Glenn Beck has talent. He's a self-promoter par excellence and he makes money hand over fist, simply because he can generate an audience. He generates audiences by being bold, not by being truthful. Everyone knows that Glenn Beck doesn't let facts get in the way of the story he wants to tell.
Now on his latest book tour, he says he's going to organize a series of seven "conventions" in seven regions of the country, to develop a "radical" one-hundred year plan to "restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting". His themes? "Self-reliance, community organizing, the economy and how to be a political force in your own neighborhood and country."
You know he's gonna do it. You know it will get all the press in the world. You know it's going to be awful, and wrong in ways we cannot yet imagine. But we can beat him at his own game.
I have no idea what kind of crazy Glenn Beck will come up with, and truly, I don't care. I don't buy his books, and I don't watch or listen to his shows, but I've seen enough on this website and others to know that it's going to be loony, wrong, and dangerous.
The good news is that we, in the reality-based community, have fair warning. We know Glenn Beck is going to do this thing. We'd be idiots not to spend time, effort and money now to create our own 100 year plan, to compete in the "marketplace of ideas" (such as it is) with our own fellow citizen, Glenn Beck.
I DO care what a reality-based 100 year plan for America would look like, and I've lurked on this site long enough to know that others who write or comment here do as well.
Not only would it be an interesting exercise to wrangle together our vision for America, 100 years out, it is frankly a necessary exercise. We need to make our own vision, and have our own media events. Our vision must compete with his.
Since the DKos convention in Pittsburgh was such a success (and from all I've read, it was) then putting on seven more conventions to figure out a 100 year plan for America would, I'm sure, be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. (Aside from the fact that we are indeed the reality-based community, and in reality, our problems are hard.)
One of the great things about this site is its recognition of practical politics. Kos cares about winning. Kos cares about framing the debate, and moving the Overton Window. I hope the DKos community is still fired up and ready to go to compete and win in the marketplace of ideas. Especially against the DJ's-as-policy-makers model that the GOP currently embraces.
We know this Glenn Beck wack-a-doodle thing is going to happen, and it's going to get more press attention than we can imagine! We should not, indeed we'd better not, cede this media battlefield to Rupert Murdoch and Glenn Beck! We need to make our OWN story to compete with Glenn Beck. We can do it, and we need to start right now. But, as it happens, we've already got the high ground:
"Self-reliance, community organizing, the economy and how to be a political force in your own neighborhood and country." are all the areas that Beck says he wants to focus upon. Ironically, these are also the areas in which we win. So let's win. Let's get together and let's kick Glenn Beck right in the ass.