In which I string a bunch of loosely connected thoughts together and try to make a post out of them.
Well, it ended this week. Our long nationalreprieve from bureaucratic Idiocracy nightmare is over, as Congress has finally reached a deal to reopen the government. Hurting people everywhere rejoiced! (Except the markets, which promptly tanked early the next morning.) So yesterday and today, we got to hear or see a bunch of headlines querying who are the winners and who are the losers in this fight. (Spoiler alert: It's the Republicans, because they're always the losers.)
My reaction? Meh. For one thing, I personally didn't care about getting the shutdown terror resolved anytime soon--I was kind of enjoying it, frankly--and for another, I got tired of the 24/7 coverage after a while. I mean, how many times can you watch the CNN timer display, down to the second, how long it's been the shutdown started? But more importantly, I was jonesing for more displays of citizens sticking it to SHUTDOWN THEATER. Let's be honest, the best thing about the shutdown was really one of the best things we've seen in a while--WWII vets charging the barricades thrown up around the National Mall and the D.C. war memorials (the ones it probably cost more money to put up than it would have to keep the sites open in the first place). Sure, it was a nice little bit of mud in Obama's eye, but more than that, it was an increasingly-rare middle finger to the petty bureaucracy that does his will.
Being the young and embittered soul that I am, I spend a lot of time thinking about what problem, what fundamental problem, this country has that needs to be fixed for everything else to heal itself. At the moment, I'd have to say it's this habit of obedience we fall into. Think about it. Usually, at least once a week we hear about some story somewhere, usually involving a court or a government agency, that gets us a little riled, like "ACLU sues to get Christian organization off school grounds" or "NSA enacts new round of humiliating stop-and-frisk procedures" and so on and so on. And what do we do? Yeah, we get mad. Yeah, we say "People shouldn't stand for this crap!" or something to that effect. And then what? And then we leave the house for the commute or go back to our homework or turn on the game or whatever. Let's face it, 90% of us, and probably more, are not going to get out into the streets, ever, to show our outrage at something. Because we can't be bothered.
I should note that I'm indicting myself here as well. I talk a good game online or in Letters to the Editor, and I like to imagine myself folding my arms and telling the dern guvmint to get off my property if they know what's good for them, but who am I kidding? Come next spring, I'll pay those taxes that are going to useless agencies or to subsidize SEIU, just like everyone else. I'll grumble about it, maybe I'll give the IRS some snippy and sarcastic feedback, but I'll pay them. And it's not a thought that occupies me 24/7, anyway. Still, it irritates me. I can't shake the feeling that if the Founding Fathers were transported to the year 2013, after taking part in the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Act boycotts and all that, they'd think we're all sheep. (If you're thinking of replying that 90% of people didn't take part in that revolutionary stuff either, which is not really true anyway, shut up. I'm on a roll here.)
Indeed, this is something conservatives have always come up short on against the Left. We joke all the time that we don't have time to protest because we're too busy having real jobs and so on. Which is true. But hey, the squeaky wheel gets the most grease, doesn't it? The descendants of those dumb hippies and spongers who made a mess of things in the '60s and '70s, they're the ones running Washington right now.
All of which is to say that if the Right wants to profoundly change America, back to what it ought to be, it will have to take part of large-scale civil disobedience. I'm not saying that it will happen. I'm not even saying that it should happen. Hey, I don't want to spend a bunch of time out protesting and get my name put away in a surveillance file somewhere (assuming it isn't already, of course). What I'm saying is that, if we want Y to happen, X will have to happen first. Someone, somewhere, is going to have to tell the EPA to come out here and stop me from putting a fence on my own land, tell the --th Circuit Court my business will cater to whom I want it to and not to whom I don't want it to, tell the IRS it can have my tax money when it can prove it's stopped abusing my tax money.
It's a tall order, and I'm not going to be the one to lead it. I don't have the stomach for it, so I'm not saying someone ought to start it. You can't say that if you're not willing to step into the line of fire yourself. But if we want to get anything substantial accomplished, then this will have to happen.
So that's my opinion on where we're at right now. Thoughts?
