 Are you ready for this?:
- Elimination of environmental & labour protections; total deregulation of business, and the selling off of most remaining
public land and resources for commercial purposes
- Encouragement as 'natural and inevitable' the outsourcing and offshoring of millions of jobs
- Indemnification of corporations against citizen litigation for misconduct
- Launching of pre-emptive attacks on Iran, then Syria, and then, when the House of Saud is overthrown, Saudi Arabia
- Elimination and privatization of government social services
- Instituting of a flat tax, repeal of the estate tax, and other subsidies for the rich
- Re-introduction of Patriot Act II
- Ban on abortion, after replacement of retiring Supreme Court members with religious zealots
- Erosion or dismantling the separation of church and state
- Substantive withdrawal of the US from the UN in favour of unilateralism
And are you ready for absolutely no action on this?:
- The right to universal quality health care and education
- Election and campaign finance reform
- The right to clean, healthy air, water and food
- Millions of hard-working Americans unable to get decent-paying, meaningful jobs to provide for their families
I'm not either. But I'm surprised at the number of liberals, both
moderate and radical, who are passively waiting for Bush to 'bring it
on'. The logic seems to be that the pendulum has to swing all the way,
and if we nip this in the bud now we'll prevent Americans from seeing
just how heinous the neocon agenda is, and risk the neocons being
re-elected again in 2008. The radical liberals figure Bush now has
enough rope to hang himself, and only when Bush brings on the next
Great Depression, or when Americans see other Americans being
slaughtered in the streets by right-wing law-and-order stormtroopers,
will the majority wake up and shake off their lethargy. If you buy
these arguments, you might as well stop reading now, because the rest
of this article is just going to make you tired.
We have the power to stop the machine now. There are eight levers,
eight fronts of resistance, we can use to paralyze Bush before the
ten-point agenda outlined above gets any further traction, and even
start to roll back some of the damage of the last four years:
1. Political Organization Starting Now: MoveOn, MeetUp and ReachOut
The sad truth is that, so far, our message hasn't touched enough people, face-to-face, one-on-one,
while the neocons' has. What's worse, not enough people have been
directly and incontrovertibly hurt by what Bush has done. The neocon
indoctrination uses the same deceptive and coercive methods that
orthodox religions and cults use to keep their members in line: The
straw men for Patriot Act legislation and similar laws dismantling
civil rights and freedoms are mysterious swarthy immigrants, foreign
'aliens' who perhaps take American jobs, date our daughters or even
blow up the buildings where we work. The straw men are also abortion
doctors, three-strikes criminals who by implication are deterred by
nothing but capital punishment, gay couples perhaps bringing up their
children to be gay. And the staggering harm that the rest of us suffer
because of Bush's actions -- loss of jobs, inability to get medical
care, loss of loved ones in imperialist wars, loss of civil liberties,
loss of freedom over our own bodies, inability to get a decent
education, the two-income trap, an environment so destroyed and
poisoned that it is making us all sick -- are conveniently blamed on
others: terrorist attacks, hurricanes, welfare cheats, frivolous
litigation, the axis of evil, drug addicts, sexual promiscuity and
other immoral behaviour, or, even more cynically, on us ourselves:
we're not working hard enough, not trying hard enough, we're weak,
we're not praying hard enough, we're not taking enough personal
responsibility for our situation. Neocons use established organizing
mechanisms like the churches and talk radio to hammer home their
message. These mechanisms reach people one-on-one, and their messages
are therefore much more effective than anything broadcast. If a leader
says X, that's one thing. But if everyone around me is saying X,
talking to me personally, that's powerful.
I'm not suggesting we fight propaganda with propaganda. But I am saying
we need to touch people one-on-one and face-to-face. That means we need
to stop preaching to the choir and start reaching out to converts, one
at a time. Both in the Dean campaign and in the Kerry presidency bid,
supporters had surrounded themselves so effectively with like minds
that they were stunned to found out they had lost. Our ReachOut program
needs to de-program frightened conservatives by talking to them in ways
they understand, re-framing
the discussion on every one of the bulleted issues above. Lakoff can
show us how to do that. The challenge will be reaching the largest bloc
of conservatives -- suburban commuters -- one-on-one. If we're not part
of their churches, we need to ReachOut to them in the other places
where both we and they gather and talk -- the kids' soccer fields and
baseball diamonds, the rec centres, the malls. This will not be easy,
but it's the only chance we have.
