Those of us on the left are proud to think of ourselves as being members of a reality-based community. To me being reality-based means determining one's actions in terms of principles and values that are readily arrived at through reason, such as the principle of liberty and all that follows from it. It means applying those principles
universally and not making special exceptions for preferred groups. It means being critical of ideology and exercises of authority that cannot ground themselves reasonably but instead evoke things such as patriotism or religion. And it means carefully evaluating and gathering facts before making decisions. However, there is a risk to all of this that also often puts us at a disadvantage. I think these disadvantages can be offset through some simple and productive strategies.
More below the fold.
DISCLAIMER: I offer the following musings as an analysis of the rhetorical space of the political imaginary and the dynamics of group identification, and not as a scientific or logically demonstrated proof. Needless to say, the rhetorical field does not obey the principles of logic but makes use of appeals to emotion, ideals, group oppositions, etc., as is also the case with respect to the phenomenon of identification. Moreover, I recognize that the United States is a very large country and that all generalizations are necessarily going to be inadequate. In this spirit, I modestly offer these comments as reflecting what I've come to understand about my fellow citizens through reading, listening to them, watching the news and trying to make sense of their decisions. Other analyses are both possible and no doubt correct. This disclaimer dedicated to my friends Pursewarden and Armando, who are devoted to being reality-based and rigorous in their reason. ***
All of us on the left are committed to reason and justice as principles of our political beliefs. We treat reason and justice as ideals that we strive to live up to, and sometimes we're successful and sometimes we're not. Nonetheless they are the touchstone of everything we do. This is our great strength and that which puts us on the side of right, for we treat reason and justice as universal and not the privilege of an elite few, whether they be economically elite, famous, or religiously elite.
However, these strengths are also disadvantages in a number of ways. Our commitment to reason and justice means that we're constantly scanning the political horizon or the horizon of governance to undo injustice and to fight unreason. This commitment has made us the motor of history or the force of progressive change, slowly producing a more just, more tolerant, more egalitarian, more enlightened society. Yet our focus on battles of just and enlightenment often makes us sound as we are just complainers to those who do not yet have eyes to see the problems we're trying to correct. Similarly, in our commitment to reason means that we're often more focused on abstract issues of facts and policy, rather than meaning and principles. After all, we reason, why should we talk about meaning and principles when we already know the meaning of our struggle and we are already very clear on our moral principles?
The first issue has led to the common sentiment that the left is the party of victims. Despite the fact that we are affirmative in our pursuit of justice and reason, our constant struggle pushes these things into the background in the mind of less politically inclined voters and gives the appearance that we're just complaining. And, people reason, who wants to think of themselves as a powerless victim?
The second issue (policy and fact) places us at a disadvantage because apparently many Americans have a difficult time following carefully wrought arguments and nuanced policy issues, and instead get by in their political decision making on the basis of so-called "truisms" ("Democrats raise taxes, Republicans are good on defense and for the economy.") and brand-name identifications ("Republican means rich, I want to be rich, therefore I'll vote Republican." "Democrats want socialism, socialism is bad, therefore I'm against socialism", etc.). These "truisms" are, of course, false as are these "brand-name" characterizations. However, we should not understimate the power of these things. It seems almost axiomatic to me that the majority of voters are very poorly informed across the board. They're mostly interested in their lives, the work, their loves, their problems, and their television shows, and appear, quite frankly, to be disgusted with politics and governance in general (on both sides). The highly informed voter is the exception, not the rule. If this is true, it entails that the majority of voters vote based on what I've called "truisms" and "brand-names"-- meanings --rather than facts or accurate representations of principles. I think we often forget this as psychologically people tend to project their own attributes onto others (so long as those others are similar to them, of course).
If this characterization of the average voter is true, then it means that we have a three-pronged battle to fight, and a three-stringed knot to tie. On the one hand, we must continue the struggle of carefully evaluting and formulating sound policy based on facts. On the other hand, we must do our best to inform a public that is largely uninformed and that that bases much of its decisions on poorly informed "hearsay". This is in part the struggle to get the media to properly report, but also grass roots efforts such as work and communities and on sites like Kos. However, the third task must necessarily involve the creation of meanings and historical myths that illustrate our principles and policies and which elaborate our brand. Here I'm saying nothing different than Lakoff, though I do have a spin on it.
