THE HILLBILLY PROGRESSIVE

MSNBC spent three days regurgitating the story of a child at a baseball game who was caught on national TV cameras wailing pitifully because a foul ball that had landed nearby was not delivered to him. Instead it was picked up by a woman who held it up delightedly while her husband took photos with his smart phone. The sportscaster got his panties in a terrible wad over this, announcing to a deeply interested nation that the child had been deprived  by insensitive adults of what (we must assume) was rightfully his. In a follow up interview of the couple who acquired the ball, they explained they didn’t even see the child. They’d just got married and were caught up in the excitement of the moment and the day. Never mind all that, the image that would live forever (or at least 15 minutes) in the minds of the public was a piteously crying child who had been deprived of what was his.

If it wasn’t his, where did all the sympathy and mini-moral outrage come from?  The sports announcer dramatically spun the incident that way, as did MSNBC talkers who kept the idiot story alive for three days: the child was the victim.  Public sentiment seemed to be totally with the child.  Wait a minute… hang on…

Sorry, I had to go throw up. Now I’m back.  The child wasn’t a victim. He was just a child who was crying because he couldn’t have something he wanted. But look closer: not every child would act this way. Another child, a perfectly normal child, might have noticed the baseball and shown little or no interest. Or become frightened. This child’s response suggests he probably got a lot of what he wanted, from loving and perhaps doting parents, and therefore felt entitled to some outrage when he wasn’t gifted with the ball.

Well, there’s that word: entitlement. It’s been floating around a lot lately in the news. For several weeks you could hear it frequently in relation to wealthy Republicans who were out of touch with the problems of the middle class. You could also hear it in discussions of Free Market economics. Like the tiny baseball fan, wealthy business executives and entrepreneurs feel outraged when government threatens to take away what is rightfully theirs (the wealth they  acquire through work or contrivance) and distribute it to the Have-Nots.  The entrepreneur’s Inner Child is exteriorized in the wailing infant baseball fan/victim.

The sense of entitlement seems to be a deep and abiding theme in American Society. Madison Avenue has certainly discovered it, and forged it into a powerful selling strategy.

Consider an ad from the now defunct Hummer Automotive, which  depicted a young lad building a soap box racer for an upcoming event. He fiddled with his dad’s tools, and constructed a credible looking vehicle which–well for heaven’s sake–looked a lot like his dad’s Hummer. The scene switched to the race event, where the diminutive hero is shown winning—by taking a shortcut off the racetrack.

This month I saw another commercial which is as odious as the Hummer ad, if not more so. A young, yuppie-esque couple is shown charging into a laundry. They throw a load really dirty clothes (we see it’s trendy hiking or camping gear) on the counter.  While the proprietor watches in confusion, they get another armload of filthies and throw them down with the rest. Sand and dirt are trickling out on the counter, and a small sea creature, possibly a crab, crawls out of the heap and waves at the viewing audience. We get no explanation from the couple,  they just rush back out the door. The proprietor now steps around the mess and  looks out his shop window. We see the hero and heroine of the commercial driving off in a Land Rover. The laundry owner is left with a massive pile of totally trashed clothes—presumably from recent exciting adventures—but not a word of thanks. The unspoken message is, “here, Jeeves, take care of this promptly.”  But to make the message work, the owner can’t show annoyance or be indignant. Nope, he has to buy into it, so we’re left with a profile of the laundry owner’s face.  It is wistful,  apparently reflecting his acceptance that this wealthy young couple is free to roam the world and have exciting adventures in their new Land Rover, while he (a simple provider of menial services lacking wealth) can only watch wishfully for a moment, before shuffling off to clean up their mess.

That really stinks.

The prize for the most over-the-top commercial of this genre goes to BMW, which is currently running an ad showing the driver of a BMW sedan speeding down a highway. He opens his sun roof, and holds his empty cup in the slipstream above the car. A 4 engine jet tanker swoops in, lowers its fueling nozzle, and fills his cup. It’s a commercial touting the good gas mileage of the big BMW sedans, but the covert message is that BMW ownership gets you the nice perk of having your smallest needs fulfilled by a big jet plane.

These ads have something very troubling in common. They  depict, in artful and attractive ways, that a sense of entitlement  comes from having money.  If I have money, the ads say, the world will bend over backwards to meet my needs. I can make my own rules, I can be rude to people who have less than I do, and I can even expect them to clean up my messes. That’s troubling, both because people shouldn’t feel entitled like that, and because  big advertising agencies shouldn’t think it’s OK to use such a sleazy message to sell their products.  I could credit the ad agencies for creating great commercials around this theme, but that would be like crediting someone for having a really great case of Herpes.

Of all these social images, the most troubling is the face of the laundry operator  as he watches the happy/wealthy couple speeding off in their Land Rover status symbol: he accepts his diminished status, and envies them. A mentally healthy merchant would have observed the mess being dumped on his counter and held up his hand: Wait! What is this? Take these  clothes out of my shop, shake out the sand and sea creatures. Rinse them, fold them in a clean laundry basket, and bring them back. Then I’ll clean them for you.

