what introduction goddamn it?
What have Christian churches done for more than a thousand years? Using images, music, and the spoken word, they have manufactured emotion and then provided the object (typically Jesus, Jerusalem, etc., but sometimes notions of social justice) to which the people as a group could attach their roused feelings.
Repub political operatives do the same thing. By using images, words, and yes, even music, they both scare and tug at the heart-strings of gullible, scared, stressed-out, yellow-ribbonized Oprah viewers. This induces a non-critical mental state, usually fear, sorrow, gratitude, or some heady combination thereof. They then provide an object, a Man on a White Horse-- Boosh landing on a carrier, Boosh reading the Riot Act to the hairy-eyed Democratic Morlochs, Boosh the Lawgiver bringing the 21st Century to the world's oppressed, Boosh as God's appointed Christian Soldier, Boosh the Strict But Loving Parent, Boosh the Hugger of Dead GIs' Moms, which resolves these manufactured emotions into a personal attachment to him, and it is this attachment that gets him the votes of the non-ideologues. It is a frank and effective appeal to the irrational side of the mind.
We have to figure out a way to get inside this process and derail it. Rational, fact-based arguments against Repub policy choices cannot work in isolation, any more than rationality has triumphed over religion. But adopting the classic Repub propaganda techniques would further poison the political well.
Look at the Boston Catholics and how they have soured on their Church in the wake of the revelation of priestly child abuse. They are angry, not just at the priests but also at the Church because they've figured out that they were being conned by a group of powerful insiders, free until recently from external review, with a frankly crooked agenda. Very few Boston Catholics accept the Church's statements at face value any more.
If people were given the chance to realize how hypocritical, dishonest, narcissistic, manipulative, and power-hungry the Repubs are, couldn't they figure out that they have been conned by their own (manufactured) emotions?
How to do this? Continue to make those rational, fact-based arguments, but couch them every time to encourage a little skeptical reflection, knowing that we don't have to convince them right then of the rationality of our position. That can wait.
Don't just say "Boosh was wrong about WMDs, what a gullible idiot he is." Who cares if he was wrong? Undermine the psychology behind the Repub tactics. Say "Boosh used you by playing on your fears when he knew or should have known there was no threat of an Iraqi A-bomb; Boosh went to war because the UN inspectors weren't finding anything-- if they had been allowed to continue, we would have known that there were no WMDs and no good reason for an invasion in 2003, not in 2005, thousands of lives and hundreds of billion dollars later." Don't just belittle the Iraqi election, flawed as it probably was. Say "When Boosh went into Iraq, the administration told the American people that there would be no fundamentalist regime in Iraq, but in order to make you forget that every reason he gave for going to war was a lie, Boosh has held an election in which the fundamentalist Shia gained the power to form a government." Don't say "Boosh is (wrong) or (lying) about Social Security." That doesn't give true believers any reason to re-examine their personal attachment to him. Instead, say "Boosh wants you to be uncertain about the future of your Social Security. He is trying to convince you that you have no shot at getting anything from Social Security, so the Repubs can starve it to death, putting at risk millions of retired, widowed, and disabled Americans." Don't say "The Boosh tax cuts are going to drive the national debt to nosebleed levels." Say "Boosh wants you to quit worrying about the national debt while he borrows 2 trillion dollars to fund his Social Security schemes, knowing that when the economy tanks from the unsustainable debt service requirements, he and his friends will have made enough money from his tax cuts for the wealthy to take care of themselves, and probably enough to buy your house when you can't make the payments."
Stuff like that. Show that he's using manufactured emotion-- every time. Highlight the hypocrisy, the dishonesty, the narcissism, not by using those words, but by making arguments that get people to go there on their own. It's not like we need to change 40 million minds . . . .