Is it schadenfreude to take pleasure in provoking hateful, greedy, mendacious people to frenzy for one's own entertainment? Is it a cruel exploitation of their cataclysmic lack of humanity to shine a spotlight on it and treat them as zoo exhibits for the amusement of the civilized? These and other subtle philosophical questions are important in making real decisions, but for now I would like to wallow in some plausible scenarios along these lines: Projects that are sincere and honest enough in their substance, yet calculated to provoke maximum fury from conservatives.
Personally, it disgusts me how consistently liberals avoid provoking the right, almost as a matter of instinct - we're just too nice. Unfortunately, that means there are huge swaths of the country where liberal values are effectively nonexistent, because the conservatives there are so reactionary and vicious that we just avoid them. The entire political culture of these regions consists of radical conservatives (e.g., religionists, fascists), moderate conservatives (Blue Dogs), and libertarians, and the liberal minority speaks if at all in obsequious whispers and self-effacing caveats. "Well, sir, we all love God and guns and low-to-nonexistent taxes for rich people, sir, but maybe, sir, we can, perhaps, possibly, maybe, if you please, sir, have a library with more than the Bible in it, sir?"
And what's truly galling about it is that we think we're being heroic and provocative if we do anything at all in these parts of the country, simply because it causes a stronger reaction from the other side than our usual eggshell-walking does. It's pathetic. So, in a spirit of mischievousness, just try to imagine projects that would be truly confrontational, and yet totally honest and serious (nothing that could be legitimately derided as a prank).
10. Greed monuments outside corporate HQs
These would have to be earnest and impactful rather than cartoonish. What I imagine is a large pedestal, perhaps a couple of stories tall, with proportionally large statues on top of it: One group of statues is an obviously poor, homeless family huddled down against the cold, and nearby is a man in a business suit looking away with a sneer of disgust on his face, and his feet treading on an American flag. A GOP elephant lapel pin should be on his suit. Every corporation that does not meet certain challenging guidelines for social responsibility should have one in front of their HQ, and smaller versions in front of all their satellite campuses. The plaque should name them and their misdeeds.
9. Prominent statue of John Brown in a very white part of a Southern state
John Brown, as you may recall, was the radical abolitionist who got tired of the cowardice of the North and began launching guerrilla attacks against slave-owners. We would like to think that we, in his shoes, could have found a better way, but we must also acknowledge that we cannot fully appreciate the situation he faced - the arrogance, impunity, and murderous terrorism of the pro-slavery forces at that point.
As a political culture, the slavers were pure evil, having next to no moral reservations about violently attacking people who so much as spoke against them in territory they considered theirs or even adjacent to theirs, and often enough that amounted to murder. Even the passive general population just waved away such acts as being self-inflicted by those who would "interfere with the natural order." So it would seem inevitable that a reaction would occur, but that isn't how it was interpreted: Brown was controversial for introducing "impure" human reality into an abolitionist movement that had been ethereal, philosophical, and spiritual, but many today consider him a hero not only for his choice to fight, but for illuminating the jagged moral line of violence in defense of other people's rights.
So, as one of the very few abolitionists to stand up for himself in the face of slaver terrorism before the Civil War, Brown continues to be regarded with a deep and disproportionate loathing by the political descendents of the slavers. Their own legacy they rationalize, sanitize, and examine through rose-colored glasses as some kind of quaint, pastoral tradition - like slaves were just folks who didn't quite get a square deal, rather than people who were savagely dehumanized, violated, mutilated, and murdered on a regular basis with the full support of Southern society. But in the most prominent of the few abolitionists who did anything about it, they tend to see little more than a callous, marauding lunatic who killed people over a "lil ole disagreement." And since that perspective is dishonest and delusional, I think it would be great to erect a big statue of John Brown in a very white, very conservative part of a city in the Deep South.
8. Darwin / evolution / science monuments in Bible Belt cities.
These could include a wide diversity of specific designs, preferably located within sight of megachurches without actually acknowledging religion in any way. They could be statues of Darwin himself, the proverbial "Descent of Man" image with the ape slowly transitioning into the human, or perhaps just one hominid with uncommonly intelligent eyes - perhaps also monuments to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and other figures relevant to it such as Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, etc. Some examples could be monuments dedicated to martyrs of science, killed by religion - Hypatia, Giordano Bruno, etc. Other monuments could be dedicated to symbolic ideas, celebrating science, creativity, and freedom from fear and superstition. They should all be large, obtrusive, and yet dignified in just such a way as to infuriate the right people without giving them any legitimate cause for offense.
7. Gun victim memorials in Arizona and Texas
AZ and TX are not the only states with batshit gun laws, but they are the most arrogant, intransigent, mindless, and proud of their inhuman attitudes on just about every topic. So I think it would be fitting to build two huge memorials, each in the most conservative big city of each state (I assume that's respectively Tucson and Dallas), that list all the people in America murdered or killed accidentally with guns, their faces, the type of gun they were killed with, images of the gun, and advertisements from the gun manufacturers touting the qualities of that gun. Since more people would die every year, the memorials would be designed to expand indefinitely.
