"It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer."
-Terence McSwiney
Oh yes. If you can punch me ten times and I'm still standing, but on jab from me knock you out, the fight is worth fighting.
And think of the prize.
We've endured a lot, but now the right is getting desperate. Now they are showing what they can't endure.
If you what to win a fight, you threaten what the other side values the most. That’s not so easy to see sometimes; after all, Tzu Szu tells us that “the art of war is the art of deception”. And give it to the Right; they are usually pretty good at deceiving.
But not at the moment.
The fight for the future of the US has lost all subtlety, and that's a good thing: because now we know what the other side is really scared of. Now the path to winning is obvious.
Not easy mind you, but obvious.
It’s just business
-Mario Puzo, The Godfather
When Francis Ford Coppola put Mario Puzo’s classic to film, he set out to make the criminal underworld a metaphor for unrestrained capitalism. He succeeded. The ruthlessness of the mob families in the pursuit of profit perfectly paralleled the tactics of corporate America at the time. Now, the only difference, if any, is that there is no need for metaphor: comparing the corporate world to gang of criminals is redundant.
But keep something in mind: it still all comes down to business.
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
-Public Enemy
A nation of millions and a hell of a lot of cash.
This is where the Right reveals its vulnerabilities.
Take at look what the last couple of decades, culminating in the events of the last couple of years, and ask: what do the Right spend their resources protecting? What
are they spending more and more to protect?
Once you see it, you know what they can’t endure. You know where to jab. Again and again and again, until it less expensive for them to give up than to fight.
They’re businessmen, they’ll get it.
The Right used to hide its attempts to control our society; they aren’t doing that any more. This loss of subtlety reflects their growing fear that things might slip from their control. There are precedents to increasingly bold attempts at suppression: just look at the Middle East. Look at Wisconsin.
Why are they scared?
1. Demographics: The US population in changing rapidly from a majority white to a plurality white nation. African American and Latino voters are heavily Democratic, while white voters are divided between the two parties. Should these trends continue, the Right has a problem.
2. Ideological Capture: Loud and impatient, the Tea Party had enough enthusiasm to move a low turnout mid-term in favor of the Republicans. Since then, the economy has continued to go down the toilet, Atlas hasn’t hiccupped, much less shrugged, and the senior element of the movement discovered a government program it actually likes: Medicare. However, the party is trapped: it loses the mainstream by keeping the Tea Partiers, and it loses them by acting rationally.
3. Reality show politics: it seems that, by the grace of a just God with a cosmic sense of humor, the American attraction for deranged celebrity has populated the Republican field with a bevy of goofballs. Thus Donald Trump, who lost money on his own casino, rises to the top. Thus Newt Gingrich, on wife number three and religion number two, remains in play. They and other entertaining clowns have no chance of winning, but they make great copy; so the media gets ad revenue in return for making the Republicans look ridiculous.
In essence, the Right are extremely powerful, but the fields in which they can exert their power are limited to the near future by changes in the American landscape, and to Congress and the statehouses by their low chances of capturing the Presidency.
This is why they have lost all subtly; they have to use all their strength to rob us quickly, because they don’t have time for a better plan.
So let’s look at where their money is going. And let’s see how we can force them to part with more.
The Right cannot endure:
Competing Information. From the sponsorship of right wing radio, to the creation of Fox News, to the heavily (and privately) subsidized Washington Times, to the attempted destruction of NPR, the Right has made an enormous effort to dominate the airwaves. Some of these ventures have been directly profitable, such as Fox News, but even that network could make as much cash though simple shock value as it does through propaganda (in fact, Murdock has proven extremely malleable when it comes to ideology: his own entertainment network spends a considerable amount of time mocking the Right, and he famously capitulated to the Chinese when they objected to his broadcast of Tiananmen Square footage. Business sense trumps ideology.)
Tactic 1: Get media friendly. The Tea Party understood this with their costumed rallies and town hall attack. Wisconsin showed that we can do the same.
Noam Chomsky points out that the business of the media is to sell audiences to advertisers. The creation of a loud, visible and seriously watched movement on the Left tells the media that there is an audience they can sell. It tells advertisers that there is an audience they can sell to.
