Follow the money — The unacknowledged asymmetry
If you looked at the examples of violence in American history in Part 1, you may have noticed something. Some of the worst were around issues involving wealth and power. People with money have resources the rest of us don’t, access to the government at levels most of us don’t, and they like things just the way they are. They’d like it even better if they had even more wealth and power. That’s how they roll.
Groups that challenge the existing order will get much more push back from people with that wealth and power — they recognize it as a threat to them. Racism, religious bigotry, xenophobia — what does money care about that, unless it directly impacts the bottom line? Heck — they may embrace those things, believe in them.
Labor rights, civil rights, social justice, economic justice, environmentalism, regulation, good government — that’s an entirely different threat to the order of things in their eyes. If you look at American history, threats from the left have always gotten landed on harder by the established order — and it’s not always via government action. Racism, religious bigotry, xenophobia — these are traditionally used to divide us from each other, and distract people from the real reasons their lives are miserable: an economic system rigged against them. (Yeah, that ‘economic uncertainty’ that explains support for Trump. Riiiiight.)
It can be as simple as the authorities turning a blind eye to certain things. It can be tacit support for policies that enshrine injustice. It can be blatant financial support — or does anyone still think the Tea Party was a purely spontaneous populist uprising? Is it a coincidence that Martin Luther King was assassinated just as he was moving from concentrating on racial justice to the larger issue of economic justice? There is a huge body of scientific research showing that the root of just about every social ill you can name correlates with how much inequality there is in a given society — and the U.S. is at record levels of wealth concentration. Think they want to change the subject?
So how do we end up with a billionaire business con man in the Oval Office, and a Congress full of people dedicated to shoving more wealth upwards — and no effective outrage over that? Which leads into...
Another asymmetry: shaping the narrative
Projection: The wiki entry describes it as defense mechanism where people avoid acknowledging their own flaws by projecting them on others, which goes along with blame shifting. It has been weaponized into a propaganda method where one side projects its bad behavior onto the other to A) delegitimize them, B) change the subject, and C) justify their own actions. (See Wayne LaPierre as linked above.) It’s part and parcel with scapegoating, whataboutism and false equivalence. (The latter is a media failing, in which they try to ‘prove’ objectivity by tarring both sides as being no different.
It also ties in with the mindset of authoritarian followers and the way their leaders manipulate them. Again, via Robinson:
...Conformity also feeds their sense of themselves as more moral and righteous than others -- a perception that's usually buttressed by the use of magical absolution techniques that they use to "evaporate guilt," in Dean's words. Because they confessed, or are saved, or were just following orders, they can commit heinous crimes and still retain a serene conscience and sense that they are "righteous people." On the other hand, when it comes to outsiders, there is no absolution. Their memory for even minor transgressions is nothing short of elephantine (as Bill Clinton knows all too well).
emphasis added
What this means is, there is always going to be unwarranted blame and condemnation coming at the left from the right no matter how you behave. Do not allow their well-calculated outrage to intimidate you, discredit you, or go unchallenged. Do not let them take control of the narrative — hard to do, because they’ve got a well-established media machine.
People angered by Wall Street Greed in the Occupy movement got turned into drug-abusing, health-hazard, petty criminals trashing public spaces. African Americans protesting police violence and other abuses targeting them got turned into violent criminal rioters threatening public order and blocking roads — and it was used for political gain.
This post by annieli gets into some detail on how the terrain is being molded to advantage the right, including disinformation campaigns and selective targeting. It’s not even subtle. Right wing radio, FOX News, Sinclair Broadcasting, evangelical mercenaries, a whole network of Think Tanks and academic centers are devoted to a 24/7 campaign whose net goal is to demonize liberals, capture and subvert government, stir up division to make people angry and afraid, while spreading misinformation — all in the service of money. They’ve been at it for decades. Traditional media seems unable to recognize or counteract it — and is being neutralized more and more. The lesson of Rwanda is being ignored — words can have consequences, and the words that are being deliberately promoted matter.
Soft Violence. Slow Violence.
The rich can do this for one simple reason: money is power, and it is power with no checks or balances on it, not in the way we try to limit government. The power of working people to fight for political power has been systematically destroyed. Anti-trust policies are effectively gone; financial accountability is under attack despite the harsh lessons of 2008, and the most important issue their surrogates in Congress are currently wrestling with is how to push through un-needed tax cuts. (And let’s not forget how badly they want to get rid of the ‘death tax’ so they can pile up even more money through their generations.) They’re having trouble because of their success — they’ve made government so dysfunctional and trashed so many norms, even their own blatant corruption runs into the occasional hiccup.