But the laundryman doesn’t say that. He buys into the awful social myth that wealth conveys entitlement.  Sad, and Scary, because the face of the laundryman is the face of Middle Class America.

President Obama achieved recognition early in his first term for his CLURT (Come Let Us Reason Together) approach to government. He expected others to reciprocate. Republicans responded with a kind of Reverse-Kumbyah and  rejected just about every policy, initiative, and piece of legislation he came up with. Obama, seen  through the eyes of the Media, was starting to look like the 90 pound weakling with a lot of beach sand in his eyes.

But things are changing.  Obama’s  Budget address on April 3^rd ranged from assertive to confrontational. Paul Ryan got stomped for his Kill Medicare/Increase Corporate Welfare Budget, and in advance of their decision on his health care bill, the Supreme Court got admonished to not be social activists . His speech was a karate chop across the neck of the Conservative agenda.

Obama correctly labeled the Republican legislature as unwilling to negotiate and out of touch with the middle class. These are failings of the first order, and I bet you’ll hear them repeated often as the campaign for the general election gets going. I’m confident the McConnell Clan will assist Obama in his efforts to get re-elected by remaining obstinate and belligerent, and not proposing anything relevant to the Middle Class and working poor. How could they, after aspiring for three years to nothing more than getting Obama out of office? Their strategy—to thwart every initiative and prevent every achievement through nay votes and filibusters—was pretty good but it won’t be good enough. Voters anywhere near the Center will see through it, and appreciate how self-serving and destructive a strategy is really is.

Here one can see an essential difference between Obama and his Republican adversaries. He learns from experience and can change, whereas for Republicans  resistance to change has become a plank in the Party Platform. It is in fact the greatest strength of the Republican Party that they can lock arms, submit to Party Line authority, and loyally stick to a position or plan. It is also their greatest weakness. Watch how it hurts them between now and November.

There’s a great deal to be gained from the CLURT approach. It often  played a part in forming and re-forming our government. The  Presidents most universally admired, from Washington to    Clinton,  incorporated CLURT in their presidential style. After Clinton, compromise and negotiation did not make good seasoning in the neoconservative trough.

Obama aspired to a CLURT presidency because he valued and respected compromise and negotiation. I think he still does. Unfortunately, unadulterated reasonableness was killing him politically. And to his credit, he recognized that as admirable as reasonableness is, it is not an approach one persists in using with a grizzly bear that is trying to eat you, or equally, with a narrow minded and intransigent opposition that aspires to nothing more than taking you down.

The damage done to the country as a result of Republican contrariety will be studied for years, and the picture history paints of the Party of No will be far different from the one that exists in the fantasies of  John Boehner, Paul Ryan, or the Tea Party Poobahs.

And what might history say about Obama? I don’t know, maybe it will sound a lot like what they said about the Roosevelts.

Very conservative Republicans are a lot like onions. Their outmost layer is a kind of mutated version of personal freedom, which is composed of equal parts resentment of  authority and need to be told what to do. Down a layer you find loyalty, the explanation for why Republicans in Congress were able to chain themselves to Grover Norquist’s  rigid and ridiculous  pledge not to raise taxes.

The core of the Republican onion, however, is John Wayne. Republicans are forever channeling John Wayne, although when he becomes manifest through a neoconservative he looks a lot more like Yosemite Sam. You remember John Wayne, right? He was the cowboy who was always true to the Code of the West, never backed down, and always came out fightin’. John Wayne movies were always about John Wayne shooting or beating up on people who got in his way, or didn’t adhere to his Cowboy Code. No wussy negotiating or backin’ down for John, little missy. In his world, good guys were good and bad guys were bad and the way you proved you were a good guy was to beat up all the bad guys.

Just like John Wayne, the Republicans see their political role in concrete and simplistic terms: us good guys are on the side of Right, and them Democrats are on the side of Wrong. Our job is to fight them.

Republicans love a good fight. And if they don’t have an adversary they are skilled in making them (think GW Bush and his Axis of Evil; think Birthers). Republicans understand that compromise and negotiation are signs of weakness.  Real leaders never settle, and never back down.

Nothing proves this point better than the 2012 Republican campaign. Santorum beats up on Gingrich, Gingrich beats up on Santorum  They both beat up on Romney and Obama. They accomplish this without discussing any of the complex issues they would face as president; it’s enough to vow to tear down what Democrats have constructed.

It’s as if they believed they had to be in a continuous struggle, or else their constituents would see them as weak. That would explain why at least two of the Republican contenders, Gingrich and Santorum, refuse to bow out of the campaign,  why they spend millions for the opportunity to create negative ads,  and why they seem confidant in simply promising to dismantle Progressive programs instead of detailing their own. They must believe that many of their constituents have no grasp at all about what it takes to be president. Beyond fighting.

The Tea Party types and the authority-centered Christian Evangelicals would be thrilled with a John Wayne president. Other opinions would vary. Many—perhaps a majority—of voters will understand the need to beat someone up is not a sign of strength, but of weakness. Fighting implies impotence. Many important goals and initiatives can only be achieved by compromise and cooperation; understanding this is a sign of strength.