6. Memorial to murdered abortion doctors and nurses
Build dozens of them in the heart of the Bible Belt, in every state that imposes or tries to impose restrictions on abortion. Build them tall, build them large, build them bright and strong with unmistakable meaning, and build them where the people who would hate them cannot escape seeing them.
5. Museum of Organized Crime with Republican Party wing
The Republican Party hasn't promoted an actual political agenda for going on three decades - it has no ideas, no philosophy, no purpose that can be articulated as such. It is, for all intents and purposes, a coalition of hate groups and crime syndicates, and individuals with interests in them. People only join in order to directly acquire payoffs in the form of tax cuts or contracts, almost like a pyramid scheme, or else to deny others access to those payoffs so that they personally can have a bigger share in them. But even that would be legitimate if it were approached largely through political means, but as with most money-oriented interests, it doesn't - it commits crimes of all sorts, up to and including treason to obtain these payoffs, at all levels, routinely and as a matter of mandatory policy. The GOP does not tolerate people within its ranks who will not cooperate with these crimes. It is a criminal organization, period.
So why are they not articulated as organized crime? Perhaps the narrative allure of people like Al Capone and John Gotti is missing from a pack of white-collar vermin who are never at personal risk in their crimes, so people who study and make a hobby of exhibiting the history of organized crime wouldn't find the GOP a very interesting subject. Nevertheless, it is one and the same topic: So it would be quite provocative to start a large, credible, and centrally located (Washington DC) Museum of American Organized Crime with an entire wing dedicated to the Republican Party. It could educate foreign tourists about how Richard Nixon eliminated the GOP's scruples, how Reagan killed its conscience, and how Bush and Cheney took away its last vestiges of sanity and patriotism. Let them open their own museum to counter this one, and it would be taken about as seriously as any other reaction of theirs ever is (Freedom Fries, anyone?)
4. Buy rich, predominantly white, Southern private schools and rename them after MLK and others.
This is an especially delicious scenario, because it would put conservative parents in a catch-22: If their children's school is renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, what are they going to do about it? Are they going to interrupt their children's education and social life by transferring them somewhere else just because the school is now named after a black man? I'm sure there are conservatives who are that level of repugnant, but their repugnance would be on display for all to enjoy, and those conservatives who would be too ashamed to make a similar spectacle of themselves would squirm in powerlessness. It would be fun to watch those ones run through the litany of semi-plausible excuses for a different name: You can bet they would say something like "A different name would be a better fit," or "There are already so many schools with that name, and we think this one should be distinctive."
RFK, JFK, Abraham Lincoln, William Tecumseh Sherman, and MLK would be the biggest ones for Southern schools, but there could be other names and include conservative communities in the North. I'm thinking especially about historical labor organizers and union leaders, as well as other liberal Democrats of history. In addition, parochial and theological schools could be renamed in memory of scientific martyrs, and called the "Giordano Bruno School of Mythology" rather than Theology, or the "Hypatia School of Ancient Literature" rather than Bible Study.
3. Colossal slavery memorials in all the major former slave states.
Imagine a 100-foot-tall colossus of an idealized African in broken chains standing proudly over Jackson, Montgomery, Atlanta, Richmond, etc. On his face, a majestic expression and an enigmatic smile that just says "uppity" to every redneck douchebag who sees it. His bare feet tread on the Confederate battle flag, and he carries the American flag, either on a standard or worn as a cloak or something.
2. A fitting Reagan memorial
There are probably Reagan memorials in various places already that celebrate the delusional alternate history his people have created around him, but the biggest and most prominent memorial to him should be that which accurately reflects his presidency and legacy. How to do that without just being a trivial mockery? An inexhaustible amount of ideas could be generated, but my suggestion would be a giant empty suit with a black onyx heart and a plaque at the base commemorating his chief accomplishments: Delaying the release of the Iran hostages, selling missiles to America's sworn enemy, making homelessness an epidemic, training Central American dictators in torture, delaying the end of the Cold War, exploding the National Debt to buy weapons that didn't work, and filling his administration with felons. This could be part of a "Rogues Gallery" with statues of other vermin - Nixon, George W. Bush, Joe McCarthy, etc, or it could be a standalone.
1. Iraq War memorial in the heart of Texas
This should show a woman in a headscarf cowering in terror, with tears streaming down her face and her children in her arms. It should be dedicated to the murdered people of Iraq, and name George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as their murderers. The monument should be big enough to be visible from far away, and immune to petty vandalism or any practical level of bomb attack. It should be located inside a large city where the people responsible for the atrocities (those Texans who were behind Bush and Cheney) would drive past it every day, and be filled with bitterness and rage at being confronted with their legacy. The inscription should be in huge letters, far from the ground but visible from most angles, and simple yet profound: "Dedicated to the murdered people of Iraq, their lives stolen in the illegal invasion of that country by the criminals George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney."