"Misdirection"

[phantom power]

From Digby's "Hullabaloo" blog. I'm not a big fan of "it's hopeless" arguments, but sometimes I find them pretty compelling. Below are just teasers from a longer post, worth reading the rest of.

Digby's discussion is in the context of why people won't vote Dem, but I kept thinking about environment and energy issues while I read it. You could apply it equally well to any "reality-based" issue. Oncoming environmental problems, peak oil, economic problems, the war in Iraq, whatever. His main thesis is that none of it matters to the rural-conservative demographic, and no amount of explaination, presentation of facts, etc, will make a dent.

If he sees any ray of hope, it seems to be in people like Paul Hackett, but not because they are actually right about anything, just because of his agressive style, which I gather simply appeals to the demographic that thinks with their brain-stem.

In an effort to find out how we can win back the independent rural and red state Bush voter, Democracy Corps did some focus groups (pdf). They found that while there was deep dissatisfaction with the country's direction, they still blame Democrats because Democrats are immoral. Or something like that.

(...)

They don't care about issues --- indeed, they think that moral values are the issues. Republicans are for (the right kind of) Christians therefore they are better at defending the nation and the economy. It's a simple formula that doesn't require much investigation and is validated and emphasized constantly by the predominant political influences in rural red states: churches and talk radio. (Re-read this most insightful article by Christopher Hayes from last year to more fully understand the fact that these people don't even know what political issues are.)

(...)

Something about (Paul Hackett) was able to transcend the christian right influence with the country folk. I suspect it was style, which when you think about it is the one thing that might just be able to pull some of these people away from their preacher proxy model. They have, after all, already demonstrated that they are entirely hueristic decisionmakers who are discontented with the direction the country is going but can't rationally put that together with who is in charge. Hackett looks and sounds like a mans man who wasn't "weak" --- the constant refrain. (Good work Rush.) Maybe that's all it really takes.

(...)

The Republicans are not fucking around here. They are building an impermeable, corrupt political machine made up of cronies, employees and hangers-on the likes of which we haven't seen since the 19th century. They are court-packing, gerrymandering, impeaching and recalling --- not to mention electronically stuffing ballot boxes and throwing disputed elections to their handpicked Supreme Court judges. They control the DC lobbying process and own a rather large piece of the media landscape. They are not building their "permanent majority" through a civil, democratic process.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_08_07_digbysblog_archive.html#112369832168850921

[blindpig]

1. goes a long way in explaining the appeal of Dr Dean

Those sample comments speak volumes; several saying that the Dems just got to stand for something echos what we say here all the time.
The complete opposite of the mealy mouthed DLC crap. Damn straight, let us rumble. But where will the Democratic Party find a Warrior? Kerry may have been one at one time but he ain't no more.

I feel the same way about the environment. I'm sick of finding anthropocentric reasons for acting like well adjusted members of the biosphere. We should maintain life on Earth because it is the right thing to do. Because all life is beautiful and sacred and deserves more than being abused and exterminated by a gang of whacked out nekked monkeys.

[phantom power]

3. Where indeed?

Well, Dean is still out there. And so is Hackett.

I predict that Hackett is just the first of a growing tsunami of soldiers coming back from Iraq, who are all going to be mad as hell, and who sure as shit won't be afraid of the neocon chickenhawks who have been bullying the "DLC Dems" back here at home.

It's not clear to me whether that translates into any immediate wins for environment/energy specifically, but:

1) any force that can kick the current psychos out of power can only cause an improvement, regardless of topic. If nothing else, it should halt the bleeding.

2) after their experiences in Iraq, these people will surely have a real committment to national security, and that just about has to include alternative energy, in this day and age.

[newswolf56]

2. I believe the ultimate divide in the United States is between...

libertarians (note the lower-case "l") and authoritarians. This divide cuts across party differences, religious differences, all economic differences save the ultimate class divide between workers and plutocrats (from the workers' perspective, the latter are all authoritarians.) While there are a few Conservative libertarians -- that is, Conservatives who insist on the right to think for themselves rather than march in ideological lockstep with der Bushler and his Christofascist storm troopers -- most lower-case-"l" libertarians are liberals or Leftists: people who not only insist on the right to think for themselves, but the right to do so in a manner that advances individual liberty through eco-humanitarianism -- precisely what the authoritarian Conservatives so often denounce as "bleeding heart" or "tree-hugger" values.

Today's Conservatives -- an alliance of Christofascists and plutocrats -- are totally authoritarian. Indeed their "model" economic system is a global version of the Nazi/Fascist New Order Mussolini described as "the corporate state."

The extent to which this alliance will retain control of the government depends on (A) whether corporate-run public schools have already dumbed-down the electorate to the point it will accept Christofascist economic analysis (i.e., that ever-worsening poverty and disability is divine punishment for sin) and (B) whether the oligarchy, if genuinely threatened, is sufficiently ruthless to abolish elections.

The key to a Democratic victory in this already-oppressively theocratic context is whether we can develop an economic analysis sufficiently radical to not only energize the party's libertarian core (note once more the lower-case "l"), but to also compete successfully with the Christofascist "we-are-being-punished-for-our-sins" economic model. Our greatest ally in this fight may thus be the newly radicalized break-away labor movement.

Alas -- given the methodical dumbing-down of the electorate by both corporate schools and corporate media, given too the fact that all Yehvehistic religion is at least incipiently authoritarian -- I do not have much hope. And there is also the dread reality that the present regime is already the most viciously tyrannical administration in U.S. history -- which leaves little doubt what it might do if its power were seriously threatened.


Edit: re-inclusion of accidentally deleted phrase in first paragraph.