Saturday, January 24, 2004
Memes and "The Process"
Over the past few weeks the Mighty Wurlitzer has been concerned to debunk various memes that have emerged from the Democratic blogosphere:
Four memes
My nameserver seems to be doing weird things, so this post will be short of links, but I wanted to tie all these things together now, since I think they're remarkable. First I'm going to talk about the memes, then about the reaction to them, and finally suggest what we need to keep doing.
State of play of the four memes
First, none of these memes are new to us. We've been honing them since election 2000. On desertion, we call Bush aWol (appropriating his famous "W") for a very good reason (see the entry in the linked Lexicon entry for citations).[0] We look to the out-in-plain-sight PNAC for a very good reason: it has predictive value. Heck, the guys ruling us wrote it, and now they're applying it. (See here for the PNAC's plan to militarize space, for which the Moon/Mars thing is an obvious cover). On home-grown fascism, we just have to follow the scholarly work of Orcinus to connect the dots. And electronic vote fraud has reached the mainstream, with Democrats introducing bills in Congress, many scientists speaking out, and a nationwide movement at the state and local level.
So that's the state of play for these memes in the Democratic blogosphere, which has, in some ways, served the same argument-honing and rhetoric-testing function for Democrats that funded institutions have for wingers.
"The Process"
And the reaction.... Well, I don't really have the right word for it. Right now, the country is being ruled, though not governed, by a constellation of forces (examples in parentheses), including:
In the aggregate, these guys—the operatives, lawyers, journalists, officials, and funders—devised and executed a slow-moving, media-fuelled right-wing coup. They started with the assault on Clinton, they continued through the impeachment, seized power in Florida 2000 (remember the bourgeois riot?), and now they're are ruling the country.
And we don't have a name for these guys. And without naming them, we can't talk about what they do. I've though of just saying "Bush," since after all he's the front man. I've thought of "Republicans," but although most are complicit, the moderate, truly conservative, and libertarian Republicans tend to retain some integrity. The closest I've seen is the "Bush Gang," which has the right aura of criminality, but it's too restrictive: it doesn't include the billionaire funders, and they're an essential part of the mix. My suggestion:
remembering Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing Las Vegas: "Kid, you'd have to be crazy to mention The Process in this town."
NOTE: My runner-up was "The Blob". Would that be better?
Reaction from The Process
If you poke THE PROCESS with a sharp stick, it reacts. In fact, a reaction is the only way to know that you've poked it! And the reactions we've gotten are interesting. The RNC fax-blasters gave the SCLM their marching orders by classifying all criticism of THE PROCESS as "hate speech." Which is a good move—and these guys are good—since to some people, anger looks like hate, or they can imagine no other reason to be angry than hatred.
What's remarkable (ha) about these reactions is how shoddy they are. Taking our memes in reverse order: The silence on electronic voting fraud is deafening. It's "the dog that didn't bark in the night." And what THE PROCESS is silent on, it's probably doing. (Bush emplaced all the supplies and most of the troops for the war before Rove marketed it.) Miller distorts the home-grown fascism meme, which at least in some hands (Orcinus) is a serious analytical tool that explains the purposes and techniques of THE PROCESS, into a "Bush is Hitler" straw man. Where, pray tell, was Miller when The Oxycontin Kid was calling the first lady "Hitlery"? Oh well.[2] Brooks uses the same straw man trick as Miller: first distort the analysis (it's a "conspiracy theory"), then debunk the analysts ("tinfoil hat types"). [3]. The Howler nails Jennings on desertion. (Clark issued a sensible and elegant non-denial denial.)
Yes, shoddy reactions, even at the level of pure professional technique. Setting up straw men is the laziest and cheapest kind of argumentation to do. And that's all THE PROCESS is doing, so far. (Though doubtless Rove is buying a witness to deal with the charge of Bush's desertion; he's got $130 million, after all. The electronic vote fraud meme will be harder to defeat, I think, given that 40% of Blue state votes think election 2000 was stolen). Of course, for some reason, the cheapest argument made by THE PROCESS gets picked up by the Mighty Wurlitzer and pounded 'til the echo chamber rings, and the most serious meme introduced by a democrat (small "d" deliberate) is silently dropped. So, we have to make THE PROCESS work harder. What do we do?