In that light, consider the contrast between what Republicans and Democrats have done this week. The three top Republican contenders have participated in a wearisome struggle to destroy each other; The Democrats hosted a state dinner for Britain’s Prime Minister, and celebrated the cooperation between Great Britain and the US.

Before Obama, we had a president who was good at picking fights. We should remember and appreciate how much that damaged us economically and in the eyes of the world. Electing any of the three Republican front-runners would put Yosemite Sam back in the Oval Office. And that, little missy, would be the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the foot.

CHAPTER 27

By most accounts,  by 2006 the American political system was broken, perhaps irreparably. G W Bush’s second term in office saw the decline of federal oversight in all areas, and a corresponding rise in cases of corporate and industrial fraud and white collar criminality. Lack of  adequate monitoring and controls by agencies like the EPA and FDA saw sharp rises in oil and natural gas pipeline failures, massive oil spills and groundwater pollution due to drilling, numerous nationwide food product recalls due to contamination by e-coli or other food-born pathogens, illegal logging on national forests, and a seemingly endless march of Enron-style money grabs and Ponzi schemes by Wall Street and ultra-wealthy power brokers.

This was the political landscape when the sun rose on the 2012 presidential elections.  On the Democratic side, President Barack Obama was uncontested. On the Republican side, the field was a clutter of eccentric and under-qualified conservative candidates, none of whom was viewed as representing mainstream conservative voter. Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, John Huntsman, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney all stepped forward and offered their services. One after another, they withdrew under Media scrutiny  because of personal indiscretions or professional weaknesses, while the Media made jokes about the Republican candidate du jour. In the end, only Paul, Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney survived, and none had the support of the Party majority.

The problem seemed to be that the moderate core of the Republican Party had atrophied during the past two decades, and a variety of Far Right fringe groups vied for Party control without achieving consensus on a platform. Endless squabbling and recriminations about who could face down incumbent President Obama, and who would be most loyal to the extreme social or economic conservative agendas raged unabated as the election approached. Money poured into candidates’ coffers from rich Conservatives hiding behind super pacs, and even loyal Republicans were becoming uncomfortable with the endless stream of absurd and unachievable promises made by the front runners. Political pundits generally agreed only on two things, that none of the Republican hopefuls could defeat President Obama, and that were one to do so he would be poorly qualified to serve. However, none of the pundits foresaw the world-changing events of the Summer of 2012.

They started innocently enough, with a small blip on the Media radar regarding a total political outsider, John Carter. A registered Independent voter from the tiny rural community of Troy, Illinois,  Carter had never held a political office when he began his campaign for a comprehensive test of presidential competency. His first foray into local newspapers caused scarcely a ripple of local interest. However, with each submission, his op eds and letters to the editor became more focused and detailed. What began in early June as the equivalent of a kitchen faucet of local interest in a sleepy Illinois community grew to a public tsunami of national support by late August.

Carter’s contention was as simple as it was irrefutable: no job as important as the President of the United States should be decided by uncontested claims or big money. Competence should be measured. Measuring competence and verifying readiness or level of accomplishment was an integral part of practically every profession and trade, and was accepted without argument for everything from advancement through the grades in public schools to the readiness of a brain surgeon to perform a delicate laser technique. Brick layers, lawyers, and hairdressers were required to demonstrate competence by some formal examination process.  How, Carter asked, could what was perhaps the most powerful job in the civilized world be exempt from some sort of testing procedure?

Carter proposed such a procedure, to be required of all presidential candidates. He suggested a comprehensive written and oral exam. It would be the product of a thorough study by a committee of non-partisan authorities in all fields relevant to professional politics, but  it would be weighted heavily in the area of professional ethics.  The exam answers would be measurable and objective, and the final rating would be done by a  commission which was unbound to any political party or platform, and rigorously trained in the evaluation and rating process. The score a candidate received would not win him the public office, but would be an objective measurement of his professional skills, experience, and knowledge. It would be submitted to voters, who would use the data to help them make the difficult decision about who was, in fact, the best qualified candidate. It would take the election process out of the hands of wealthy but undisclosed contributors and do away with the customary barrage of  unsupported claims and allegations by candidates.

At another time in US history, Carter’s proposal may have quickly passed through the political consciousness and disappeared. But the Summer of 2012 saw an unprecedented level of voter unrest and dissatisfaction. Resistance to re-electing a Progressive Black President was high, and Conservative voters were disappointed and resentful their Party could come up with nothing more than a series of under qualified extremists frantically pandering to one or another Conservative minority.

Whatever the reason, Carter’s idea caught fire. Marches on Washington numbered in the millions.  Public meetings were held day and night,  in every conceivable venue from parking lots to private homes. Congress, taken totally by surprise, was shaken like an unconscious man slapped in the face. It was at this point that Dennis Kucinich, a recently unseated Democratic Senator, suggested that Carter’s plan should be taken up formally by Congress, and the 2012 national election should be postponed until a resolution had been achieved. To the amazement of all, the suggestion received vociferous support everywhere, from the Tea Party to Mitch McConnell and the Republican  “Good Ole’ Boys Club” in Congress. Conservatives, though a bit dazed, quickly saw the initiative as a way out of an embarrassing failure if they challenged Obama in November, while Democrats saw it as a solution to most of the criticisms they’d been making of the national election process for years.