MoveOn and MeetUp
have done an admirable job organizing progressives, and they need to
continue to mobilize us on many fronts. MoveOn needs to provide its new
book, 50 Ways to Love Your Country,
free online, and find progressive sponsors to underwrite the printing
and free distribution of millions of copies across the country. And it
needs to produce the ReachOut handbook, teaching progressives how and
where to reach out to conservatives and find common cause. And we need
a new, progressive group to spearhead grassroots projects around the
issues bulleted above, and use tools like MeetUp to organize, lobby,
educate, and get out the memes, get our people talking about them so we're informed and prepared with positive, viable solutions,
not just opposition to what Bush is doing. We can't wait for midterm
elections for this. We should, I believe, draft Dennis Kucinich, the
only logical progressive standard-bearer, to lead this new progressive
group, which should not be wedded to the Democratic Party. This group
should be Organization Central, starting right now,
to plan and orchestrate and coordinate intelligent, persuasive,
positive-alternative opposition and resistance to everything Bush will
be doing.
2. Street Demonstrations & Street Theatre: Wearing Opposition on Our Sleeves
The purpose of massive demonstrations is not to bring about change.
Their audience is not the government in power. The audience is the
people. Demonstrations are a show of strength and popular will. So it's
important that the political organization described above plan and
manage demonstrations carefully. To be effective, they must be
peaceful, even in the face of police and government provocation,
intimidation and violence. They must be well-attended, orderly, and
well-organized. They must be covered by the media, which means that we
need to send our own camera crews out to cover them, and then send in
the tapes to the mainstream media without charge. And they need to be
focused -- headed to one place where a progressive spokesman
articulates logically and in an inclusive way the purpose of the
opposition. That doesn't mean they're not spontaneous. It just means
they need to be used to advantage, not held up by conservatives as
evidence of an unruly mob's disrespect for conservative values. And
they need to be newsworthy, not because of the violence of the
protesters, but because of the message, and possibly the violence with
which its passive expression is suppressed.
Street theatre is different. It doesn't need to be big. It can be quite intimate. Turn your Back on Bush
is a great example. It needs to be clever, newsworthy, visual,
non-confrontational, and fun. Get those creative juices flowing. Think
like Ghandi. Be the Change.
Another effective quiet protest is wearing subtle symbols of resistance
and opposition to the status quo. The little ribbons that people wear
on their lapels to indicate their support for the fight against AIDS,
or breast cancer, are very effective. Similar symbols should be used to
indicate our support for the fight against oppression, outsourcing,
environmental destruction and other Bush signature issues. The key is
not to be in-your-face about them. They can be clever or ambiguous, but
not disrespectful or confrontational (yes I know it's more fun to be
in-your-face and ironic, but we're trying to change the world here).
They invite either "what does that stand for" or "that's very clever"
comment, and that's where the pièce de résistance comes in -- always have a bunch more on hand that you can give out to those that comment. It's a physical meme.
3. International Sanctions and Ostracism
Those of us in other countries need to stand up to the bully, now.
The passivity of Paul Martin in Canada, and most other Western leaders
whose people overwhelmingly despise George Bush and everything he
stands for, is simply unacceptable. We need to start lobbying our
governments to openly criticize Bush, not for what he's doing to
America, but for what he's doing to the world. His non-ratification of
the Kyoto Accord, his rollback and non-enforcement of environmental
protection laws, and his already-stated plan to further ease pollution
standards for corporations, deserve a loud and united outcry of
opposition and opprobrium, because he is poisoning our whole world. His
unilateralism in foreign affairs is counter to the core principles of
the United Nations and the greatest threat to world peace since the
Cold War, and UN censure is not enough. We need to take actions to
ostracize Bush -- with sanctions against America, just like any other
bully leader. We should tear up NAFTA and other trade agreements, and
put a massive Environmental Tax on imports to our countries from the
US, to raise funds to help combat the US portion (40%) of the global
warming problem). We should suspend the US's membership in the UN (they
don't pay their dues anyway) until they ratify the UN treaties and
infrastructure (like the International Court of Justice) that are
critical to the UN's ability to function effectively. By these and
other measures, we can and must isolate and embarrass the US government
into being a responsible member of the international community. It's
long past time for the schoolyard bully to be sent to detention.
4. Unapologetic Alternative Media
We need to give up on the mainstream US media, which are in a hopeless
conflict of interest, beholden as they are to their corporate owners
who are in turn beholden to the government in which they invest
millions of dollars and depend for their oligopoly rights. The US needs
media that are free to report objectively, and that means they cannot
be corporate-controlled. It is inevitable that NPR and PBS, the only
media that aren't corporate-controlled, will be privatized sooner or
later. That's part of the neocon agenda -- they don't like starkly
alternative viewpoints and investigation of government and corporate
wrongdoing, which obviously make them look bad. We need to build a
network of television and radio stations and newspapers that are
nation-wide and funded by an independent public foundation.