Making The Process work harder
In fact, I have confidence in the good sense of the American people. During the worst of the Clinton impeachment, his polls were never higher, and the numbers transcended the polarization of the country we're seeing today. The American people really aren't stupid. And we have the truth on our side. That's why the Republicans rely on anecdotes, and try to cook the numbers, and we rely on citations, and try to keep statistics apolitical. So what do we have to do?
Hammer our four memes. The fact that THE PROCESS is working on them shows they've got power. The strength of blogging is also its weakness: A blogger's voice speaks in the present. The focus on the writer could mean that we miss opportunities to propagate strong memes: after all, we all know the issues of aWol's desertion, and what writer wants to rehash what his readership already knows? So with the focus on the present: it's easy to react right away, it's harder to show patterns over time, and it's even harder to name those patterns, and show how they work in the present. (That's what I'm trying to do by naming THE PROCESS.) We've worked for years to hone these memes, they've survived a Darwinian process, and now, just when they're making the mainstream, is not the time to stop pushing them.
Propagate new memes. I can think of a few:
On Bush the killer, I've said enough elsewhere. It's important to take away the idea that Bush is a nice guy; he isn't. The candidates can't say anything about this, of course; but there's no reason some of us can't take the low road. (In a nice way, of course, and using the Democratic tools of analysis and citation.) Do the math looks like it might be getting traction. Partly, people (including true conservatives who aren't part of THE PROCESS) are wised up to the fact that THE PROCESS can't handle money—more precisely, their money. And the idea's taking hold that the when Republicans put $5 into your front pocket (through tax cuts) they take $10 out of your back pocket (through higher property and payroll taxes, higher fees, and corporate giveaways, as in Prescription drugs). On gays are your children I really believe that "the wedge edge" here is for the Democrats, if they are clever and ruthless enough (well...). Cheney's daughter, after all, is both a lesbian and his campaign chair. I'm hoping that the last decades of "coming out" have shown enough people the bigotry THE PROCESS is propagating is hurtful to people they love. (And separating "civil union" from "marriage" is a great way to argue for the separation of church and state. Does the country really want the government defining sanctity?) Bringing me to true religion. We really have to get traction on this one, and I can't see why it's not possible. (It's really, really unfortunate that Dean said—assuming I can trust the reporting—that the Book of Job was in the New Testament. Even a recovering Episcopalian like me knows it's in the Old Testament. This was a far greater "gaffe" than the Iowa speech, and its doubtless a card THE PROCESS plans to play later, which is why they're not saying anything about it.) It's possible because any Bible reader knows that THE PROCESS, and its personal representative here on Earth, Bush, is about the farthest thing from being that Christian it's possible to be. The hypocrites and Pharisees of THE PROCESS are exactly the people Jesus threw out of the temple. Ditto the people who use their religion to get votes. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 6: 1 – 18) The Dems should own this issue; why don't they claim it? constitutional government and follow the money I'll leave as exercises for reader.
Thoughts, anyone?
Notes
[0]BTW, I like the idea of "defenders" (let's not call them protesters, they're defending democracy") chanting "A-W-O-L" at the Thug in-gathering in Manhattan...
[1]I leave out the big corporations bribing our money into their pockets with campaign contributions. That's much more business as usual. Much like German industrialists in the '30s, who thought they had matters under control.
[2]Of course, everyone knows Bush isn't Hitler: for one thing, Bush has no talent as a graphic artist. The Bush dynasty is comfortable doing business with Nazis, however, as recovering Republican Kevin Philllips points out in his new book).
[3]This was the column in which Brooks also accused anyone who criticized the neo-cons of being anti-Semites. This created a furor, as Brooks surely designed it to do. The Democratic blogosphere focused on the anit-Semitism charge, while ignoring Brook's disinformation on the PNAC. In this way, Brooks introduced the PNAC meme into the mainstream under conditions not favorable to its propagation.
Four memes
- Bush's desertion from his cushy spot in the Texas Air National Guard
- The role of the PNAC in preparing America for a state of permanent war, including the militarization of space
- The possiblity of an emergent form of home-grown fascism in this country
- The fact that electronic voting machines enable large-scale election theft
My nameserver seems to be doing weird things, so this post will be short of links, but I wanted to tie all these things together now, since I think they're remarkable. First I'm going to talk about the memes, then about the reaction to them, and finally suggest what we need to keep doing.
