1. The Electorate
The
Republicans may as well stop their soul-searching and look at the
reality of the Democrat electorate. In addition to those Republican
voters who stayed home on Election Day, the hard-core (so-called)
progressives, the inadequate Republican ground game, and those who pay
little or no federal tax and are
happy to elect those who promise to take larger sums from those who DO
pay, there's a more profound and possibly intractable problem. From my
countless discussions with Democrats/liberals, it seems clear that many,
many voters - we will never be sure of their numbers - neither hear,
nor are interested in hearing, the stance of conservatives or
Republicans. I'm often incredulous at the self-satisfied political
ignorance and gullibility of successful, otherwise high-functioning and
intellectually curious Democrats. The range and depth of their
ignorance regarding easily ascertainable facts is astounding ("No,
President Obama has NOT increased the deficit: that's a lie! For your
information, President Obama has spent less than any President in
history!"); and many, in my experience, cite the New York Times as their
irrefutable source of information, with phrases like: "The Times didn't
mention it so it can't be true or relevant...."
For these people, it really doesn't matter what conservatives or Republicans think or say: they won't hear it!
Republican positions are totally lost - unheard and meaningless - to a
growing number of the electorate, including huge swaths of
highly-educated and effective leaders in society. It would be
understating the issue to note that the Republican/conservative "brand"
has been sullied - but it begins to convey the nature of the problem:
it's more accurate to say that the Republican/conservative brand has
been effectively nullified for many people. For a growing number of
voters, it doesn't matter what Republicans say: they have bought into
the idea - nurtured by the press, educators at every level, and almost
the entire entertainment industry - that Republicans are the "bad
guys". Furthermore, and possibly more disturbing, is the fact that this
apparently mushrooming group of voters is largely unaware of and
unconcerned about their stance.
Imagine
trying to discuss the strengths of Judaism with members of the Hitler
Youth, or the weaknesses of Mao's Great Leap Forward with a cadre of the
Red Guard: would your ideas be heard and rationally considered? Or
suppose you were running for office and these youngsters could vote:
would they vote for you? When you discovered that you'd lost their vote
and consequently an election, would you then ask yourself, for example,
whether the ideas or nature of Judaism were at fault for your inability
to persuade them?
That's
about the level of it with much of the U.S. electorate: they've totally
bought into the liberal stance - which these days includes refusing to
hear or even consider ideas of the blacklisted opposition - and there's
no indication that they'll be coming back to a more rational stance.
They
proclaim themselves compassionate but really don't care if the "bad
guys" are emotionally or physically hurt. And there's a typical
structure to their answers in
response to interrogations about their reputed compassion: first the
distancing phrase, then the conjunction, and finally the seemingly
reasonable explanation. (A couple typical answers: "Of course nobody
would condone such violent behavior but I also don't hear too many
people upset about his absence"...or... "We should never turn to
violence as an answer but who can blame them for getting upset".) An
example to illustrate the point: although You may recall that a couple
Republicans were savagely beaten in apparent political violence in New
Orleans after a Republican fund raiser in 2010, I can guarantee you that
essentially none of your Democrat friends do.
To
call these people "zealots" would be overstating their political
energy, but calling them "partisans" is somehow off point. Many of them,
but for their political stance, would be considered bright or
knowledgeable, as I'm sure were many of the Hitler Youth, the Red Guard
and members of like organizations, who were often specially selected for
their academic, athletic and social skills
.
While
some of these people may have limited political knowledge, they all
know something really, really well: Republicans and conservatives are
bad guys, should not be listened to, and will make everything worse. If
you're a Republican or a conservative, it doesn't matter what you say
because, if it comes out of your mouth, it's wrong.
When
I was young, it was a matter of pride that we'd try to familiarize
ourselves with both sides of an argument: my teachers mostly attempted
to present alternative views fairly and encouraged us to research
opposing political stances independently. Now educators at every level
mostly seem to expect adherence to the liberal/Democrat position, and
both challenge (even threaten) those who disagree, and create an
environment where alternative views and their proponents are mocked (or
worse).
So
Republicans and conservatives, I'd say the same thing to you that I'd
say to a Rabbi rejected by the Hitler Youth: if you think that the
Democrats heard, digested and rejected your arguments in the last
election, you're deluded. Your brand is so soiled that you will not be
heard by this generation...short of a calamity on the order of the one
that befell the Nazis. Your misreading of the times and the situation
is startling. You look like bewildered youngsters trying to please a
psychotic mother, looking for cues in an electorate and media that
derides and, in many cases, despises you. In terms of convincing the
electorate of the good sense of your positions, there may not be
workable solutions: but take a first step by facing the truth: you have
allowed the culture to drift for decades, and one feature of the drift
is the acceptability of determined mindlessness...including the mindless
rejection of you and whatever it is that you proclaim. You still have a
substantial choir to whom you preach...but probably a larger
counter-choir that not only doesn't hear you but aggressively covers its
ears when you speak.