They have a rationale for it all too.
...Any clash between “freedom” (allowing the rich to do as they wish) and democracy should be resolved in favour of freedom. In his book The Limits of Liberty, he [James Buchanan] noted that “despotism may be the only organisational alternative to the political structure that we observe.” Despotism in defence of freedom.
His prescription was a “constitutional revolution”: creating irrevocable restraints to limit democratic choice. Sponsored throughout his working life by wealthy foundations, billionaires and corporations, he developed a theoretical account of what this constitutional revolution would look like, and a strategy for implementing it.
He explained how attempts to desegregate schooling in the American south could be frustrated by setting up a network of state-sponsored private schools. It was he who first proposed privatising universities, and imposing full tuition fees on students: his original purpose was to crush student activism. He urged privatisation of social security and many other functions of the state. He sought to break the links between people and government, and demolish trust in public institutions. He aimed, in short, to save capitalism from democracy.
emphasis added
The rich can do what most of us can’t — they can hire people full time to push for their agenda, via political contributions, primary challenges, media propaganda outlets, lobbyists writing bills, and so on. You hear about the deep state? This is the shadow state, the deepest of the deep state. They have people for that, and those people answer only to them. And they have no desire to be subject to public scrutiny of what they do.
...Buchanan saw stealth as crucial. He told his collaborators that “conspiratorial secrecy is at all times essential”. Instead of revealing their ultimate destination, they would proceed by incremental steps. For example, in seeking to destroy the social security system, they would claim to be saving it, arguing that it would fail without a series of radical “reforms”. (The same argument is used by those attacking the NHS). Gradually they would build a “counter-intelligentsia”, allied to a “vast network of political power” that would become the new establishment.
Which, is where soft violence and slow violence come in. Mass shootings, riots that burn buildings, pitched battles in the streets, cars mowing down demonstrators — this is a hard, immediate violence, easily seen, easily grasped. Soft and slow violence is less obvious, but no less deadly. And it’s now pervasive; it’s now entrenched in our government.
Through the network of thinktanks that Koch and other billionaires have sponsored, through their transformation of the Republican party, and the hundreds of millions they have poured into state congressional and judicial races, through the mass colonisation of Trump’s administration by members of this network and lethally effective campaigns against everything from public health to action on climate change, it would be fair to say that Buchanan’s vision is maturing in the US.
Every law, regulation, policy that makes it harder to vote, harder to run for office does violence to our social order, our government, our country. Every attack that destroys confidence in the rule of law and the role of judges as impartial arbiters of justice is violence. An exploding fertilizer plant in West, Texas, an exploding chemical plant in Houston, Texas is the end product of soft, slow violence. Every smarmy talking head sneering at government employees, attacking regulations, is doing violence. Every push of the Overton Window, a nudge at a time, adds up. Every end user agreement, every warranty that forces you to give up the right to go to court by sending you to a corporate ‘arbiter’ instead is soft, slow violence against our judicial system. It’s a corrosive effect on all of society.
Soft/slow violence doesn’t get a police response. It seldom appears on the front page. It doesn’t get scrolled across the bottom of the screen while a breathless news zombie prattles about newstainment. Maybe there are no bodies in the streets after a talk radio host unloads his ordnance of lies, maybe there are no casualties flooding emergency rooms after a banker pays a nominal fine for calculated financial predation — but victims there are.
The toll is measured in rising inequality. The toll is measured in declining life expectancy and rising infant mortality. The toll is measured in the numbers of people who are finding it harder to vote and the greater number who no longer believe it matters. The toll is measured in an economy that does not reward work. The toll is measured in the increasing tide of ignorance drowning learning, beliefs overwhelming facts. (“Fake News” is just another way of saying “Ignorance is Strength”.) The toll is measured in the rising disgust with politics and politicians — so that government of the people, by the people, and for the people becomes impossible when all are painted as villains. Let’s not forget climate change — soft, slow violence on a global scale.
And treading not far behind the soft violence, the slow violence, is the hard violence of the police state, the lynch mob, the hired guns, the corporate wolves, the tyranny of men with money and no scruples. They have their mobs primed and ready. They’ve been working to get guns everywhere. They’re arming up the police. They’ve got God on their side.
The battle is being waged on many fronts and by many means — don’t let a fixation on open violence in what are minor clashes by comparison blind you to what else is happening softly, slowly, remorselessly. Don’t expect the struggle to be neat and orderly either. Stuff happens. Keep moving forward — and stay awake. They have an agenda, they’re coming for us — we need to be ready for them.