One of the truths of the educational process is that education progresses from the concrete to the abstract. We first learn about math with brightly colored blocks and pictures, before moving to abstract maths such as geometry or calculus. We first learn grammar through reading actual stories and hearing people around us talk, not by first studying abstract grammatical principles and then applying them to concrete cases. Simply put, humans have a very difficult time thinking abstractly, which puts us at a disadvantage insofar as we're so often speaking in abstract terms about policy and our principles. Plato had already recognized this in his famous Allegory of the Cave from the Republic. The prisoners of the cave first think that it's the shadows on the wall that are true, and only gradually obtain the ability to know the patterns, principles, or laws governing these appearances.
Along the lines of the crucial role that meaning plays in our decision making process, narrative history serves an especially important role. Narratives aren't just stories that we tell, but they also serve the function of group identification and the legitimation of certain forms of social organization. If people got so upset back in the 80's when revalations about Columbus' treatment of indiginious American populations came to the fore, then this is because they thought of themselves as descended from Columbus' great voyage and because they could only think of themselves as being good or legitimate so long as their historical predecessors were good and legitimate (rightful in their rule and principles). To question Columbus, in this context, was to question the identity of a particular group in the United States and to contest their legitimacy. Examples can be multiplied ad infinitum.
As far as I can tell, we on the left don't have a very strong narrative function with regard to our political strategy. Here the Republicans have us backed into a corner. Not only does the Right make extensive use of historical narrative mythology, but they evoke it whenever they can. They evoke it in the mytheme that America was founded as a Christian nation. The aim is to produce identifications among citizens in the present with Christianity ("If I'm an American and I'm proud to be an American, and if the nation was founded as a Christian nation, then I'm not a true American unless I'm Christian too."). They evoke it to legitimate a particular form of rule today. They evoke it to exclude certain groups today. For a certain segment of people who confuse these myths with true historical realities, these narratives are immediately persuasive and compelling, but also reassuring because they give them a sense of who they are, where they came from, and why they belong to something special. This is one of the central mechanisms of group identification and is central to the political imaginary in general. Woa unto he who ignores it.
And indeed, it seems that we have ignored it. During the last democratic convention, Obama made tremendous strides in producing a historical narrative mythology, but we still have a long way to go. The nice thing is that our historical narrative isn't a mythology at all, but is actually true. I propose that counter to the "Christian Narrative" myth of origins, we create an Enlightenment narrative: The Founding Fathers founded this knowledge on Enlightenment principles.
We should speak this loudly, clearly, and consistently whenever we can. You don't hear too much talk of the Enlightenment, but we can work to change that. It has a number of advantages. First, it clearly states our principles: Liberty, reason, equality, distrust of ungrounded authority, justice, etc. But there's also a story we can tell in relation to these principles. We can tell a story, which is a historical truth, by a Europe ripped to shreds over religious differences and despotic exercises of Monarchial power, where people were killed and tortured. We can talk about how reason and liberty, being gregarious by nature and open to public demonstration and discourse, promote an end to such war and horror. We can talk about how liberty follows directly from the pursuit of reason insofar as you cannot safely make use of reason to pursue happiness and knowledge without liberty and the assurance that you won't be tortured, killed, or locked up. We can talk about how reason suggests that an Enlightened populace is more likely to produce personal and collective policy than a despotic power in the form of the Church or Monarch who are pursuing their own aims. We can also talk about heroic struggle of our Forefathers in fighting this form of despotism, knowing that there must be a better way, a more peaceful way, and that way is found through reason which is by definition public and allows for consensus. Finally we can talk about how those things that are not demonstrable through reason and which are therefore not public, belong in the realm of private and that when this does not occur (i.e., as in the case of religion) horror and war ensue. This is the heritage of our Founding Fathers, the principles upon which liberalism is based, and a great and compelling story to boot. So why not try a little "myth-making" of our own to counter the prevailing and powerful myths of the conservative right?