I found
this interesting article by Andrew M. Gracy over at DU. The first thing that caught my eye, actually, was the flag logo in the corner. I love it! Blue and red set against one another, with blue arrows pushing into the red. Perfect! Man, remove the text on the left and let that be our battle flag!
Anyways, the article is good in parts. The lead-off that got me excited reads:
It's time to put away the liberal tool box - the principles of rational adjudication and fair play, the respect for the diversity of ideas and the pursuit of truth. There is simply too much at stake. It's time to bring the fight to them, and it's time to fight to win. The future of our country depends on it, and there are real, human lives at stake.
Too fucking right! One of the problems with the Left is that we don't fight dirty. Too much wide-eyed idealism and the strident belief that "truth will out!" The Right has taken advantage of this and kicked us in the teeth while we stood around saying "See here! That's not very gentlemanly of you!" That's why I love what Howard Dean has been doing lately. Just full-on, unabashed attack dog rhetoric against the Republicans. Honestly, I don't care if he "goes too far," someone needs to set the tone and remind Dems and other Lefties that we are at war! The article then takes a bit of a conspiracy theory turn:
The truth is, the 2004 presidential election was almost certainly fraudulent (as were many of the Congressional races), and George W. Bush was ushered into office by subterfuge and against the will of the voting majority. There is too much evidence to support this hypothesis to be ignored - from exit polls to statistical studies of voting patterns in a number of states - but it is not a story that could break into the corporate media. The lesson? You've already been disenfranchised, and conventional methods of political activism will likely prove ineffective against the power establishment.
Well... I'm not so sure. I've never gotten too deep into the Ohio exit poll scandal or the Diebold conspiracy stuff post-election, mostly because a lot of Dems seemed to be using it as a convenient scapegoat for why Kerry lost, instead of examining the real strategic and tactical shortcomings that led to a President who should have been washed away in a landslide getting re-elected. That said, verifiable voting is an issue that needs to be examined and remedied, the sooner the better. The article gets better from here, though not without first delivering a gut punch to our liberal sensibilities:
Traditional liberalism is dead. You can balk, you can insist that universal truths never die, that compassion and dignity always have a seat at the table. And in principle you are right. But it's precisely this attitude that has led us to this point, to the brink of theocracy, and to the end of democracy in America. You may be a hit at the Chancellor's annual holiday party, but you are living in utter ignorance of the political realities we face.
True, but still harsh to many lefties' ears. The rest of the paragraph talks a little about rebranding the best ideas of liberalism. And here we get to the main thrust of the article: the Left needs to wrap its ideas in the cloak of populism and moralism in order to drive a wedge between cultural conservatives and their Big Business allies:
If the people are to turn the tide and restore democracy, they must be willing to fight a new kind of war. When faced with overwhelming force, it is suicide to mount a frontal assault; the only workable strategy is subversion - a guerilla war that exploits the weaknesses in the opposing force and redirects the resources of the enemy inward, against itself. It is time for Americans to mount such an offensive, an offensive forged with words and carefully orchestrated political action, an offensive that exploits the inherent tension between the Religious Right and corporate America to undermine the conservative movement.
Wow. The author gives some examples of how to rebrand and reframe traditional liberal arguments to make them resonate with the cultural conservative's inherent distrust of power. Protect the environment for the sake of spotted owls? Hell no! Protect the environment because the President's environmental policies threaten unborn children with exposure to toxic levels of mercury! Help out the poor and the workers? No, just argue that Bush's economic policies have lead to an increase in the abortion rate in this country. You get the idea. It may be tawdry realpolitik, but, as the author notes, Al Capone was arrested for tax evasion, not bootlegging. Ha!
Personally, I'm not so sure a wedge strategy like this will work. Yes, the alliance between the Religious Right and Big Business is kind of remarkable when you look at it. But it's also very engrained in the average Red Stater. In What's The Matter With Kansas, Thomas Frank points out that when the Operation Rescue nutjobs converged on Kansas in the early 90s and whipped everybody into a froth, the voters dumped the moderate Republicans and installed an even more conservative government. Which is pretty much what you'd expect. But did it weaken the Right? Not really. Kansas is still blood Red. It's the Whack-a-mole problem: you may drive a wedge between the Religious Right and Big Business, but at the same time you empower the Religious Right. It's possibly a zero-sum game.
Secondly, it's not like, once they see how Big Business is inherently amoral, the culturally conservatives are going to up and vote Democrat in the next election. At best, you're hoping for a decrease in their turnout. Which is not to say it's a bad strategy. Decreased evangelical turnout in 2000 was one of the reasons Bush didn't stomp Gore, and the increase in their turnout in 2004 is a key reason why Bush didn't get stomped by Kerry (that and Diebold. snicker). I guess what I'm saying is that the strategy outlined by Mr. Gracy can be an effective line of attack when combined with other, perhaps less subversive, lines of attack. I'm speaking of netroots/grassroots communities, political activism, etc. Subvert and split the Right while also building a new, grassroots and netroots dominated progressive alternative. Now you're talking turkey!