President Obama created the Commission to Create a Presidential Readiness Examination Process, and by mid September they had put together a proposal which included examination areas and topics, authorities to create the exams, and a fail-safe procedure for preventing examination fraud. By December the preliminary recommendations had been submitted to Congress, and the public got their first viewing of the oral and written components on January 15^th.  A national cataclysm followed. Shops closed, schools let out, and the streets of every town and city filled millions who literally danced and sang their support.

With a speed and efficiency unseen in modern times, the Presidential Readiness Examination System was ratified by Congress and signed into law by  President Obama. On July 4^th it was administered to the four Republican candidates. A week later, the scores were announced on radio and TV, and published in newspapers across the land.  Reactions ranged from delight to consternation to livid rage. Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum failed so miserably some of their scores fell below the available norms. Newt Gingrich came within a few points of passing the oral exam, and passed just one written exam, Professional Ethics. That prompted the Examinaton Commission to immediately void the ethics section of the test based on verifiable lack of validity,  and construct an new section from the ground up.

Only Ron Paul passed the oral exam and all the written sections.

President Obama went on national TV and described the first National Presidential Readiness Examination as “a sign we have moved on from the sad and dysfunctional government of a year ago,”  Nancy Pelosi said she saw “a bright new future for Democrats and Republicans alike.” George Clooney said, “This gives legislators and voters something to rally round.” Harry Reid said, “Let the healing begin.”  And Fox News proclaimed, “This is the most exciting political event since the signing of the Constitution.”

On July 5^th, the day after the results of the first Presidential Readiness Examination, Dr Ron Paul was assassinated by a self-proclaimed member of the Evangelical Coalition for Christian Government. The world-changing consequences of this event are taken up in Chapter 28.

I brought you all here today to dispel the pernicious rumors that the Republican Party has degenerated into a fragmented and chaotic mess of jabbering and belligerent extremist fringe groups.  Or, since that’s essentially true,  at least to assure you that we still have a winning strategy for November.

Some of you probably think the present crop of whacked-out and totally unelectable candidates simply sprang by chance from the Republican ranks, and the embarrassing clown show of the past 6 months has been the unwanted outcome of having these losers debating in public and displaying their gross incompetence to voters.

That just isn’t so. When I became a pariah after turd blossom’s departure, I did not shoot myself as many advised, I slunk off to my secret offices in the Heritage Foundation basement and continued to insinuate myself into national politics by setting up super pacs and masterminding the Conservative election strategies from the closet.

The fact is, I PLANNED the Republican presidential campaigns of the leading candidates every step of the way, and shortly my brilliant strategy will result in the election of a Republican to the White House in November.

I realized from the beginning none of the current crop of Republican losers could ever win against Obama. Since the Tea Party, Republicans have lost their focus on national values and degenerated into a bunch of self-centered knuckle-draggers whose only political skills are cooking up swift boat ads, throwing temper tantrums or leaving the building when things don’t go their way. Electing any of them to the presidency would be tantamount to giving the entire country to Romania or Ethiopia to rule. But, while they could never be president,  those same miserable excuses for politicians could serve as political pawns on my campaign chess board.

Here’s how it worked. I convinced Romney, Santorum, Paul, and Gingrich to run for election. I knew exactly what would happen when they opened their mouths: Santorum would be seen as a spittle-flecked Televangelist, Romney an out of touch industrialist who could only imagine national government as another giant industry to take over, and Gingrich as a morally compromised conniver. Next to them, Paul would look like a totally unacceptable “compassionate conservative.”

Once I opened the gate, I could just sit back and allow  insanity to run its course. Since each of the candidates has some glaring weakness or fatal flaw to one or another Republican fringe group, I knew that they would all be tearing at each other’s throats and the candidates would look more and more unelectable. Then, just when it seemed the entire Republican Party was going to disintegrate into a frothing cauldron of failure and idiocy, I would quietly introduce the REAL Republican presidential candidate. He would have to be a plausible but easily controlled piece of fluff that I could mold into a puppet willing to respond to the guidance of our rich purse holders—the real Republicans. By contrast to the present laughable candidates, the REAL candidate would look like Superman, Ronald Reagan, and John Wayne all rolled into one.

That candidate is Jeb Bush. Now I know what you’re thinking. Jeb is nobody’s first choice… or even fifth choice. Moreover, he can never escape the shadow of his brother’s embarrassing presidency.  However, he’s basically a nice normal guy, and the absence of any screamingly objectionable flaws will overshadow the absence of any real qualifications.  And anyway, in the Republican Party of today, qualifications can just be a headache when they keep a president from performing as a loyal lap dog for big money interests.

So there you have it: the perfect Republican candidate: nothing right about him, but also nothing wrong with him.  The color and consistency of a good grade of putty. Just what we all  need. Or at least what I need… Since I’ll be doing the molding. And if I get any complaints from that Neanderthal Tea Party crowd, I’ll punch their ticket real fast. Oops… there’s one over there in the corner. …Snuck in somehow. Security, will you take care of that, please?

