‘Revolution’ in the air: Romney, Obama and ‘The Hunger Games’

Mitt Romney is bound to be a great president because the world is
falling apart. Possibly any of the past presidents except Franklin
Pierce would have been great if the world had fallen apart on their
watch. Those sent to preside over petty tasks like the Clintons and
Obama will be destined for scorn: It is not the measure of the candidate
which makes the great president. It is the depth and velocity of the
breakage he faces in his tenure and his ability to survive it standing.
Romney will be in that category if the world falls apart on his watch.
It looks like it will and it looks like he can handle it.

But there is a disquieting rumor of revolution in the air. It could mean
a return to character and honor, but anything can happen. Hollywood
producer and Friend of Obama J.J. Abrams sees “Revolution” ahead; it is
the name of his new TV series.

{mosads}If Abrams’s “Lost” represented the end of everything in sacred and occult symbolism, “Revolution” is less opaque. “Revolution” unashamedly poaches, featuring young women with bow and arrows and actors who look like they might have been in “Twilight” (one of them was). And now they are armed against the “Monroe Republic,” an indigenous group formed by American militias when the lights all went out everywhere.

Apparently “The Hunger Games” has made its mark. The president has not seen it. “I haven’t seen ‘The Hunger Games,’ ” he joked at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “Some of you have seen it? It’s a movie about people who court wealthy sponsors and then brutally savage each other until only one contestant is left standing.” Romney saw “The Hunger Games” the weekend it opened with his grandchildren. He read all three books.

J.J. Abrams is, according to The Wrap, which covers Hollywood, one of Obama’s top 10 Hollywood supporters. You have to wonder if Obama, who has little interest in the space between New York and L.A., and his agent Abrams are not just declaring war on the heartland with this offering.

Apparently, the lights going out is a symbol of political darkness here, not a return to nature as it might be to Rousseau, Jefferson or Katniss, reading by candlelight — or sharpening her knife.

Katniss and company seek a true place for themselves somewhere in the vicinity of Appalachia. The Abrams “revolutionaries” in the trailer seem to focus on Chicago — Obama’s hometown — when the symbolic “son” (“deathless child” — spirit of God — Obama?) has gone missing. It seems a fairly good guess that a negative miracle has occurred: When Obama was denied a second term, the “light of the world” — once symbolic of the Christ — went out.

“Hope lights the way,” it says in the trailer. Seriously. Fifteen years after “the darkness” which easily suggests the rejection of Barack Obama for a second term.

“The Hunger Games” dramatizes a dystopian entertainment industry embedded with news sources and government, forming the kind of totalitarian matrix Aldous Huxley prophesied in Brave New World. There could not be a better example than that presented in the trailer for “Revolution.”