This is no moot court; it’s not academic. The American experiment’s single biggest problem is that about one third of its members – historically and currently – want to restrict and restrain everyone else to their world view, their religion, their paradigms, their party, their leaders. They are not happy with free thinkers and open societies. They want to follow an authoritarian philosophy and authoritarian Father figure wherever he will lead them, and they want you to as well. In fact, they insist that you do.
These are not the people who wrote the American Constitution. These people have no respect for the American Constitution except where it agrees with them or the Old Testament. This is a dangerous group to embrace within the American experiment. They can seriously distort the checks and balances of government, and they regularly do.
This Immovable Third of our polling population who (still!) resolutely support Mister Bush and his ilk are widely regarded as immune to reality. Talking them out of their praise and support for Dear Leader is beyond the labors of Hercules, beyond the labors of Sisyphus. It is an impossible task.
The problem this presents to America is that every one of these true believers is a fully empowered citizen of the American experiment. Their vote counts. It will always count.
Is there a solution? Hell, yes. Stop rolling that rock up the hill, Sisyphus. Walk away.
Like 90% of the political blogosphere, the gamut of daily diaries at dKOS largely consist of the reactions of progressive souls to the current crimes and depredations of the Bush Administration, and the New Oligarchy it is so eagerly building atop the American experiment. Wait 24 hours, and you can read a fresh crop of reactions to fresh depredations. Outrage, drama and despair rule the Recommended list! Four letter words are in fashion! Roaring is all the rage! Sisyphus exerts his all!
And the next morning that rock is right back where it started from. Reacting to wingnut crimes, deeds, and statements is a closed circle.
Stop rolling that rock up the hill, Sisyphus. Walk away.
Let’s step back for a moment, and look at the whole American political system.
Professor Altemeyer (and John Dean) have credibly established the nature and effect of the (roughly) one third of American citizens who are Right Wing Authoritarians (RWA’s). Simply put, they are the Bush base, a highly conservative and authoritarian subset of the electorate who are not happy when not following authority figures and an authoritarian hierarchy. Joining and belonging and defending and following an authority figure and an authoritarian hierarchy is their personal and political identity.
It’s not just what they say and what they do. It’s them. It’s who they are. They are wired that way, they swing that way. It’s what makes them tick. Belonging to the truth, the chosen clan, the Right Ones, is their everything. Capice?
After Bush is gone, they will follow the next Dear Leader. Indeed, they define their lives by whom they are with, and whom they follow, on several levels of their lives, from parent to preacher to politician to philosopher.
There is never any lack of people willing to lead these right wing authoritarians. As Machiavelli put it, "Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions."
But then, that isn’t everybody in America.
There is another third of the American electorate who are highly progressive in their outlook and actions, people who are willing to adapt and adjust their view of reality according to science and fact and their own experiences. People who read, study, and think things through. People who want to hear what the problems are so they can help solve them. People who react to hard science like global warming by tackling the problem, where RWA’s react by denying it.
But then, that still isn’t everybody in America.
There is another third of the American electorate who aren’t remotely interested in politics, or in much of anything outside their daily rounds. They have a job, they have kids to raise, they have friends and a house and car payments and their favorite sports team and all in all this is a full life for them. They go along to get along, because getting along is what they do, and is a lot to do. There are only 24 hours in a day, ya know?
To this Middle Third of the American electorate, politics is something that happens on TV every couple of years, and these folks reliably vote for the candidates who give good hair and good words and get good reviews from the talking heads. These people don’t have the time or inclination to read books or blogs; when polling day arrives, they go with their gut.
They reliably vote for the candidates who make them feel comfortable, secure and in the American mainstream. They reliably vote for the candidates who remind them that America is exceptional among nations, and that they are part of that very special something, part of that nation that is the source of all progress and enlightenment on Earth.
Gosh, life is good, ain’t it?
This is the genius of the right wing movement over the past 35 years in American politics. They have relentlessly moved the "mainstream" American political position far, far over to the conservative point of view, and held it there by co-opting the mainstream media almost entirely. Enough to turn that 33% of true believers into 50% of the electorate, which is close enough to steal the White House. Which they did in 2000, and again in 2004.
So, that’s the big picture. That’s everybody inside the American experiment, in broad brush strokes. You have one third on the progressive left, one third on the authoritarian right, and one third in between who generally wish to get along, feel comfortable, and know that they are solidly in the mainstream of the greatest nation on Earth.
Now, whom among this entire lot is amenable to persuasion?
Certainly not the Right Wing Authoritarians. They do not function by logic or evidence, and so cannot be persuaded of anything they don’t already hold dear. They function by group identity. They do not think, they know. They do not arrive at the truth, they belong to the truth. Giving them the most wonderful bundle of facts and logic, neatly ordered and summarized and tied with a bow is every bit as effective as placing cucumbers in front of a koala bear.
They don’t eat such things. They can’t eat such things. Such things make them ill.
Can you persuade the progressive third? Certainly not. They are already pretty much there, or getting there by themselves. It isn’t a matter of persuading them of new facts and new views and new solutions, it’s a matter of keeping up with them in all those pursuits. They read, they study, they think. They already heard you.
It is the people in the middle who can be persuaded, and swayed. Why? Because they don’t genuinely and deeply know or care, really, who runs the country or precisely how or why. They are busy, and they just want to feel comfortable, and they want to know that they are special, and well within the mainstream of America the Beautiful.