This morning I was listening to Morning Joe on MSNBC. Truth is, the TV was on and I was working in the next room.  At some point I paid a little bit more attention to the conversation.

They were discussing the 1%-ers, and the attitudes of the wealthy toward their acquisitions.  It’s not about wealth, somebody said, it’s about what the country does with the revenue it collects. Rich people don’t want their tax money spent on poor people. Somebody else said, take away the “Thanks Dad” generation from the wealthy and the rest wouldn’t object to paying more taxes. No, the greater issue is that the wealthy don’t want to underwrite other people’s welfare; don’t want their wealth spent on people who in their view can’t tote their own load. It just goes back to the Conservative’s view that demanding I help somebody else is equivalent to stealing my money.

I found that discussion interesting, because hardly ever, especially on a talk show run by a Republican, does the Conservative “redistribution of wealth” topic get discussed directly, or discussed with so little support.. It’s a Conservative value that’s usually tucked away in the closet, because when you take a close look at it, it is a) an essentially selfish position; and b) if you ran a country strictly by this rule you would end up with an aristocracy which would eventually be obliterated by a starving Third Estate. Or at least I hope it would.

And then I heard it. Don’t know the guy who said it, he wasn’t a regular. He was a young, burgher-faced, well-spoken guy who must have been the Token Conservative on that particular panel.

“You have to remember, this is a Capitalist country…”

There it was: the contention underlying 90% of the political news these days. He went on to mention the wealthy often share their largesse through charity, but  the unspoken message was: you have to cut these wealthy guys some slack; after all, they’re playing by the rules. Capitalists are supposed to make money, that’s what they do. And of course they’ll get rich, and when they do they’ll get powerful, and then do you really think you can tell them what to do with their own money?

That’s the unspoken premise that lurks behind most every discussion of the deficit, tax rates, social entitlements, and budget. Whatever this country does, don’t expect the wealthy to pay for it.

Consider how it might be if there were a different unspoken premise, that this is a democratic country.  What if the prevailing mindset, orientation, core value, behind the news was not commercial and economic, but emerged from and was tied to personal and civil liberties, rights, and responsibilities? What if the government’s role was to protect those things, instead of personal wealth?

I’d like to see that change. I’d like the news outlets stop using “redistribution of wealth”  as a pejorative, and stop taking the unstated position that social entitlements are equivalent to larceny.

So I don’t remember the name of the guy who admitted we’ve stopped being a democracy and have regressed to the point it’s our style of economy that defines us. I don’t think it matters who said it; the important thing is that someone did.

We’ve drifted away from a view of government that supports all people, to a government that is supposed to let the wealthy do what they want, where people deserve to starve if they don’t have a job, and where the Tooth Fairy, I suppose, is supposed to pay for the maintenance of schools and highways.

Republicans are just not very democratic.

I said that.

Some disclaimers: I get all my political news off the Internet and from radio. I don’t sample many different news sources; 80% of what I learn comes from CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, none of which are famously conservative in their skew.

That said, I watch the news a lot and deliberately make allowances for the partisan slant of my sources by not believing everything I hear. Those sources I mentioned above are slanted, but to my mind less so than, for example, Fox News or Huffington Post, both of which slide dangerously toward the Gross Propaganda end of the news reporting continuum.   I make this digression to remind myself and inform others I have no credentials as a political analyst.

But I am a voter, I do have an interest in what’s going on here and abroad, and I do care who runs the country. And one more thing: I do have an interest in how the agents that offer me news process and parse it. I have no illusions a lot of both go on, regardless of the news source. The claim of impartial delivery of objective news is usually a marketing ploy and seldom a fact. I find the reasons why this is so to be both fascinating and cryptic.

I can sort some of it out, though. A lot of it comes down to money. The folks who fund the cable companies and run the news networks are not little blank slates in Armani suits. They are not politically neutral. In ways straightforward and surreptitious they will insert and insinuate their political opinions into the news. They will, because they can. This is straightforward in cases like Rupert Murdoch/Fox and Arianna Huffington/Huffington Post. It is visible, though harder to catch, in a news outlet’s choice of analysts and newsreaders. No matter how loudly a news outlet trumpets fair and balanced, there is always a slant and every ceo looks for talking heads that can do the best job of slippin’ that slant across. If the employee, no matter how celestial his reputation, varies too much from the Party Line, he’s dumped. Like Fox dumped Glen Beck or CNN dumped Lou Dobbs.

Once you’ve got the right analysts and news readers, you are left with presentation. How do you package information so it contains the kind of covert message or meta-language you need to influence your viewers’ political beliefs? Sometimes it’s as simple as interviewing two opposing experts, and making sure the one on your side is the best qualified or has the last word. Sometimes it’s a matter of tuning or fine-tuning language, including body language and inflection,  so more importance or Reality is associated with one political idea than another. When the person presenting the news uses a word like “welfare state,” or “war on terror,” in a natural and matter of fact way, it authorizes and validates that idea; it says, “these words are accurate labels you can count on to understand the world.”