2. Media Bias
The
fact is that while there has never been a pure news delivery system, it
was much, much cleaner 60 years ago. One could have argued the case
several decades ago that there was such an entity as "news", but it
makes no sense to call these groups "news" organizations anymore. A
more sensible approach would be to say that there's hot, warm, cool and
cold information, and that the mainstream press and the left are the
arbiters of what will be hot, cold, etc. If the press decides that a
particular story does not fit their world-view or plan, the story
becomes "cold", is ignored and, to the acolytes, doesn't exist.
Examples would be The New York Times ignoring the Benghazi story or
"Fast and Furious" for extended periods; when they finally reported on
these, they had lots of ways, as always, to effect their spin: story
placement and flow, leaving out facts that might be inconsistent with
their world-view, interviewing those with known sympathy to their stance
and then editing the interviews for greatest New-York-Times-style
impact. Since so many news organizations and acolytes look to the Times
to define worthy/unworthy stories, advance the "proper" spin, etc.,
much of the country, including many Republicans, believe that they've
heard the full story after having
read The Times (and The Washington Post). I've been told several times
- although it always amazes me - that a particular event "never
happened"...with the explanation that "The Times didn't mention it...."
Because this situation has been in place without effective challenge
for so long, it's second-nature to the (so-called) reporters involved in
creating and perpetuating it: to most of them, the idea that they have a
political slant that finds expression in their news stories would be
obviously bogus...not worth wasting a moment pondering.
"What?? Are you claiming that there's a conspiracy
among these journalists???" No: it's group-think! Imagine the Jewish
fellow noted above speaking to a Nazi Youth club and later finding that
essentially all of them had a negative reaction to his presentation.
Would that be a conspiracy? Or how about someone identified as a "Petit
Bourgeois" delivering a roundly rejected lecture on the benefits of
capitalism to a group of Bolsheviks: although they all found his ideas
wrong-headed, would their rejection reflect a conspiracy? I don't think
so.
Republicans and conservatives: you are playthings of the mainstream media and they can totally have their way with you, no matter
your observations or objections. And the most interesting part of
living in such a one-sided media environment for so long is that the
vast majority of Republicans (and many conservatives) will, like
obedient puppies, follow the media lead. The bottom line: you
Republicans and conservatives are powerless in defining or moving the
debate: the mainstream media along with the liberals and Democrats
essentially totally define the issues, the responses to the issues,
which events to focus on or ignore, etc. And their chosen topics and
slants can be very bizarre indeed. But you have nothing to do with it! You're powerless! Impotent! The sooner you face this fact, the sooner you might find a productive path ahead.
And one other note about the mainstream media: because you Republicans and conservatives are so impotent and because they identify, define and massage (or ignore) the stories consistent with their world view, it stands to reason that anyone can be tarnished and destroyed by them. Anyone!:
Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, a reincarnated Jesus Christ, and you and any
of your colleagues: it's simply a matter of who is picked out and how
thoroughly he or she needs to be destroyed. If the target will
cooperate and absent himself or herself, it's often unnecessary - a
waste of time and resources - to continue the assault.
Likewise,
if the mainstream media and the left decide to ignore a scandal or
other situation, for a large percentage of the population - including
many who are otherwise well informed and high-functioning - it won't
exist: there's essentially nothing that you conservatives and
Republicans can do about it. In related fashion, if the left and
mainstream media decide to re-route information or assign blame
idiosyncratically, their version will quickly become the accepted
explanation for a large percentage of the populace. It's why George W.
Bush is largely to blame for the mortgage crisis, (supposed) global
warming, increased violent crime, persistent racism and all manner of
other difficulties. Scapegoats are a beautiful thing for people who
don't want to face themselves or grow up and, in a lopsided information
system like ours, there is neither a shortage of scapegoats nor a
practical limit to the extent of blame that one scapegoat can absorb.
If you think that this plum George Bush-Sarah Palin-scapegoat-era is
over, think again. And, more to the point, you Republicans and
conservatives have nothing whatever to say about it.