Well, it ended this week. Our long national
My reaction? Meh. For one thing, I personally didn't care about getting the shutdown terror resolved anytime soon--I was kind of enjoying it, frankly--and for another, I got tired of the 24/7 coverage after a while. I mean, how many times can you watch the CNN timer display, down to the second, how long it's been the shutdown started? But more importantly, I was jonesing for more displays of citizens sticking it to SHUTDOWN THEATER. Let's be honest, the best thing about the shutdown was really one of the best things we've seen in a while--WWII vets charging the barricades thrown up around the National Mall and the D.C. war memorials (the ones it probably cost more money to put up than it would have to keep the sites open in the first place). Sure, it was a nice little bit of mud in Obama's eye, but more than that, it was an increasingly-rare middle finger to the petty bureaucracy that does his will.
Being the young and embittered soul that I am, I spend a lot of time thinking about what problem, what fundamental problem, this country has that needs to be fixed for everything else to heal itself. At the moment, I'd have to say it's this habit of obedience we fall into. Think about it. Usually, at least once a week we hear about some story somewhere, usually involving a court or a government agency, that gets us a little riled, like "ACLU sues to get Christian organization off school grounds" or "NSA enacts new round of humiliating stop-and-frisk procedures" and so on and so on. And what do we do? Yeah, we get mad. Yeah, we say "People shouldn't stand for this crap!" or something to that effect. And then what? And then we leave the house for the commute or go back to our homework or turn on the game or whatever. Let's face it, 90% of us, and probably more, are not going to get out into the streets, ever, to show our outrage at something. Because we can't be bothered.
I should note that I'm indicting myself here as well. I talk a good game online or in Letters to the Editor, and I like to imagine myself folding my arms and telling the dern guvmint to get off my property if they know what's good for them, but who am I kidding? Come next spring, I'll pay those taxes that are going to useless agencies or to subsidize SEIU, just like everyone else. I'll grumble about it, maybe I'll give the IRS some snippy and sarcastic feedback, but I'll pay them. And it's not a thought that occupies me 24/7, anyway. Still, it irritates me. I can't shake the feeling that if the Founding Fathers were transported to the year 2013, after taking part in the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Act boycotts and all that, they'd think we're all sheep. (If you're thinking of replying that 90% of people didn't take part in that revolutionary stuff either, which is not really true anyway, shut up. I'm on a roll here.)
Indeed, this is something conservatives have always come up short on against the Left. We joke all the time that we don't have time to protest because we're too busy having real jobs and so on. Which is true. But hey, the squeaky wheel gets the most grease, doesn't it? The descendants of those dumb hippies and spongers who made a mess of things in the '60s and '70s, they're the ones running Washington right now.
All of which is to say that if the Right wants to profoundly change America, back to what it ought to be, it will have to take part of large-scale civil disobedience. I'm not saying that it will happen. I'm not even saying that it should happen. Hey, I don't want to spend a bunch of time out protesting and get my name put away in a surveillance file somewhere (assuming it isn't already, of course). What I'm saying is that, if we want Y to happen, X will have to happen first. Someone, somewhere, is going to have to tell the EPA to come out here and stop me from putting a fence on my own land, tell the --th Circuit Court my business will cater to whom I want it to and not to whom I don't want it to, tell the IRS it can have my tax money when it can prove it's stopped abusing my tax money.
It's a tall order, and I'm not going to be the one to lead it. I don't have the stomach for it, so I'm not saying someone ought to start it. You can't say that if you're not willing to step into the line of fire yourself. But if we want to get anything substantial accomplished, then this will have to happen.
So that's my opinion on where we're at right now. Thoughts?
29 comments:
I'm all about breaking the law and never following the rules.
On your point, I don't honestly know if it would help or not. On the one hand, I know the public dislikes "activists," so being nasty typically hurts more than it helps. And the government never gives in to that. On the other hand, I think it would be useful to make life really hard for Democrats.
BTW, Let me separate what the veterans did with what activists do. What the veterans did was mock an injustice. They saw something stupid, a nonsense rule meant to wave Washington's power in people's face and they exposed it as a joke.
By comparison, what activists tend to do is theater -- throwing ketchup on women in furs, disrupting speeches and conventions, throwing bricks through windows.
