Abstract: Michael Lind wrote an article last week criticizing the Democratic strategy of continuously attacking Fox News for its lunacy, instead calling for a venue in which we can present our own narrative and state positive positions on the issues. We should not allow the GOP to dictate what we talk about, and here I lay out a plan for a "counter-Glenn Beck" that is intelligent and doesn't rely on fear tactics. The purpose of this plan is to wrest control of the debate from Fox News and put them on the defensive.
I read a fascinating article on Salon.com last week arguing that simply trying to correct and mock the lunatic personalities on the right, such as Beck, Bachmann, Limbaugh, etc., is a bad political strategy. As fun as it is to roast Fox News like a Thanksgiving turkey, Mr Lind is correct.
The most compelling argument Lind provides is that it cedes control of the debate to the opposition, and it provides no positive position. "No doubt this drives ratings, attracting hyper-partisan Democrats whose greatest pleasure in life is the rather low one of picking apart the statements of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck: "Nyah, nyah, Glenn Beck is wrong again!" But it’s no substitute for a liberalism that tells its own story, on its own timeline, and lets the right react1."
Lind argues for a counter-Glenn Beck, someone who can explain things from the opposite (and hopefully more sane) point of view. The perfect strategy would be to explain things in a way that does not make the audience more afraid, but gives them a good grasp of, say, the 2008 economic recession, and lays out the real causes of their current economic hardship while at the same time outlining the plans of the opposition as they are, and how they directly impact audience members as individuals.
Furthermore, a person in this position could also go on to explain the adverse impact on society of their cuts to the EPA, PBS/NPR, and recount how these services improve life not only individuals but also for greater society. The object here would be to make the case that our government also has a responsibility to guarantee our rights and freedoms, and provide for our welfare, and perhaps come up with a plan to reduce the deficit in a way that impacts everyday society as minimally as possible with prudent foresight, considering both the integrity of society and national supremacy.
It is easier to run a clip of Sarah Palin that makes you go "What the f---?" but it may hurt us in the long run, because, as Lind also points out, it makes us look more immediately like snobs than even the Koch brothers.
Our task here is to reverse the damage done by the Tea Party (as explained so brilliantly by Tom Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas?) and win back the lower and working classes to our cause. If we could explain to them that the Tea Party is backed by enormous corporate interests that are manipulating them to vote against their own social and economic interests, we may succeed. This may be helped by the fact that there is an all-consuming civil war between the Tea Party Patriots and their grassroots affiliates involving financial misfeasance2.
The difficulty here is that people have been continually duped by conservative personalities in the past. Abortion is an extremely effective smokescreen issue, in which the working class throws their economic aspirations under the bus for a Hellerian* campagain to save unwanted fetuses. This is made ever more tragic by the fact that there is a more effective way to mitigate the necessity of abortion procedures, which many conservative leaders consider with equal disgust: Contraception.
The cynical manipulation of the lower classes by business and religious leaders in tandem is nothing short of horrific to anyone who knows anything about Jesus himself, which has been a popular point since the beginning of the Cold War and McCarthyism, and has been taken up again in response to Obama's election. Perhaps it would be possible to pull the dominance of the debate away from Fox News and the political party it controls by doing something a bit uncomfortable, like actually quoting Jesus.
Knowing that I am an atheist, you might be immediately taken aback by this suggestion. But the goal is not to inject religion into public policy, at least any more than it already is. The goal, instead, is an educational one. The Pew Research poll on religious knowledge released last September ranked Jews and atheists/agnostics as the most knowledgeable about religion generally, and if we are going to correct the damage done by the Tea Party, perhaps it would be helpful if we were able to demonstrate 1) some Biblical knowledge, and 2) that Jesus was certainly not a capitalist, let alone a Randian one. I see no clear danger from including the Religious Left in this enterprise; it is entirely permissible for them to participate in public politics so long as they respect the law, even if they privately justify their actions on religious grounds. It is entirely possible for they and secularists such as myself to work toward the same end.
In fact, many evangelical scholars lament that Biblical literacy in the United States is dismal, and I would venture to surmise that the right's claims on the subject are not doing anything to alleviate the situation, from the complexities of religious issues surrounding the Founding of the nation to the claims surrounding the vindictive and avaricious nature of their Savior. We have an opportunity to take them to task over this, not by directly engaging them, but by forming a narrative of our own that is more accurate and doesn't rely on terror and hatred.
Unfortunately, CNN's hiring practices these past few months present a discouraging reality. Not only have they hired Erick Erickson, who had called a Supreme Court Justice a "goat-f---ing child molester," but they also hired Dana Loesch, and the news network went further and joined with the Tea Party Express3. It was also the only network to take Michele Bachmann's rebuttal to the SotU seriously.
This means that the current trend in our news media leaves little room for any kind of intelligent programming; the moderators of what is to be considered our political discourse are, instead of fostering the kind of discourse that could be considered "civil," are almost deliberately making us afraid and prone to violence. We would need to find an outlet that would support something of a higher standard of commentary and reach a wider audience.
1) http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/02/15/lind_beck_bachmann
2) http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/tea-party-patriots-investigated?page=1
3) http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/473148/cnn_hires_cpac_star_dana_loesch,_who_acts_out_violent_%27metaphors%27_against_democrats/
* referring to Joseph Heller's Catch-22
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