It’s just business. They’ll get it.
Tactic 2: Provide useful information. Much of Right wing media is meant to entertain, titillate and enrage; it rarely provides its audience with tools that can help them better their lives.
We can do the same thing the Right does, but we can also provide information that can help the audience. Whenever we highlight an issue, (say, pollution) we can provide contact numbers for every single decision maker responsible for fixing the problem, as well as every source of medical information required to protect against the effects of whatever particular poison has been dumped.
Ideological competition. The creation of the various right wing foundations, whose sole purpose is to provide intellectual cover for the systematic looting of the US Treasury, cost a hell of a lot of money to create; these foundations also cost a lot to maintain. See Tentacles of Rage The Republican propaganda mill, a brief history.
Recent events, from the polling free fall of Wisconsin Governor Walker to the dramatic opposition to the Ryan Medicare Destruction Plan, will require the foundations to spend more and more on the pretzel logic required to sell their BS.
This has recently been done via the best PR trick I’ve seen in decades: Within seconds of wining the mid-terms, the Republicans turned the "job crisis" into a debt crisis.
Why?
Well, the Tea Party folks who swept them into power see no legitimate role for government, and the corporate bosses who finance their elections sure as hell don’t want to pay for any proactive efforts. So there is no way the Right can offer any ideas for out of work Americans.
However, they can latch onto the word "debt" because it's so loaded. Everyone hates to be in debt, so what's bad for the individual must be bad for the country, right? And when individuals are in debt, what do they do? They cut spending.
Tactic: Mount compelling ideological opposition. What The President has done by calling this a fight over two visions for America is a start, but it is nowhere near enough. Every Democrat should be screaming "Rebuild the nation! Jobs for us, jail for them!" The discontent is there.
This is a time when good politics is also good policy. Kicking the Republicans while they are down is the most sensible thing to do with both the 2012 elections and the nation's survival in mind.
I would love to see the President say the following:
"When I came to Washington, I promised to hold out my hand to my Republican friends. And I did when (insert issue here" but they refused it. And I did when (insert issue here" and they refused it" ( and so on with example after example)
"So now, with deep regret, I will say this: if our Republican friends refuse to move this country forward into the future with us, we will move it forward without them. We will not longer tolerate a system that rewards the few for impoverishing the many. I, and the Democratic Party, will fight for an America in which the responsibility for, and the blessings of, a great and prosperous nation are shared by all."
For plenty of information on how to frame issues, see:
Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives, by George Lakoff. Lakoff specializes in debate framing for progressives. The most important lesson you can pick up from this book is that the winning frame wins the debate. Republicans know this: that’s why they have their own language specialist, Frank Luntz , turn “oil drilling” into “energy exploration”. Lakoff is just as good, turning “higher taxes” into “paying your dues” examples abound. See also: Cognitive Policy Wonks and The Progressive Strategy Handbook Project .
and
Frank Luntz: everything he’s written. He's a conservative message master, and you have to know the enemy. Remember the great scene in Patton, when the victorious general shouted: “Rommel! You magnificent bastard! I READ YOUR BOOK!”
Any electoral victory by the Left. The Right donates enormous amounts of cash to its champions, both directly and indirectly. The Citizens United fiasco indicates that they are ready and willing to spend more.
Tactic: Expand the battlefield. There are plenty of opportunities for victory that can drive them nuts and cost them more. While the big prizes of the US system are, of course the Federal government and the Statehouses, they are smaller elections all the time that, given low turnout, can be won by organization and enthusiasm alone. Victories in these areas need not be immediately substantive; the smallest symbolic victory generates the morale needed for the next, larger one. See George Washington at Valley Forge. (It was our Revolution, too)
Here’s informtion on Initiative and Referendums
Also, check with your state elections authority to see the calendar of local elections, including city town and county, for the remainder of 2011 and for 2012.
Then they'll raise their hands
Sayin' we'll meet all your demands
But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered
And like Pharaoh's tribe
They'll be drownded in the tide
And like Goliath, they'll be conquered.
-Bob Dylan (When the Ship Comes In)