To me, the vets are honorable, the activists aren't. BUT so long as the left is going to do make life difficult for people they don't like, our side should do the same -- but our political groups should not embrace those people. Let them do the work, but don't praise them. Always be seen as the adult.
Andrew...."The public dislikes activists?" We elected one as President twice!
T-Rav.....This is one of the most frustrating realities of what is going on now for conservatives/traditionalists/realists/libertarians/etc. How do rile up the common man to begin a mass movement. I've written before that I think it will be an accident basically, some innocent getting injured/killed due to a stupid move by someone representing the government. Some event that the media and gov't cannot lie their way out of, as it is so obvious what happened. Maybe someone's grandmother injured by Park Rangers or something.
In today's "viral" messaging, the event would spread and outrage would be fairly quick. Acts of retribution would start slowly until many millions of Americans would join in. It will be too widespread for the gov't to control and then "real change" would happen.
In my fevered imagination, I would imagine it ending for those leftists responsible for all this, like what happened to Nicolae Ceaușescu at his "trial": He refused to accept the authority of the tribunal's verdict and was demanding release even while they were lining him and his wife up for immediate execution.
So, while the gov't parties on, the rest of us looks at them and what is happening with ill-concealed hatred....and we are not smiling.
in the words of that noted political analyst Grace Slick, "Up against the wall Mother-Raver."
Andrew, you put the missing piece into T-Rav's puzzle. It's absolutely true that the public dislikes activists. The inoculation to that is to be an activist for "justice." I use quotes because it is not always justice they seek, merely the banner they wave.
Therein lies the rub. You need to pick or establish a convincing injustice to oppose. In that vein, one simply cannot support the status quo in the name of justice as the status quo is always assumed to be unjust.
So what is a defender of the status quo to do? Well, to paraphrase my least favorite Republican president, sometimes you have to change it to preserve it. However, that overlooks the fact that conservatives aren't happy with the status quo either.
The real problem conservatives have is their rhetoric of returning to a former status quo. That doesn't fly, either. There are some things people do want to return to, like a "simpler time," but in general, nobody wants to undo anything that's been done, no matter how terrible it turns out to be. That doesn't mean we can't go back to something we had before, but it needs to be packaged as something new.
Take the case of peanut butter Twix. We had these when I was a kid. Then they went away for a few years. When they were brought back, they were brought back as "NEW" even though they had existed before. I'm sure a lot of people remembered the old ones as I did, but it didn't matter. Imagine how much more effective repackaging something that nobody remembers would be?
So, the answer to the age-old question "How do we get back to the way things used to be?" is to simply package it as a new destination. Heck, visitors' bureaus have done that since always. ("You've been to Minneapolis before? Oh, no you haven't, because you haven't seen the new Minneapolis !")
For the hopelessly Honest Johns out there, think of it as something "new to them" if that helps you sleep. That, or shut up and let somebody else do the dirty work.
Two words...tax strike. It's cheap, it's easy and you can do it in your own home while sitting in your easy chair...
Great article from the Wall Street Journal on the Defund Obamacare fight. "The Charge of the Defund Brigade"
Best quote:
"Had the militants chosen to hold back, to wait, as it were, for PR reinforcement, what might the GOP have won? The rollout of the ObamaCare exchanges has been a failure. Not "glitchy." Not "troubled." Failure. Had the GOP not been mired in shutdown headlines, had it spent 24/7 highlighting the enrollment disasters, the flood of premium hikes and canceled policies, the layoffs and cut hours, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius might at this moment be facing forced resignation. The GOP might be issuing its own terms for some form of ObamaCare surrender."
tryanmax -
I've never even been to the old Minneapolis!
Your comment reminds me of a recent Ross Douthat piece I read:
The right has had success restraining the federal government’s growth and frustrating liberal ambitions for new programs, but when it comes to the question of whether the state should meaningfully shrink its footprint in our society, American political reality really does seem to have a liberal bias. And so the process that Frum described well in the early 1990s has played out repeatedly in our politics: Conservative politicians take power imagining that this time, this time, they will finally tame the New Deal-Great Society Leviathan … and then they make proposals and advance ideas for doing so, the weight of public opinion tilts against them, and they end up either backpedalling, getting defeated at the polls, or both.
