There’s a great diary out telling how Trump got played but let’s go a bit further. The American public has been played for decades now.
The primary tools that the oligarchs of this nation have used to seize and control nearly all the political and financial power have been wedge issues. Let me name some of them below. In every case we have righteously gone on the defensive as we’ve been played on each and every one of them while those power brokers have been stealing us blind.
1. ABORTION. Hey, it’s still legal and widely used across the nation and not just by liberals. In all likelihood the worst of the deplorables have probably accounted for more abortions performed by a large percentage. The male ruling class think them just peachy. They also know that the issue, as long as it’s contentious, is probably the simplest way of getting large numbers of us voting against our own best interests. They can let the churches do their marketing for them. The absolute worst thing they can do politically is to “solve” the abortion issue. They have had the numbers to do so at many times during the last few decades and if you notice, it always came down to a squeaker of a vote nationally. Now regionally of course some of the acts succeed...for awhile until they are ruled unconstitutional. As long as so many Americans belong to religions that view the issue as black and white, that fight will go on.
2. HEALTH CARE (the ACA). Let’s remember that the main engine for this legislation (which has done far more good than bad) was written by the Republicans under the direction of the health care insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies. While it’s a wonderful bad guy to scream about for the GOP, in reality the oligarchs love it. A bunch of the burden of them providing insurance for their workers got subsidized by public money. Public cash poured into the health insurance, health provider, and pharmaceutical industries and you’ll find all their boards of directors and investors have a predominance of GOP members who are raking in the profits. The last thing in the world they want is for their cash cow to stop. Once again the GOP has had the numbers in both Congress and the Supreme Court to destroy the funding source for this and each time it came down to a squeaker vote. “Oh we put up a great fight but were almost there…..”. I know it’s against popular opinion here but I’ve always believed John McCain’s thumbs down was just as scripted as the rest of his voting history. John Roberts decisive vote stopping the defunding case? Same thing. He answers to corporate masters not some conscience.
3. LGBTQ rights issues. Once again legitimate causes for us to take on but we are also being played on emotion here. It, like abortion, works best for the GOP if they never “solve” it. They won’t ban gay marriage but they’ll sure act like they want to. They’ll keep their fire and brimstone preachers blasting out about the evils of it but once again the oligarchs don’t give a fuck one way or the other. They just want people’s votes to be about single issues. Plus, I think we all know that probably a good percentage of the male GOP leadership are closeted gay. Once again, they have had the numbers to stop the progress we have been making but any action they threatened was always just not quite enough.
4. RELIGION. Boy what a powerhouse of a wedge issue this one is. You know where it wouldn’t be? In any of the major democratic SECULAR nations. Anyone that has watched my posts know how strongly I believe that the thing holding us back more than anything in this nation is Christianity and its dominance here. I can write a post clearly condemning some extreme sect or group within the Christian faith and the defensiveness of people I view as extremely rational in all other issues goes up to 11. Of course it goes along with the other wedge issues I’ve listed above. Clearly abortion, certainly the LGBTQ issues, and even the ACA where ridiculous assertions come out that certain religious groups be immune to some of its regulations.
5. UNIONS. Reagan started the assault on them and the GOP have been in power for decades since and yet they are still around although greatly weakened. Of course not all of them. Police unions are stronger than ever. The GOP would never want that union destroyed. Here’s our mistake on unions. I love their basic concept. When they are kept small, pure and focused there is no better tool to keep management from exploiting workers and stealing all the wealth coming from the production of the workers. However, just like any other organization that grows in strength, they are subject to overreach and corruption themselves. I worked for a government agency that was at the mercy of such a union that cared only about enriching their senior members at the expense of logic and the greater good of the public. The GOP has been brilliant in their anti-union marketing in that they only highlight those abuses and ignore the vast good and potential. Just like all the other wedge issues though unions will never go away. They are too emotional for us and their opponents.
So how do we fight against this obviously successful tactic of the right and their “owners”? We change the subject. We start controlling the narrative (as much as the corrupt media allows us). Turn our outrage not against the trolls these oligarchs throw at us to divide and distract. Go after those very people at the top. Shine the spotlight on the Waltons, the Mercers, Adelstein, the remaining Koch, the people on the boards of all the right wing organizations. All of the people on our hate list work for them.
Now for the specifics about the wedge issues I mentioned above.
The topic goes to abortions, we need to stop with this over the top claim that the right will outlaw them. They won’t. Call their bluff and change the topic. Instead scream and yell about how well family planning and birth control work for all. Turn every debate into one about ALL of the rights of women not just this one narrow part. Change the subject. Until we get a secular nation, this issue brought to the forefront is a loser for us.
The topic goes to the ACA, admit its flaws but acknowledge you don’t mind the insurance companies making profits from it as long as the greater good happens. Be honest about that part of the cost. But at the same time keep harping about how in a system with private insurance at the core, a robust public option is great for the competition. That’s a capitalist ideal — competition. Marketplace. Let’s all get involved. Obviously our eventual goal is everyone moving to that public option but this whole M4A bullshit isn’t going to sell here. That said, I adore the UK’s NHS but guess what. UK citizens can still purchase additional private insurance.
When the topic goes to LGBTQ stuff I think the best strategy is one of avoidance to the debate. The societal pressure of acceptance and change is massive and can’t be stopped. Don’t give them their wedge issue. Look at entertainment today as just an example. LGBTQ people are heavily involved in the industry even in corporations largely controlled by the GOP. While they pretend this war is still undecided they have lost.
Support unions and the workers they represent but make sure those unions have the same oversight on them as the corporations they are in contention with. They should be advocating for all their members not just a privileged elite. Reagan was successful back then because many of the large unions were corrupt and overbearing and did a disservice to the ones that were not. Some of the Trump supporters I met were people that had worked for massive corporations all their lives and came out of it with a disdain for union overreach. They were full of shit in the big picture but we have to understand how going to extremes hurts us in the long run. Socialism is a core PIECE of any successful democracy. It cannot be the only part. That is a losing issue.
The last advice is to educate people about religion, not just what your little sect cherry picks out of your founding text. I’m talking about the history of how it came about. We are not a secular nation because frankly we suck at world history. We have been living for the most part terribly spoiled and safe from the worst of the consequences of a deeply divided religious population. All of the other nations that were once at the stage of national evolution we are at, were one time deeply ingrained in religion and they all suffered horribly with the contention it caused. They lived it. They saw both the good and the bad and the most successful democracies pushed that part of their history back into more a place of pageantry and celebration, certainly not as some basis for how they built and designed their modern governments or derived their national ethics. Of course the right and their handlers up above will continue to utilize our Christian majority here as the primary wedge against us. Our only hope to beat them at this game is to destroy the toe hold of the major sects here in America. Stop this generation after generation passing on of religious faith and start telling youth to think for themselves, to study history and science and derive their ethics from common sense and a basic golden rule. To a large extent they are doing that but it must be, in my opinion, our number one focus in the years ahead for America to survive.
Let me put this disclaimer because I know how the single issue folks on DailyKos react to stuff like this (if it even gets read). I fully acknowledge that there are horrors within each of these issues, outliers to everything I brought up, and I am not dismissing them. I’m only talking big picture strategy here. I left out race because that is a huge subject worthy of many diaries on its own but it is certainly one of the major wedge issues.