Long Term, progressive thinking could have the opposite effect on the whole Body Politick of the atmosphere pushed by Karl Rove and others. In the context of a long term, 40 year campaign by conservative financiers and investors to achieve massive influence over the media environment both nationally and locally, narrowed down quotation opportunities favor thought memes that can only be sustained in terms of seconds.
Progressives make a big mistake when thinking that the problem is to master Rovism and try to beat those political strategists at their own game election by election.
It must be understood where that game came from and why it fundamentally must be met with a core sense of what is progressive by contrast that would be persuasive to swing voters – especially in the long term.
Regressivism – The Future of the Human Race is At Stake
There is a noise machine blaring out through a million loudspeakers that keep us from being able to think clearly. We are distracted constantly by red herring arguments and the salesmen who are making a lot of money by selling blinders that are just so trendy people just have to have them.
When you really think about it for a long time, what is at root is a fear of the future. The core of the conservative mobilization is unthinking, emotional and fear based. It isn’t really a sustainable coalition.
In every election, the real choice that is obscured by all the hollering is:
Do we seek the future through meeting challenges honestly that demand that we embrace reality in its full complexity? Or do we deny the need for complexity and actually support those who promise to bring back a simpler past?
That question is what is being played out in every election at every level in every state and in our national politics.
That is why I am convinced that, despite the hugely noisy distraction machine, the future is progressive, based on a pragmatic and articulate approach to solving problems.
We need to double down on being real, and on being practical and on the discipline to avoid those who are arguing out of sheer emotional panic that the world is made more dangerous by seeing the truth. We need to throw the blinders away.
The problem is, that the world is changing and possibly becoming more dangerous. We understand that it isn’t immediately obvious what is important. You can’t get this in a single book, and mostly the people in the media we hear from are carnival sideshow barkers who have no idea what is really going on. If they do, they are unscrupulous con men who know the truth but promote lies in order to get rich – off of us.
It may take years to unravel enough of the truth to really have a clear mind about it, and most people will never try.
If enough people, however, adopt the self discipline to do that, then there is some hope that the center will hold amidst a cacophony of increasingly crazy hollering. It doesn't have to be very many. A few determined people who can thing long term and big picture could be enough.
What intelligent people of good will have to realize is that the crazies could wind up in the majority if there isn’t a coming together on behalf of the future of America.
The years ahead will not be easier, but will be harder instead. Thus, there is a tremendous responsibility to hold on through stormy times ahead in order to come out the way Americans have always before come out through times of adversity.
It isn’t the excitable neurotics who won the West, but the people who built towns and societies and economies by getting serious, exhibiting rugged persistence and banding together in common cause. They were operating from a progressive vision of the future.
The prognosis ahead is that the contest will not so much be between Democrats and Republicans, but between Progressives and Regressives, as the issues resulting from conditions in the world intensify throughout the 21st Century.
Leadership Considerations
For something like 40 years, since the days of student protests and the Vietnam War, progressives have been used to protesting bad policies of Republicans in power, while regressives have steadily and persistently organized. Is there a problem? Who can we boycott? You can see that in these diaries and comments very frequently.
For progressives, largely stuck in reactive mode for most of this half century, there has not been a chance to build a pro-active, long term governing strategy looking forward to conditions over the upcoming decades.
The Project For a New American Century, written and promoted by conservatives associated with conservative “think tanks” like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, was a comprehensive view of history and how to interpret history in terms of a big picture strategy for governing going forward, and addressing foreign policy in terms of applying Reagan era economics principles to creating a world governance based on international banking.
There is no similar comprehensive view of how history works and how the world works put forward by progressives that actually could guide governance the way PNAC did for the Bush Administration.
If you read and analyze the blog posts and comments on the Daily Kos blog, the status of the progressive community is that there is no sense of common purpose and discipline and no real awareness of what is going on beyond a certain level of experience.
If that is anything like a representation of the progressive community nationwide, then something needs to be done over the long run to create a more educated cohort of activists and supporters that can be connected to real policy achievement in Washington and in the state capitols.
There needs to be a level of organizing aimed at this problem, and it needs to be created like yesterday.