Many years ago I had taken a cab from the New Orleans airport to the French Quarter. I had a time share and went every year for Halloween. Very fun. So I had had a few drinks on the plane and found myself chatting it up with the cab driver. I asked him about the horse and carriage rides, if he saw them as competition. He proceeded to tell me a story that I would never forget.
As an environmental activist, I had become interested in the topic of how changes occur in society. Specifically, how does change occur and how do we make it happen? I spent a great deal of time in the library researching great societal changes in history, from the fall of Rome to the Progressive era and the New Deal. But in all my research, I never imagined that I would get the most useful insight from a cab driver in New Orleans.
"The carriages used to be competition", he told me, "but no more. Not since they passed all those laws protecting the horses." This had apparently driven a lot of the carriage owners out of business.
Now I was interested. "When did that happen", I asked. I never rode the carriages so I hadn't noticed.
"A few years ago", he told me. "A horse died in the middle of Bourbon St. and all of a sudden, all these laws that had failed to pass over the years miraculously went through in about three weeks." He went on to explain, "You had all these groups, humane society types, who had been complaining about the cruel treatment of the horses for years. They tried to pass these laws but they would never quite go through, until that horse died."
"Wow", I said. "What made everyone suddenly care about a dead horse?"
"The newspaper", he replied. "A news photographer happened to be there. He took a picture of the dead horse laying in the middle of Bourbon St. and they put it on the Sunday front page."
This was an epiphany. So change happens when people are shocked into it by an event. And history bears this out. Most of the reforms in Washington have been the direct result of some shocking event, a scandal, a crisis, etc. The formation of this country, and the preceding revolution that made it possible, were direct reactions to a series of shocking events - most notably the colonies' economic collapse after the British Parliament outlawed their fiat currency, colonial script, and forced them on the gold standard. According to Benjamin Franklin, this was the real underlying cause of the American revolution.
Many years later, I would read a book by Naomi Klein that exposes the fact that the Corporatist movement has been aware of this shock effect for decades and has used it repeatedly to conquer new frontiers. In fact, the spread of globalization and their radical free market ideals would not have been possible without shock.
But we have a shock treatment of our own, right here on Daily Kos. Every time you post a diary that exposes some new outrage, some new atrocity, it is the equivalent of putting a picture of that dead horse on the front page of a newspaper. It may not reach as many people or cause such a dramatic response. But it works.
Quite frequently I run across a new Daily Kos member who, it is clear, has not gone through the Daily Kos shock treatment. They weren't here for the raging debates over the countless Democratic appeasements of the Bush administration, the bills that were allowed to pass like the Military Commissions Act, bankruptcy reform, and Medicare reform, or the countless revelations posted here about how Washington really works, or the countless times the corporate media has been busted passing off lies and propaganda as fact.
We have been educated by our fellow Daily Kos members and, to some extent, radicalized - in the sense that being part of the minority of Americans who actually know wtf is really going on makes one a radical.
I sometimes get frustrated by these new users, a lot of whom just signed on to support Barack Obama. Many still have their world views shaped by what they see on television. To them, Bill Clinton was a good Democratic president, you can believe much of what you hear and see on CNN, and the real fight in this country is between bad Republicans and good Democrats despite the fact that the real power in Washington is trans-partisan and the real fight is between the Corporatists of both parties, and us.
But I know it is just a matter of time before these new members come around. They will change just as we have changed. And that is the true power of this place. One can only endure the sight of all these dead horses for so long before wanting to do something about it.