Does this matter? Consider what happened during the last presidency.  News sources at every level began matter of factly reporting that Iraq had, or most likely had, WMDs. There was little or no analysis of  possible political origins of this claim. Listeners and viewers (including most  legislators) were offered this information as if it were credible; therefore, most assumed it was. Did that matter? Turn on any news cast and you can hear certain certain Hispanics described as  “undocumented aliens.” These words impart an antipathetic and prejudicial stain which may overwhelm all other qualities or truths about this ethnic group. Does that matter?

Often manipulating the viewer or listener’s point of view comes down to controlling emotions. In the largest sense, this is what infotainment involves: packaging information so it sparks interest, promotes agreement, and prevents channel change. It also explains much of the Bush II presidency. The Bush/Rove gang relied heavily on the emotion fear to influence voter beliefs. Many of their strategies involved creating enemies and demonizing adversaries (Islamofascist, Axis of Evil, War on Terror). Those strategies, presented routinely and matter of factly by just about every news outlet,  succeeded famously.

One of the strangest examples of manipulating emotions has to do with the style of news delivery seen on a number of cable channels, including Fox and MSNBC. If you’d ask the cable marketing chiefs to describe it, they’d probably say,  “spirited debate.” But that’s a euphemism of  brobdingnagian proportions. It is rather a jabberfest in which participants continuously interrupt and talk over one another. You have to see it to appreciate it. Of the programs I watch regularly, Rachel Maddow is an exception,  and Chris Mathews and Joe Scarborough are exemplary. Joe or Chris collect three or four pundits and present  them with a topic. They start arguing, and each talks over the other. While this is going on, there is a constant stream of interruptions from Joe or Chris, so the overall effect is an entirely incoherent stream of fragmented sentences. I find it disturbing and annoying, not to say damn rude. If I were Mika Brzezinski, Joe’s female foil, I wouldn’t put up with constantly being cut off, ignored, or talked over. I’d pour the dregs of his coffee mug over his inflated Conservative head and walk out. Unless, of course, it was a strategy I was collaborating in. Since one of her books is titled, “Getting What You Want,” I’ll assume that’s what she’s doing on Joe’s Morning Show, just arriving through the back door.

Clearly, there is no political information at all being communicated during these episodes. The fascinating thing is that the ceo’s and marketing chiefs at MSNBC must see some redeeming virtue in this strategy. They must believe that allowing (or requiring) it will make them money or increase their viewership. Do they believe it resonates with an activity viewers are familiar with and enjoy, like the childhood memory of a happy political donnybrook around the supper table involving mom and dad, uncles and cousins? Do they imagine viewers are inhabited by an archetype of fighting or combativeness, maybe originating with the Cro-Magnon need to wrestle survival from a hostile universe, and they therefore are unconsciously compelled to vicariously participate in any aggressive encounter no matter how mindless and stupid? Do they believe everybody’s Irish, and just loves a good fight?

I don’t know; but it’s interesting. Just think about it: every day millions of people tune into local or national news sources imagining they’re going to get information about the world around them. Instead they get the filtered and reconstituted equivalent of a mystery meat with an incomplete label. Moreover,  there is a narrowness to the perspective that is disturbing. It seems to be most representative of Old White Rich American Men,  for whom reality is no more than commerce, the “Market,” and the world of business. Don’t expect much that will enrich your understanding of how Asians think or feel about politics. Or Australians. Or farmers, or the working class, or the poor, or Hispanics here without a visa, or Blacks. All these constituencies are considered to be foreign, and there is no need to try to get inside their lives and accurately represent their views or values.

Actually, it’s worse than this. The Mystery Meat has been injected with a political parasite  whose host is the invisible moneybag who bankrolls the operation. You must frequently scrub of the newscasts with the soap of critical thinking and common sense, or you’ll get infected. You’ll probably get infected anyway. Do you really think you can see through the cunning, and divine the enigmatic intentions, of wealthy CEOs and marketing analysts?

I’m can’t. But I am smart enough to look for the label before I unwrap that baloney sandwich they’re sellin’ on cable news.

This morning, MSNBC.com had a small article titled “Native Americans, given less time to vote for president, sue S.D.” It is the third day they’ve continued running it. Not an article really, just a paragraph and a hyperlink to the original story. I’m impressed anyway. The Washington Post had no article at all, every square millimeter of political space being donated to the meaningless quackery and embarrassing circus otherwise known as the Republican Caucus in Florida. Of course everyone is deeply touched and vitally interested in a bought-and-paid for crapslinging contest in which only a handful of extremist Republicans in a Democratic state participated.

Tearing my eyes away from that spectacle only moments before I wet myself from excitement, I glanced at the article on the Ogallala Sioux’s ongoing scuffle with the state government about fair voting practices. If you’re a decent and fair-minded person don’t read the piece before dinner, because the account of discrimination and ugly behavior by Whites against Native Americans could ruin your appetite.

