As multiple posters mentioned last week, the right-wing Wurlitzer has lots of funding, a media infrastructure, loads of radio stations with listeners who are hooked on rage and lots of experience. They have the focus groups.
Last I checked, the Left has most of the poets, many of the writers, a good chunk of academics and a galaxy of entertainers who actually entertain. In short, the talent is largely on our side of the divide.
This contest of ideas should be more equally matched.
Friday Night Memes is an attempt to rectify this.
Say This, Not That
Don’t call it CRT or “Critical Race Theory”. Call it “History As It Happened.”
Instead of “Defund the Police”, try “Reboot the Police”.
Instead of “Climate Change”, call it “Climate Weirding” or whatever effect climate change has on your state: “Drowning Indiana”, “Ten Months of Mosquitoes”, “Fire Ant and Kudzu in Your Yard”, “Shuffling Seasons”, “Haboob Enhancement”.
Repurposing Cold War Memes
By all means, call the People’s Republic of China “Red China”. If you want to, call Taiwan “Green China”, go for it (the ruling, pro-independence party’ color is green). “Blue China” is tempting to use for Taiwan, except that the Kuomintang’s color is blue: the KMT set up a White Terror during the last century, and they seek reunification with Red China under the CCP.
The United States suffers from a lack of competition between corporations servicing Internet connections, social media, food processing and distribution, and many other areas. This is sort of like a certain other economic system that dominated the Second World last century, except that the surplus going back to the people instead made it into the nomenklatura of top officials. So:
- Facebook, Google and Amazon are the Commissars of Silicon Valley.
- The four companies with 90% of the grocery shelf space are the Commissars of Food.
- In general, these monopolies and oligopolies who can set prices are the Commissars of Wall Street.
- Farmers who are trapped into contracts and debt to Tyson or Hormel live on the Corporate Kolkhoz. (Corporate Serfs or Corporate Sharecroppers may be useful, as well.)
Do not call the Corporate Kolkhoz the Corporate Collective Farm. Collective organizations keep small, rural communities alive: municipal and coop utilities service the towns and farms, collectives like Ocean Spray and Land O’Lakes offer distribution networks and IGA stores are the only choice in small towns that’s not Dollar General
COVID’s Choice
“The Coronavirus approves this message.”
“The Second Horseman of the Apocalypse approves this message.”
Possibly useful in the Midwest
”The GOP’s plan is to harvest our toil, our wealth and our youth and export them to the coasts.”
“You know, if you auction that land, Hollywood actors can snap it up and throw you off.”
“The coasts are liberal because they see the zillionaires up close and don’t like what they see.”
“Portland’s Black Bloc thanks the GOP for leaving their trust funds intact.”
“Don’t let screamers at School Board meetings decide what your children should learn.”
Final Note
This exercise might well be futile. Maybe one meme in ten thousand goes viral. But it’s better than not trying at all.