So
stop with the, "If we'd only nominated" somebody, he or she would be
"so much less vulnerable" to attacks than the person we nominated; and
stop the, "It's such a shame that he keeps opening his mouth and
sticking his foot in it...." If some other person had been nominated,
he or she would have been destroyed if he didn't fit the media paradigm:
and then you'd be complaining that yet another candidate should have
been nominated. Face it, Republicans and conservatives: you have
nothing to say about who gets pilloried in the press and who doesn't, or
what the issues will be, and there's essentially nothing you can do to
change it: all of that is decided by people who disagree with and often
despise you. So you may as well stop your automatic genuflections to
the liberals/Democrats by beating each other up. (From a distance,
though, you have to admit that it must be a gas to be able to call the
shots for your opponents...to get them to hop and dance on cue, to
self-flagellate, to start fighting with each other or join in the
carnage.)
3. Techniques
A
third element that makes the position of Republicans and conservatives
almost untenable is the range of techniques for destroying them that are
accepted by many Americans and the mainstream press. The most
effective and destructive technique is so-called "political
correctness", a method of silencing those who disagree with a group or
party controlling the political agenda: it's a technique that depends on
a constant reinforcing dialogue between the media and compliant
citizens. Political correctness is a capital political concept because:
the participants silently acquiesce to its dictates; it's a
self-modulating system where groups of people self-monitor and groom
each other into conformity; through unspoken or overt threats of
censure, it propagates itself; and, among the willing, it inevitably
leads to the control of thought. If we freely restrict our speech to
only "allowed" topics, in short order we restrict our thinking as well.
In the end there is no more powerful political tool than thought
control, which is why mastery and management of information is a central
issue in all totalitarian regimes. What has required the overt
elimination or forced domination of media outlets in most autocratic
regimes has been yielded up easily by our group-think media, who now
march along in near lockstep while trumpeting their independence.
Political correctness must be a beautiful thing to behold if you're a
politician inclined toward domination.
Another
technique is the investigation and censure of politicians and groups
who don't fit the media or left wing paradigm, while ignoring or
manipulating scandalous information on political allies. When
potentially damaging information about left wing allies is ignored by
the mainstream media, it simply "doesn't exist" to growing numbers of
otherwise well-informed acolytes. This is why Sarah Palin is regarded
as perhaps the most heinous and hated American politician today to a
large portion of the population, while Bill Clinton is lionized and his
wife may be the brightest woman in the western world. With enough
investigation and diligence, anyone can be destroyed and almost
anyone can be elevated. Again, who is destroyed and who idealized is
totally within the control of the mainstream media and the left wing:
conservatives and Republicans cannot substantially affect these
processes because of the nullification of their brand advanced through
the press, the entertainment media and educational institutions.
Two
elements exacerbate this technique for conservatives and Republicans:
the fact that the left wing, because it views itself as having an
essential and morally-superior "mission", excuses its unscrupulous
destructive strategies (like, for example, essentially inventing and
repeating false stories until they become part of the political
landscape [such as bogus Tea-Party threats toward Congressmen];
attacking family members of antagonists; somehow "discovering"
legitimately sealed information and dropping it over the transoms of
friendly media; etc.); and the fact that Republicans and conservatives,
so inured to being cogs in the left-wing-driven information system, leap
in to play their roles of unwitting enablers in the destruction of
their own.
A
third technique - another favorite of despotic regimes like the Soviets
in Eastern Europe - is "selective violence": physically harmful acts
meant to both stop a political opponent and send a message to
like-minded potential opponents. This category includes such things as
union attacks on Tea Party demonstrations; the arrest, prosecution and
imprisonment of the "Coptic Christian" on charges "unrelated" to his
film; covert threats toward Chief Justice Roberts by national
politicians on the eve of the health care decision; the use of
government powers, like repeated, intensive tax audits against political
enemies; etc. It must be a comforting and, unfortunately for the body
politic, "liberating" position for politicians and left-wing groups to
know that no matter how many or how severe their physical or
administrative attacks, these will be ignored by the mainstream press
and consequently "not exist" for much of the population.
In
a word, we are observing the regression of a culture...one that is
moving away from sophistication and proudly stepping backward from
civilizing attempts. We have seen primitive behavior in our own culture
and others: when people look to a label or a skin color as all that
need be said about a person; when information from trusted sources of
information are grossly biased so only one side is heard or even
"exists"; and when physical or administrative violence against people is
belittled, laughed at or ignored. It's a cultural regression and, as
the unifying, reassuring legal structures and precepts wither, as
information sources become untrustworthy, and as physical and
administrative violence worsens, it becomes increasingly difficult to
reverse.