This larger issue of how Native Americans are getting along in 21st Century America is really quite interesting. Remember the movie The Matrix? Regular people existed within a larger reality from which they were manipulated, and about which they knew nothing. That’s sort of how it is with the Native Americans, except their dimension in the Matrix is often a substandard flat in the city, or a ghetto-Reservation on which they are routinely  oppressed by White landowners and a White state government. Regular people living elsewhere seem to exist in a separate reality in which little or nothing happening to the Native Americans registers. When’s the last time you drove across the Rose Bud Reservation,  stopped for a nice cup of coffee with one of your long-time Indian friends, and chatted about the local White newspaper’s  sensitive review of Reservation housing problems?

OK, maybe that was unfair. It’s not your fault the Press chooses to ignore most  of what’s going on with any of the Native American communities.  And to be fair, they do cover the most notorious incidents, like the occupation of Wounded Knee, or Alcatraz. Or Leonard Pelletier. Or Mohawk iron workers. Stuff that has a little blood or punch attached to it. Every decade or so. Oops, some of those links are not to the White Press at all, they’re Native American accounts–a Google search didn’t turn up any actual newspaper stuff. Probably just Indian propaganda, don’t bother reading it.

Fact is, the White Press does not do a very good job of keeping the public informed of Native American agendas, initiatives, needs, or the chronic problems associated with Reservation life, like alcoholism, TB, high infant mortality, grinding poverty, and discrimination that would send a southern Black ranting to the NAACP or ACLU—non-Indian institutions that probably don’t get much Indian business..

Native Americans, tucked away in their own parallel dimension of Reality, are seldom very effective in getting the attention of White people on their own. I can’t speak for them, but I suspect there are lots of reasons for this. Many of them may simply be weary  of trying, worn out just defending themselves from bigoted politicians and belligerant  cops. Others may be so angry they are unable to find ways to get their grievances across without ending up in jail, or worse. Some may be embarrassed to call attention to personal circumstances they find it hard to be proud of.  Some may just be drunk. Those optimistic, White-savvy, politically-assertive, warriors who still try to make a difference probably do, sometimes. I checked the bills in the South Dakota legislature once and saw several dealing with Indian Affairs.

But I don’t think I’d make a very good Indian in 2012. I’m not real courageous. I don’t like to get beat up. I have a real thin skin, and even little acts of rudeness and discrimination make me feel pretty bad. I don’t want to have a sick kid in a place where good medical attention is lacking, or get stopped by a cop for having snow on my license plate, or get ignored by the waitress in the town café. Even a silly little thing like not having equal voting rights would bother me a lot. Thank God none of that stuff happens in our dimension of the Matrix.

Dear John,

Commenting on my coyote piece, you asked me why I hold my political views.  I can’t answer that without also talking about what I believe.  Here goes (  it looks pretty long to me, but I didn’t use any more words that I needed to say what I felt needed saying.) :

1. Political values are largely determined by family values. How could it be otherwise? George Lakoff made a very strong case for this in his book Moral Politics. He established that Conservatives most often  emerge from families where there is a “strict father” family model. Kids are taught they get ahead through discipline and hard work. Submission to authority is a prerequisite to maturity. As an adult, success comes from personal responsibility, and from assuming control of the family unit as a strong husband and father. A strong husband and father decides what’s best for wife and children, and expects their submission to his judgments. Punishment is the consequence of a failure to submit.

Progressives (nee Liberals) emerge from families with a “nurturant parent” family model.  Every member of the family is expected to care for all members. Communication and social responsibility,  rather than authority or punishment,  are central. As an adult, success comes from pursuing one’s own vision of happiness, but this vision is nurturant—i.e., it recognizes and includes the needs of others.

Kids internalize these family values, commonly without being aware its happening. Later on,  these values have much to do with determining which political viewpoints and values feel right, and which are unacceptable. I think you can extrapolate from even the brief description above how family values and parenting style shape Conservative and Progressive views.

Want  examples of how this works? Look at the Progressive’s view on abortion or social entitlements, and the Conservative’s  view of the military as the stick with which to punish those who don’t comply with our expectations or values.

Don’t buy it? That’s partly my fault, I can’t do justice to Lakoff’s conclusions in a couple paragraphs. Read Moral Politics, and maybe some of his other books, like Don’t Think Of An Elephant. If there’s anything in this assessment that sounds simplistic or superficial, it’s because the vast majority of Lakoff’s evidence and analysis are not covered here.

His analysis explains me. Whatever else my blue-collar, poverty level, family lacked, it wasn’t nurturance. Can’t find yourself in Lakoff’s model? That’s OK, there are exceptions. After all we’re not talking about some psychological dichotomy, we’re looking at statistical distributions of psychological characteristics. Some Conservatives are more nurturing than some Progressives, but the humps of the distributions are distinct, and far enough apart to be significant.

2. Conservatives live in a social order largely composed of “me vs. him;” “us vs. them.” Progressives more commonly incorporate the idea of “us.”  Maybe the biggest divide this causes in political thinking has to do with social entitlements, but it also accounts for the difference in views on the military. It’s a whole lot easier to bomb “them,” than bomb “us.”