Like you said, repackaging something no one remembers.
Andrew, fair enough--and yet, I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that such activists, loved or loathed, do more to change things over the long run than any "silent majority." They're the ones who get in the politicians' faces, they're the ones who get on TV. They may not always be liked, but they do get attention, and they do get people thinking about their message.
Even so, I'm certainly not suggesting the tactics you mention--physically assaulting people and so on. That would be going much too far. No, what I'm talking about is a simple refusal to comply with the latest government directives, and let them do the "assaulting." Civil disobedience, but of the nonviolent kind.
tryanmax, Scott, et al., this is why I never paid much attention to those poll numbers regarding ObamaCare back in 2010, when clear majorities kept showing up as opposed to it. Big whoop. All the public opinion polls in the world weren't going to keep the Dems from ramming it through, and eventually--it might take a long time, but eventually--people would roll over and take it. They always do.
This is also why I don't care much about whether or not the public would see our disobedience as uncouth activism, because I am so far past caring what the public thinks. Anything substantial we do will have to be done in spite of them.
Kit, The good news is that the Republicans have set a bright line that they didn't vote for Obamacare and tried to stop it including and up to shutting the government down. In the coming days and weeks when the full measure of just how poorly this was constructed, it will come in handy. Now the media should be focusing on this and why it happened and why the Democrats have done nothing to fix it in 3 1/2 years knowing all the problems...not one bill has been put forth by the Dems to fix one problem.
And then there's this mess - The Doctors Doctors are not happy since they have no idea what their bottom line will be. But the good news is they are not required to participate in the exchange plans either. Expect your doctor to drop your insurance company and go "cash only".
Oh, and then there's this...Insurer's woes For the people who have already signed on, well, just read.
Btw, the company that was hired because of their low bid (and with almost no other bidders) by the US government to create the web network is Canadian. Uh, really? There wasn't a US tech company they could have used that could have screwed it this well? At least it would be local.
Bev, sounds like my kind of protest! :-) Of course, the black helicopters won't have to look very far when they come a-calling.
The media should be focusing on the failure of the ObamaCare rollout, true enough....but then, they "should" be doing a lot of things.
Americans love their entitlements, they just don't want to be taxed to pay for it preferring to use a tax lag (deficit spending) to future generations. It's an old marketing ploy ... "buy now ...pay later." This resonates particularly well when the "pay later" portion is not within your own lifetime. Here is a thought from Roy Avik. Polls overwhelmingly show displeasure with Obamacare, and 75% consider the major problem with health care is it is too expensive. Only 11% consider the biggest problem to be "too many uninsured. But they still trust the Democratic Party over Republicans to fix it. We need to focus on how Obamacare is driving up the cost of healthcare and offer more efficient alternatives (e.g. universal tax credits to purchase policies.) and the Ryan proposal for reform of medicare.
Scott, I'm not quite sure I understand your meaning in the last sentence of your comment.
How I see my comment relating to the quote is this: You can never sell less, and I probably should have included that in the above. The only way to sell less it to sell it as more of whatever you get in exchange. This is even true when you're selling less of an unpleasant thing. ("With the new Sweep-O-Matic®, you'll spend less time cleaning and more doing what you love." picture of happy family outing)
When our side tries to sell smaller government, they get bogged down in all the "less" things that means instead of the "more." Those things need to be ignored in the sales pitch. If anyone gripes about less this or that in the run-up, just keep going back to the "more" talking points. If anyone gripes after it's passed, just remind them of what they'd be giving up to get those things back.
The only change people want is positive change. Defunding Big Bird, no matter how trivial, makes people upset. People will let you change anything you want as long as you don't upset them beforehand.
That's what I get for trying to go political. :-D
I suppose, in my own ham-handed way, I was trying to get across the point that it's hard to repackage a package no one remembers. In other words, does anyone remember when the government wasn't huge?
T-Rav said:
All of which is to say that if the Right wants to profoundly change America, back to what it ought to be, it will have to take part of large-scale civil disobedience.
