I just read a piece at David Neiwert's blog in which he outlined 5 lies Republicans tell about immigration, and then shot each one down, using all kinds of facts, and other, you know, true, reality based stuff that a lot of people just don't find convincing.
And I read it, and I thought, "He's wasting his time doing this. I already know these are lies, and so does everybody else who reads his blog. But the people who buy into these lies won't believe "facts" or "proof" that shoot down their beliefs.
Now that isn't to say he's really wasting his time. We need reporters who write things that are actually true. It is to say, though, that what he's doing isn't enough. Even though everything he wrote is true, and demonstrably so, that's only the beginning of changing people's minds.
Most people, sad to say, don't think with their heads; as Stephen Colbert would say, they think with their guts. If something seems right, there are a lot of people who will never change their minds, no matter how much proof you heap before them that says it's wrong. And vice versa.
Look back to 2002: Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden's attack on the U.S. It was obvious. One was a secular dictator, the other a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist. They didn't believe the same things; they hated each other and saw each other as threats. But to a lot of people, Saddam Hussein and bin Laden were just 2 Arabs and they were both bad guys, so it just made sense that they were working together.
What the Republicans have gotten so good at over the last 30 years or so is spinning yarns, stories that prove a point; they're almost like parables, in a way. It doesn't matter that the "facts" are lies, and the premise they're trotted out to bolster are lies, too, because they're good parables: they're short, anyone can remember them and tell others about them, and they buttress the premises effectively.
Remember Ronald Reagan's made up "welfare queen" who was drawing welfare under something like 25 names and drove a cadillac? Sure, it was a lie. But that didn't matter, since so many people lapped it up. I was too young to really remember it, but it was a good enough parable that I know about it today, 25 years after he told it.
How about 2000? The Republicans tarted up their pathetic excuse for a presidential candidate by talking about him as a truth telling, tough talking, all around great guy whom any normal person would want to go have a beer with. And Gore got tarred as the know-it-all serial liar who took credit for things others had done. None of it was true, but it didn't matter, since, again, it was simple, easy to remember and easy to recite. They did more or less the same thing to Kerry in 2004, changing the specifics (he was a cowardly, elitist snob who'd let us all get killed by terrorists).
What we, Democrats & liberals, have to learn to do is to tell effective parables. It seems to me that it should be great for us: our premises are valid, and the "facts" we would be using to uphold the premises would, unlike Republican "facts", be true.
I don't know what the best way is to go about it, but we have to begin to fight the Republicans with parables, as well as with facts and proof and other reality based stuff. So I thought I'd throw out my musings here. It seems there are enough of us here that some of us at least should have a knack for coming up with pithy, memorable, and above all true parables that any Democrat running for office could trot out to counter all the meanspirited parables that Republicans spew in debates or on talk shows.
Too often the Republican tells his little untrue tale and the Democrat tries to debunk it, using logic and facts that can make the listeners' eyes glaze over. It can seem nitpicky or irrelevent. And it can make the Democrat seem effete, clinical, cold and out of touch. One of the reasons
I like John Edwards so much is that as a trial lawyer, he had to be able to tell juries a story they could care about. Sure, facts are vital in court cases; but people need a narrative, a story, a parable, to hang the facts onto.
What should the Democrats' parables be this election year?