At its extreme, this view of things becomes the Me-ism that soils free market capitalism and entrepreneurship: wealth trumps human rights, If I can acquire it by any means, I have a right to it, even if your job, health care, or retirement fund stands in the way.  And before you remind me that there are thousands of CEOs and even some lobbyists and Wall Street traders who don’t think this way, I will remind you that there are plenty who do. More than enough rotten apples to spoil the barrel. It is the Me-ists who presently energize and create the flavor of political Conservatism.

3. I do believe that at its very core, national government is based on the nuclear family. But there are two key models, often in contention with each other. Neither will go away, because both are permanent social institutions which incorporate strong social values held by many voters. They won’t disappear by blending, because their core views are truly in conflict. National politics is seldom a resolution of the conflicts, and often a juggling. Or like trying to get oil and water to mix by adding some compromise soap.

4. In the Media (and thus in the public mind), it is Conservative, not Progressive, metaphors that largely define the game and playing field. If you look at the words and attitudes used by the Media to define and discuss national politics, you have to say that the Conservatives are in charge because we are using their language to define the game and the rules. The single most prominent game plan in American politics is not cooperation, collaboration, compromise, negotiation, or bipartisanship. It is “war.”

In the Media, war  is presented as a natural, justifiable, and unavoidable function of the government.  And the metaphor is used indiscrimately.  We are living through the insanity of the War on Terror, and we have been losing the War on Drugs and War on Crime for decades. Political debate is essentially making war on an adversary, rather than elucidating and promoting ideas. In the end, war becomes more than military action,  it is a filter through which voters learn to view many human activities as adversarial and threatening. This perception is much more supportive of a Conservative world view than a Progressive.

Many voters accept as reality a whole host of Conservative images and metaphors—small government, welfare queen, tort reform,  weak on national defense,  “get your hand out of my wallet,”  “They’re strangling freedom through oppressive government controls, ” etc, etc.  And free market commerce,  the most essential game in  Conservative’s playbook,  has become a metaphor for democracy.

How would things change if political analysis and debate were framed in ideas and metaphors that reflected Progressive views? There would be a lot more discussion about ideas, programs, and policies. Compromise and negotiation would be presented as strengths rather than weaknesses. Social entitlements would be discussed as a right and necessary function of national and state government. Taxes would be recognized as the money you owe the government for the work they do in taking care of all people, the environment, and the country’s infrastructure (You owe in proportion to what you make, and you don’t bitch because some of what you pay goes to the care of others.) Government oversight wouldn’t be something that ruins your opportunity to acquire wealth, it just interferes with your efforts to cheat or make it at others’ expense. The military would be viewed as an essential component of government, but it’s job would not be invasion or occupation, not pre-emptive strikes against political targets, not establishing permanent and oppressive footprints across the globe. The military’s job would be national defense when this country’s security  is genuinely threatened. And it would be intervening on behalf of other countries experiencing oppression or genocide, when they ask, and with the support and collaboration of other governments. And it would be banishing that most heinous figure of speech, loved by generals and presidents throughout the ages: “You have to break some eggs to make that omelet.”

So there is what I believe, and why I believe it, all stirred together. Sort of like an omelet.

This morning the Washington Post ran an article titled, “Republican Establishment  Pulls Together Against Newt Gingrich.” Like the proverbial coyote caught in a trap, the Republican Party must chew off one of its own legs to save itself. Awkward, but necessary. Gingrich is a minefield of known and unknown embarrassments. He is emotionally and morally unsuited to be president, and nobody knows this better than his closest cronies in Washington.

But does that set him apart from the rest of the Republican aspirants? Not an inch. Romney is a shill for Big Business and will soon be brought down by his insensitivity to middle class and working class needs, or sunk by his overseas bank accounts. Paul is a passionate and sincere mad man who would wreck the government in a year. As to Santorum,  who’s going to elect some bozo who walks up and says, “You should elect me president because I’m the best Christian Evangelical!”

The Republican field has become trapped by its own shallow and undemocratic ideology. You can’t run a country by obsessing over cutting taxes, making government smaller, and protecting the rich. You can’t go running around the world singing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran.”  Politicians who take a pledge to categorically vote against any tax increase are effectively quitting their jobs when it comes to problem solving budget issues. Candidates who claim that, if elected, they will further the No-agendas of religious or social minorities (No abortion, no stem cell research, no gay marriage) are stupendously  deficient in their understanding of how a democracy works.

The Republican platform is essentially one of negation and subtraction.  Running a country requires affirmation and addition: affirmation of the needs of those whose health or economic circumstances require reasonable governmental assistance;  addition of programs to keep the country’s infrastructure from doing a bellyflop. That’s what a democratic, as opposed to a plutocratic,  government does.

No matter how loudly they rant, no matter how much money they throw at it, as the true Republican ideology sees the election campaigning light of day, voters become aware of how much it falls short of providing a strong and positive platform for a presidential nominee. The Republican Party of today is not much more than a bunch of self-absorbed fringe groups who are manipulated by a bunch of wealthy ideologues. The Republican Party as it existed 30 years ago is gone.

The Elephant should go, too, and be replaced by a three-legged coyote wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the word “NO!”  What a lapel pin that will make. I’m going to  get one, and wear it to all my cocktail parties….