Monday, August 4, 2008

Sitting Quietly in the Corner

Dear George,

One simple fact characterizes politics in the United States: there is no viable progressive movement. Progressivism is America’s problem child who is forced by the teacher to sit quietly in the corner. Oh, there are the occasional tantrums, but a quick and vigorous caning is enough to silence them.

Over time, progressives have reached the delusional conclusion that if they sit quietly in their corner, the teacher will notice their good behavior and will reward them by inviting them back to join the rest of the class.

Little do they realize that the teacher has not only forgotten about them, but fully intends to keep them in the corner until class is dismissed.

In a classroom, the teacher frames the issues. Reality is refracted through the cracked lenses in the teacher’s glasses, and should progressives be bold enough to argue, they do so on the teacher’s terms.

The right’s favorite pastime is scamming progressives. The most salutatory effect of the Atwater/Rove approach to electioneering is that both Democrats and progressives have bought into the belief that the American public is both stupid and easily manipulated by lies and deceptions.

Political operatives are fond of pointing to the success of this approach in previous elections. However, they overlook one small detail. Prior campaigns were conducted during an era of fictitious prosperity that concealed the declining political fortunes of America’s middle and lower classes. Rather than stupidity, you had a public that wasn’t paying much attention because it found itself so distracted by all the toys and baubles its plastic could buy.

That little bubble has popped right along with the housing bubble. There’s nothing like a sudden fall off the economic ladder to fire up the public’s attention span. But, as the poet said, habit is a great deadener, and both the right and the left continue to treat America’s citizens like children.

As one writer put it, “As long as progressives continue to teat ‘ordinary’ Americans as stupid and irrelevant, progressives will find themselves largely irrelevant in U.S. politics. And that’s stupid, because it doesn’t have to be that way.”

So, progressives continue to prattle on in terms set by your minions, and in doing so, they kill any chance that they might come up with a viable alternative narrative, one that an anxious and unsettled public is ready to hear.

The above writer elaborates on this when he says, “If too many of the voters are still trapped in simplistic caricatures of patriotism and national security created 40 years ago—or if you fear they are—that’s because no one has offered them an appealing alternative narrative that meets their cultural needs…They’ll abandon one narrative only when another comes along that is more satisfying.

Who would have believed that Obama would fall for the same scam as Kerry and Gore.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

4 comments:

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

I've noticed that the polls tell us what the powers that be want us to hear. If there appears to be a light dawning on "the peoples" faces then it is time to blur and dim the light because "drama" plays better, keeps the illusion going, the people cowed, the plastic buying, the corporates satisfied.

Life's a stage and we're all in on the act.

Case Wagenvoord said...

Yes, but the guy with the hook is waiting offstage.

Anonymous said...

Yes to both comments. But it's always been clear Obama was in on the same scam as Kerry and Gore.

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

You know...in all my times on stage the hook only came out twice. One was in a play called "The Honeymooners",, yes, that "Honeymooners" and the other was a play I wrote in college about politics in the US during the Bill Clinton era. I was playing a candidate from Texas running for president in 2000... and for the life of me I cannot remember his name. Anywho! He got the hook! Nope. It tweren't prophetic- it twere pathetic.