------------
As a guy who has read a lot about the Civil Rights movement, I can tell you that civil disobedience is ineffective unless authorities react stupidly/violently and the public is sympathetic to the cause and the victims.
Veterans charging the WW2 memorial was remarked upon by the intensely political on both sides, but the larger public didn't care. The veterans defied the shutdown, the government let them, then they went home. If elderly heroes had been jailed or tased or something, there would have been an explosion of outrage, but the administration didn't make any martyrs that day.
T-Rav, A true mass movement as you mention would be great, but you run into the reality of the human animal on that one: 80% of the public will always follow the rules no matter what they are. And the other 20% split into opposing camps. So your mass movement will almost never be large enough to harm the government unless the government has put itself into a precarious position (like with Obamacare) where it actually needs 100% compliance for the thing to work.
Scott, now I get it. I guess my perspective is the opposite. It should be easier to repackage if no one remembers because you aren't constrained by those memories. The problem is, the packagers think everyone remembers (and remembers it fondly, as they do) so they are relying on old packaging that people don't recognize or think well of.
Think about retro packaging. It works b/c most people--even those who don't actually remember them--have a fondness for the "good old days." It would maybe be a neat trick to package something new as something old and see if that works. I expect it could, but it would still be picky-backing on fond associations with what was being copied.
But smaller government has been heavily associated with "the bad old days." Pre-New Deal you have the Great Depression, mobsters run amok, etc. Pre-Great Society you have racial strife and Vietnam. Pre-Obamacare is already associated with bigotry against gays and a burning planet. It doesn't matter that these things are non sequiturs, these are the associations.
So to the extent that anyone is familiar with smaller government at all, that is what it conjures. Thus, no one wants to "return to" smaller government. However, they may be enticed to "venture toward" better government. And if that better government just so happens to be smaller, what of it? But you can't actually sell "less."
Patriot, That's your spin on Obama and few shared it in 2008. The public that elected him saw him as a moderate, rational, new Democrat who wanted to move beyond race and who was running against an unpredictable, sour old guy. They were also ready to punish the party of Bush, who had been a Carter-level disaster. Then in 2012, the public abandoned Obama after they got a taste for him. If conservatism hadn't gone wild-ass-stupid, Romney would have won... easiest election ever and we threw it.
tryanmax, There's a study I keep meaning to talk about which essentially shows that the public turns against the causes activists push because they dislike the activists. Just haven't gotten around to it.
I think there are many different angles to consider on this. T-Rav is right that a true mass movement can influence a government, but those are precious few in history and are nearly impossible to organize. Then there are the fake mass movements like marches on Washington which result in nothing but donations for the organizers so they can keep soliciting donations. Then you have the screaming activists who do more harm that good with the public, but who can make life really difficult for politicians.
If you could create a true mass movement, then that would be fantastic. But I don't think you can. Those only arrive when you get a true injustice, not an ideological injustice.
Alternatively, I think the tactic of harassing the other side, but not claiming them as your own, can be effective to a degree. But again, ask yourself if some idiot screaming outside Ted Cruz's house about global warming is really going to change his votes or cause the public to turn against him? Terrorists never win because their tactics generate a bigger backlash than they generate terror or "awareness."
Anthony hits the nail on the head. It's more about the re-action than the action. If you cry injustice where none is observed, you are regarded as a complainer. However, if your cries are met with the very thing, you win!
The Democrats have become expert at diffusing every cry of injustice that the conservatives make. Take the Tea Party/IRS scandal. Somebody or other "investigated" the matter, so to the public it's dealt with. What the right needs is something that can't be "investigated" away, something not so easily remedied, something that forces the government into an extreme, indefensible, irreversible position. Find what the Democrats ideologically can't back away from and turn it on them. (And no, you can't turn Big Government on Big Government. You have to be more creative than that.)
Andrew, I think you sent me a link to that, or maybe I found it on my own. It's a lesson that conservatives really need to learn. (I don't care if liberals don't.) The last century certainly makes it seem like activism works and mass movements are easy, but it's still a fluke.
