seem to have to do this every forty years or so) then we are going to have to find a way to do it that doesn't involve book publishing.