Investigative reporting, not a progressive viewpoint, is what will
bring these stations their audience and the influx of funding from
average Americans of all political stripes. Blogs and the IndyMedia are
the great foundation and a great source of programming content and
talent for these new alternative media, but we need to reach the 80% of
Americans who do not get the bulk of their news online, and we even
need to reach those who get their online news exclusively from one
extreme of the political spectrum or the other. Blinkers, even
progressive blinkers, are no answer. We need objective, factual
information, unrestricted investigation and fair and balanced analysis,
not more Faux News. The truth needs to be told, and, as with Watergate
and the Vietnam War reporting, it can change everything.
5. Court Challenges, Filibusters & Obstructionism
We can still block Bush nominations of religious zealots to the Supreme
Court and other courts by filibuster, and we must do so. An
unapologetic alternative media can play a key role in unearthing and
communicating just why these wingnuts would be so dangerous in the
court of final appeal. These new media can also play an educational
role in explaining to the American public why even evangelicals benefit
from separation of church and state, and why a balance between, and
independence of, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary
systems is so critical to any democracy. It is a bit ironic that we
progressives need to use the judicial system, the ultimate defender of
the status quo, to slow and block the passage of new repressive and
regressive laws. But we do what we can.
There is a difference between passive resistance (obstructionism) to
unfair, undemocratic and discriminatory laws, and taking the law into
one's own hands. As I've mentioned before, the US desperately needs new
national usury laws to cap interest rates and hence prevent millions of
unwitting Americans from losing their homes. Civil disobedience like
refusing to accept or honour eviction notices, chaining yourself to
your house, is a well-established way of obstructing bad laws. So is
chaining yourself to trees marked for clear-cutting, and lying in the
road in front of bulldozers, tanks, or trucks full of toxic waste. It
is unlikely to do much more than delay the atrocity that the bad law
allows, but it makes the point, and often garners lots of publicity.
Once enough people are aware enough of an issue, they will take the
time to learn more, and, if a reasonable alternative is presented, they
will support it.
6. Consumer Power
I am always amazed that Consumer Reports
isn't the most subscribed magazine in America. It serves a vital
function, informing the public objectively about the facts before they
make buying decisions, and at least bringing attention to the most
extreme corporatist abuses. If Americans want to reign in corporate
power, punish polluters, curtail the outsourcing and offshoring that is
destroying the American middle class, they have the power, simply by
boycotting companies with deplorable
social and environmental records, by buying local instead of imported
products (even if that means they have to pay more and make do with
less), by insisting on quality products and services and fighting
corporations that don't provide it with everything at their disposal.
With enough consumer information and progressive mobilization, we could
bring corporatism to its knees, bankrupt the very companies that
bankroll Bush and the self-serving neocon agenda.
7. Campaign Finance and Electoral Reform
What more can I say? The US has an electoral system that is incapable
of reliably reflecting the popular will, and that dumbs down the voting
choices to the lesser of two evils, and which is therefore neither
representative nor democratic. It has a campaign finance system that
precludes those without money and power from any chance of attaining
elected office, and which rewards corporations for buying politicians
and politicians for doing what their corporate donors tell them.
Clean-up of these horrendously damaged systems must be Job One on the
progressive agenda.
8. Public Discourse
Conservatives talk. They yammer on the talk radio airwaves. They talk
after church and around the barbecue and at family gatherings. They
natter while they shop. They engage each other, they share ideas and
hopes and fears. The expression of conservative ideas is a (often
banal) conversation. Progressives, by contrast, write. They deliberate
and then they rant. The expression of progressive ideas is like a
performance. It's too one-way.
Progressive need to start talking. Not in carefully rehearsed scripts,
and not in negative terms, but about what they care about, what they're
hoping for, and why they're afraid. They need to stop talking in
principles and start telling stories, personal stories about people
they know who have lost their jobs and their homes and their loved ones
in war. This is how you 'talk politics' without getting people's backs
up. Talk about people who fought their way to America, escaping with
only the clothes on their back to make a home in the US, who are now
being harassed by US customs officials and police, whose children are
being taunted because of their accent or the colour of their skin or
the clothes they wear. Talk about the people like Cassie Stromer who
worked their whole lives in service of the public and who now, in
retirement, have to cut up their food into small bits because they
can't afford to get their dentures fixed.
This is a lot of hard work, I know. It's tempting to just keep on
writing rants, preaching to the choir, and blaming others for what has
happened and will continue to happen in America. We're going to have to
pace ourselves, pick each other up when the going gets tough, and take
turns being strong. But it's worth the effort, not only because it can
stop Bush dead in his tracks, but because it can lay the foundation for
rebuilding what made America such a great country. The whole world is still watching, they're behind you, cheering you on, and they'll help out any way they can.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
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