That's why I'm more focused on the messaging and salesmanship of it. You don't need a mass movement when you have good branding. The only reason to wish for a mass movement is in order to swipe it's identity. That has proven wildly successful for the Democrats. The fringe attempt to appropriate the Tea Party was premature at best. (Though there's more to it than that.)
tryanmax, I need to push back a bit on this point: What the right needs is something that can't be "investigated" away, something not so easily remedied, something that forces the government into an extreme, indefensible, irreversible position.
I don't agree with the idea that this is what the right needs. To break down what you are saying, you are saying that right needs the left to act like monsters so we can show the public how bad they are. But that is not our problem, nor does it solve anything -- our problem is not that the public loves the left, they don't. Our problem is that they like us less.
Part of that is our crazy flank who scare the crap out of people. But the even bigger issue is that we offer nothing. All we offer right now is "we're not the Democrats." And that's not going to work. People expect solutions and when one side offers them and they sound plausible if not ideal and the other side only responds "they're jerks!" or "change nothing!" they will go with the guy offering the solutions and hope they eventually work out the bugs.
We really need to get out of the mode of trying to define ourselves through the actions of the left. We need to define ourselves with our ideas, our beliefs, and our achievements. That is what the right needs.
On selling individual ideas, yes, what you say can be helpful, but it won't matter if we aren't offering an idea other than "see how bad they are?"
tryanmax, You sent it to me. :)
You don't need a mass movement when you have good branding.
Bingo. As much as conservatives hate this, winning the public is about messaging and branding. Without those, no idea no matter how good will prevail.
On your point about mass movements seeming easy, that is the perception, but let me point out that it is also wrong. Take the Civil Rights Movement. The history of the CRM has been re-written to make it sound like, "Brave white northern liberals and individual blacks stood up for their rights and won a racist nation over." That's totally wrong.
The CRM began by the 1940s for sure and took off in the 1950s under Eisenhower. There was an undeniably compelling moral case for equality, especially after we saw what racialism did in WWII, and the public wanted things changed. Thus, the early 1950s saw the election of Republicans and Democrats who passed the first Civil Rights laws. Truman had begun the desegregation of the military and Ike finished it. The courts were striking down separate but equal and all the fake voting restrictions used throughout the South.
By the time of the marches, the issue was already decided and it was only a matter of forcing the straggler states into line. Essentially, what we are now told was "a mass movement that changed the world" was really just a bandwagon movement that occurred at the tail end of the fight. The public, most of the states, and the Feds had already adopted their ideas by the time this "mass movement" supposedly rose up.
Anthony, that's true. Although given the thorough incompetence the Administration has displayed so far, I wouldn't put it past them to make such a mistake.
As others alluded to earlier, it also depends on whether the cause you're agitating for or against is of such a nature as to outrage people in and of itself.
Careful, Andrew. You're getting into "racist" territory with your history there. :-)
As I've mentioned before, public opinion among Southern whites had also become seriously divided by this time as well, so even on its own turf the opposition could not provide a united front.
Also, more broadly, I want to reiterate that I'm not calling for a mass movement. I'm just saying that under the present circumstances, stopping stuff like ObamaCare will take mass acts of non-compliance. Not saying it will happen, just that that's what it will take.
Andrew, in regards to your pushback, I suppose I should have qualified that. That was meant in the sense that it is what the (far) right needs if they want their current mode of operation to bear fruit.
The ideal, in my mind, is for both scenarios to work in tandem, with the catalyst being new ideas rooted in traditional conservatism. It should be expected that some if not many of those ideas would be antithetical to modern liberalism. We sell the benefits, they become the nay-sayers. In that case, we don't need the left to act like monsters. All we need is their obstinance. The pundits can make them into monsters from that if they don't do enough themselves.
T-Rav, Sad isn't it when facts are considered racist?
I concur on your Obamacare point. This will take mass non-compliance to cause its failure. On the plus side, that appears to be happening with the non-signups. :)
tryanmax, I agree with that. I just wanted to clarify that because there does seem to be this idea all over talk radio that if we can just destroy Obama then we will win by default. That doesn't work.
On your ideal, what you're talking about is classic political salesmanship. Put forward a plan, let the other guy naysay it, then call him out on why he doesn't trust the public and keep pushing until he blurts out some bit of totalitarian behavior or rhetoric.... guaranteed success. That's a very solid plan.
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