State of play of the four memes
First, none of these memes are new to us. We've been honing them since election 2000. On desertion, we call Bush aWol (appropriating his famous "W") for a very good reason (see the entry in the linked Lexicon entry for citations).[0] We look to the out-in-plain-sight PNAC for a very good reason: it has predictive value. Heck, the guys ruling us wrote it, and now they're applying it. (See here for the PNAC's plan to militarize space, for which the Moon/Mars thing is an obvious cover). On home-grown fascism, we just have to follow the scholarly work of Orcinus to connect the dots. And electronic vote fraud has reached the mainstream, with Democrats introducing bills in Congress, many scientists speaking out, and a nationwide movement at the state and local level.
So that's the state of play for these memes in the Democratic blogosphere, which has, in some ways, served the same argument-honing and rhetoric-testing function for Democrats that funded institutions have for wingers.
"The Process"
And the reaction.... Well, I don't really have the right word for it. Right now, the country is being ruled, though not governed, by a constellation of forces (examples in parentheses), including:
- the Republican party (Ed, Karl)
- paid operatives and vendors of the Republican party (pollsters, "fellows" at think tanks, lawyers, and the like)
- MWs in the SCLM (Brooks, Will, and their editors. The Mighty Wurlitzer; the echo chamber)
- SIC theocrats (Reed)
- Winger billionairs who fund the Republicans, their operatives, the MWs, and the theocrats (Scaife, Rushdooney, etc.)[1]
In the aggregate, these guys—the operatives, lawyers, journalists, officials, and funders—devised and executed a slow-moving, media-fuelled right-wing coup. They started with the assault on Clinton, they continued through the impeachment, seized power in Florida 2000 (remember the bourgeois riot?), and now they're are ruling the country.
And we don't have a name for these guys. And without naming them, we can't talk about what they do. I've though of just saying "Bush," since after all he's the front man. I've thought of "Republicans," but although most are complicit, the moderate, truly conservative, and libertarian Republicans tend to retain some integrity. The closest I've seen is the "Bush Gang," which has the right aura of criminality, but it's too restrictive: it doesn't include the billionaire funders, and they're an essential part of the mix. My suggestion:
"THE PROCESS" (yes, in all caps, so it looks like a logo).
remembering Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing Las Vegas: "Kid, you'd have to be crazy to mention The Process in this town."
NOTE: My runner-up was "The Blob". Would that be better?
Reaction from The Process
If you poke THE PROCESS with a sharp stick, it reacts. In fact, a reaction is the only way to know that you've poked it! And the reactions we've gotten are interesting. The RNC fax-blasters gave the SCLM their marching orders by classifying all criticism of THE PROCESS as "hate speech." Which is a good move—and these guys are good—since to some people, anger looks like hate, or they can imagine no other reason to be angry than hatred.
- Desertion: Jennings baits Clark
- PNAC: Brooks writes "tinfoil hat" column
- Home-grown fascism: Miller invokes Godwin's law
- Electronic vote fraud: silence
What's remarkable (ha) about these reactions is how shoddy they are. Taking our memes in reverse order: The silence on electronic voting fraud is deafening. It's "the dog that didn't bark in the night." And what THE PROCESS is silent on, it's probably doing. (Bush emplaced all the supplies and most of the troops for the war before Rove marketed it.) Miller distorts the home-grown fascism meme, which at least in some hands (Orcinus) is a serious analytical tool that explains the purposes and techniques of THE PROCESS, into a "Bush is Hitler" straw man. Where, pray tell, was Miller when The Oxycontin Kid was calling the first lady "Hitlery"? Oh well.[2] Brooks uses the same straw man trick as Miller: first distort the analysis (it's a "conspiracy theory"), then debunk the analysts ("tinfoil hat types"). [3]. The Howler nails Jennings on desertion. (Clark issued a sensible and elegant non-denial denial.)
Yes, shoddy reactions, even at the level of pure professional technique. Setting up straw men is the laziest and cheapest kind of argumentation to do. And that's all THE PROCESS is doing, so far. (Though doubtless Rove is buying a witness to deal with the charge of Bush's desertion; he's got $130 million, after all. The electronic vote fraud meme will be harder to defeat, I think, given that 40% of Blue state votes think election 2000 was stolen). Of course, for some reason, the cheapest argument made by THE PROCESS gets picked up by the Mighty Wurlitzer and pounded 'til the echo chamber rings, and the most serious meme introduced by a democrat (small "d" deliberate) is silently dropped. So, we have to make THE PROCESS work harder. What do we do?