If you can’t give ‘em that, what good are you?
Honestly. That’s the big picture. One third of the electorate can swing either way, politically, and does. Entirely on shallow and quixotic motivations.
These people of the Great Middle are easily swayed. These are the people who followed Reagan over the financial cliff because he had good hair and he spoke liltingly of morning in American and a shining city on a hill, and he sent the Marines to Grenada, and he was magnanimous and wise enough to trickle down upon us all.
By the facts and numbers it was all lies, and it indebted an entire generation of Americans, but it captured enough of the Great Middle to get him elected twice. These are the people who followed Bill Clinton just as happily, because he had good hair, he spoke liltingly and made he them feel warm and fuzzy as a rule.
That’s no reason to follow a politician, or a political platform, which is what a political party is. In Europe, people gather in small, local caucuses across their country, decide on the planks in their party’s platform, and then pick leaders who are bound to follow those planks, and not otherwise. In America, it’s winner take all. You only have to master what Karl Rove calls "The Math" well enough to get to 51% of the votes cast, and you have no serious operating restrictions in office thereafter, as long as you give good hair and good words, and don’t make the people in the middle feel uncomfortable or out of the mainstream.
Do that, and you’re back to your base, and soon. Like King George is lately, since he has thoroughly embarrassed the Great Middle of America by his Iraq occupation. He has tarnished the shining city on a hill, and lost his admirers aplenty.
What is all the political shouting on the left and right for in America? It is to capture a great chunk of the Great Middle. The people who can be persuaded. Who can be, not already are. Who can be, not whose personal identity is bound up with following authoritarian leaders and structures.
Watching the flow of diaries on dKOS go around and around, starting every day with the rock back at the bottom of the hill, with the RWA’s reciting the same talking points that were so elegantly disproved the day before -- is damned frustrating. Watching the same process in the mainstream press, and on the TV is a thousand times more frustrating.
Stop rolling that rock up the hill, Sisyphus. Walk away.
The juggernaut of the right wing in America is not the conservative base, not the one third who will follow an authority figure wherever he leads. It is the Noise Machine, the Mighty Wurlitzer of the mainstream media that gives unfair audience to the catechism of the authoritarian followers, that demonizes and dismisses to the fringes any and all progressive and reality-based perspectives and platforms.
Gentle Reader, you will never in a thousand years change the catechism of the authoritarian right. Never. Never. Never.
Stop rolling that rock up the hill, Sisyphus. Walk away.
They will always be with us. It is part of the human condition. What the body of Professor Altemeyer’s lifetime of work proves is that one third of the human species tends to think and operate in authoritarian strictures and structures. They are wired that way. They will find an authoritarian hierarchy and leadership to order their lives by, and they will do it well before they are of voting age. Moving them off that basic world view is as difficult as changing their internal identity – because it is their internal identity.
Logic is no remedy. The only effective response to the catechism of the right wing is public ridicule. Chase them away not by earnestly disproving their every talking point, but by laughing them off the stage. It is a political act, not an act of logic or argumentation. Remember that you are playing to the audience of the Great Middle, not the right wing authoritarians. Get the audience to laugh at them, and the rock will not be there tomorrow. Describe them as clowns, and treat them as clowns, and the Great Middle will treat them as clowns.
Let them be one third of the electorate, but let them do it on their own time, and their own dime. Charlie Chaplin knew this simple truth about authority figures, and often said this. The Great Dictator did more to disabuse mainstream Americans of their latent Nazi sympathies than all the earnest arguments put forth at the time in the press and in publications.
In our current times, we need to ridicule The Great Decider in the same way. George Bush is a clown, not a leader, and this needs only to be shown for people in the Great Middle to feel highly uncomfortable with him.
It is far more effective to go after reclaiming the mainstream media from corporate control, and from the right wing catechism, than to roll rocks uphill in the mainstream media every day. That’s just entertainment, and profits for the media corporations. It is a closed circle.
It is far more effective to push progressive changes in who America hears on the radio and TV every day than it is to endlessly refute the statements of the right wing clowns who do get air play, day after day. That is reactive arguing from within their frame, and that just makes the progressive positions sound shrill, which makes the middle American feel uncomfortable.
The Great Middle are not politically astute people. These are people who cannot hear that America is wrong. They can only hear that America can be better. Any other message loses them, wholesale.
There is only one couch provided in the American living room these days, and it is reserved for right wing talking heads. Naturally, mainstream Americans who live and thrive by the television feel comfortable with this setup – it’s all that’s available.
The right wing lies; it tells big lies to the American public, and the public is not given equal access to dissenting voices, or to progressive voices. They aren’t given the option. Is it not better to change this setup than to refute the right wing talking points day after day on blogs they don’t even read?
The fight is not with the right wing authoritarians. The fight is for. The fight is for the middle ground, for the airwaves and newspapers and think tanks and bookstores. The fight is for a great chunk of the Great Middle.
The facts of life are not at issue. The facts can take care of themselves. At issue is the polluted media environment in America, which only presents facts comfortable to the true believers and couch potatoes who will go along with American militarism and American exceptionalism as long as that’s all there ever is for dinner.
Stop rolling that rock up the hill, Sisyphus. Walk away.
Go for the media, and go for the Middle. It’s the only game in town.
Permalink | 29 comments