Making The Process work harder
In fact, I have confidence in the good sense of the American people. During the worst of the Clinton impeachment, his polls were never higher, and the numbers transcended the polarization of the country we're seeing today. The American people really aren't stupid. And we have the truth on our side. That's why the Republicans rely on anecdotes, and try to cook the numbers, and we rely on citations, and try to keep statistics apolitical. So what do we have to do?
Hammer our four memes. The fact that THE PROCESS is working on them shows they've got power. The strength of blogging is also its weakness: A blogger's voice speaks in the present. The focus on the writer could mean that we miss opportunities to propagate strong memes: after all, we all know the issues of aWol's desertion, and what writer wants to rehash what his readership already knows? So with the focus on the present: it's easy to react right away, it's harder to show patterns over time, and it's even harder to name those patterns, and show how they work in the present. (That's what I'm trying to do by naming THE PROCESS.) We've worked for years to hone these memes, they've survived a Darwinian process, and now, just when they're making the mainstream, is not the time to stop pushing them.
Propagate new memes. I can think of a few:
- Bush the bully and killer (see below)
- Do the math (tax cuts, Medicare)
- Gays are your children, nieces, nephews and neighbors (Cheney's daughter)
- True religion
- Constitutional government
- Follow the money
On Bush the killer, I've said enough elsewhere. It's important to take away the idea that Bush is a nice guy; he isn't. The candidates can't say anything about this, of course; but there's no reason some of us can't take the low road. (In a nice way, of course, and using the Democratic tools of analysis and citation.) Do the math looks like it might be getting traction. Partly, people (including true conservatives who aren't part of THE PROCESS) are wised up to the fact that THE PROCESS can't handle money—more precisely, their money. And the idea's taking hold that the when Republicans put $5 into your front pocket (through tax cuts) they take $10 out of your back pocket (through higher property and payroll taxes, higher fees, and corporate giveaways, as in Prescription drugs). On gays are your children I really believe that "the wedge edge" here is for the Democrats, if they are clever and ruthless enough (well...). Cheney's daughter, after all, is both a lesbian and his campaign chair. I'm hoping that the last decades of "coming out" have shown enough people the bigotry THE PROCESS is propagating is hurtful to people they love. (And separating "civil union" from "marriage" is a great way to argue for the separation of church and state. Does the country really want the government defining sanctity?) Bringing me to true religion. We really have to get traction on this one, and I can't see why it's not possible. (It's really, really unfortunate that Dean said—assuming I can trust the reporting—that the Book of Job was in the New Testament. Even a recovering Episcopalian like me knows it's in the Old Testament. This was a far greater "gaffe" than the Iowa speech, and its doubtless a card THE PROCESS plans to play later, which is why they're not saying anything about it.) It's possible because any Bible reader knows that THE PROCESS, and its personal representative here on Earth, Bush, is about the farthest thing from being that Christian it's possible to be. The hypocrites and Pharisees of THE PROCESS are exactly the people Jesus threw out of the temple. Ditto the people who use their religion to get votes. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 6: 1 – 18) The Dems should own this issue; why don't they claim it? constitutional government and follow the money I'll leave as exercises for reader.
Thoughts, anyone?
Notes
[0]BTW, I like the idea of "defenders" (let's not call them protesters, they're defending democracy") chanting "A-W-O-L" at the Thug in-gathering in Manhattan...
[1]I leave out the big corporations bribing our money into their pockets with campaign contributions. That's much more business as usual. Much like German industrialists in the '30s, who thought they had matters under control.
[2]Of course, everyone knows Bush isn't Hitler: for one thing, Bush has no talent as a graphic artist. The Bush dynasty is comfortable doing business with Nazis, however, as recovering Republican Kevin Philllips points out in his new book).
[3]This was the column in which Brooks also accused anyone who criticized the neo-cons of being anti-Semites. This created a furor, as Brooks surely designed it to do. The Democratic blogosphere focused on the anit-Semitism charge, while ignoring Brook's disinformation on the PNAC. In this way, Brooks introduced the PNAC meme into the mainstream under conditions not favorable to its propagation.
