If you are a fervent supporter of the current administration who wishes to excuse everything that is or isn't being done in D.C. on the futility of the bully pulpit, the burdens of holding a position of authority, the inscrutability of 11-dimensional chess, the vagaries of parliamentary procedure and the indomitable will of Republicans then this diary is not going to be for you. It's just hard to enjoy a diary about the Class War and what to do about it when your main concerns are arguing that it's not that bad, everything practical that can be done is already being done and trying to do more than that endangers Democrats. This diary is for people who:
1) Can tell that The Man behind the curtain is controlling things,
2) Aren't fooled by half-hearted, insulting shell game moves and
3) Resent being economically and politically destroyed, regardless of who's in the White House.
You can't swing a dead mortgage around here without hitting several excellent, well-sourced diaries discussing some aspect of the Class War ("The War"). I call it "The War" for simplicity's sake but also because it is the Big One of our age. All other wars thrive in its fertile soil. The drug war. The war on science. The war on terror. The war on Islam. The war on ACORN. The war on unions. The war on gays. The war on women. The war on judicial appointments. The war on civil rights. The war on international treaties. The war on sensible gun control. The war on Christmas. These and so many more battles all go back to The War and The Man's efforts to increase his own wealth and power, whether that means fomenting homophobia to manipulate rednecks or mainlining on market manipulation. It's all part of The Man's Intelligent Design for winning The War.
Anyone who tells you different is selling something, in denial or ignorant.
We've seen the numbers, viewed the chart-lines, digested the analyses. Those who choose to study here will continue to be well-educated on The War. Recently, some of these diaries and/or comments within them have also been contemplating the efficacy of employing Democratic surrogates to fight The War. After all, it's been a long, long time since they've been anything but the lesser of two destructive evils. Since government is broken, however, I propose an option that doesn't involve choosing or creating parties at all.
Among those of us who appreciate The War for what it is (see assumptions below), and in particular who still believe something can be done and/or in lieu of that still feel something should be attempted, there is much to consider and discuss; not merely the evidence of The War's existence and severity or the needed changes in policies, laws, regulations, regulatory enforcement or even the Constitution, but the operational strategies and tactics to make them happen.
For clarification, here are my ASSUMPTIONS
1) The War has been going on forever and will never end without a singular change in human nature, which we currently have no reason to believe is coming.
2) The War has been significantly abated in the past, including but not limited to the efforts of TR, FDR, MLK and LBJ...
3) The Man never sleeps in his efforts to engage in and capitalize on The War; otherwise he never would have become nor would he remain The Man.
4) The War has been heating up for the past 3-4 decades, burning down the accomplishments of the 20th century piece by piece. In the guise of "Supply-side Economics" and other euphemisms, the War draws life from many sources, including:
a) Tax Policy
b) Disaster Capitalism (including the National Security State/MIC)
c) Private Healthcare
d) Regulatory manipulation
e) Privatization, Consolidation and Globalization
f) The evolution of financial sector mechanisms for generating windfall profits at the expense of unwary investors and taxpayers, under the guise of beneficial "pursuit(s) of free trade", leading to massive collapses and, with increasing frequency, public bail-outs (socialization of risk):
1) Junk Bonds, LBOs, insider trading (Boesky,Milken-Drexel Burnham),
2) Evolution of S&L's from low-risk to high-risk savings managers, exploiting the FDIC (taxpayer funded bank insurance) by gambling deposits on real estate ventures, resulting in widespread collapses and bail-outs (Silverado).
3) Spectacular hedge fund failures leading to bail-outs (BCCI, LTC)
4) Collusion between interest-conflicted stock analysts and investment bankers in the same firms as a result of the repeal of Glass-Steagall (dot there goes the 401k).
5) Complex business structures and accounting methods used to manipulate markets (e.g., Enron)
6) Real estate bubble/swindle perpetrated through Greenspan/Fed market manipulation, subprime mortgages, CDO/credit rating manipulation and bailouts.
7) Credit rating agency corruption.
8) Ever-growing, unregulated ponzi schemes (Rothstein, Madoff, etc.).
9) Derivatives casino
g) Lobbyist/Corporate influence in elections, legislation, regulatory enforcement...
h) SCOTUS control
i) Information, Media Control
j) The Gap itself (see #5)
5) The disparity and concentration of income, wealth, information and influence ("the Gap"), which cripples efforts to achieve goals that are inconsistent with those of The Man, which includes influence over social programs and the wedge issues that The Man manipulates in order to wield influence over elections, governance, business and finance. The Gap is at once the purpose, means and outcome of The War. As Representative Dennis Kucinich said in his recent speech in WI, "economic justice is a pre-condition for political justice". You cannot have the latter without the former.
6) The War is kryptonite to democratic institutions and the progressive movement.
7) The War precludes a robust response to Global Warming.
8) The War ravages public education and inflames social ills tied to want, neglect and ignorance.
9) The War tramples civil rights.
10) The War increases personal debt and reduces savings, discretionary income, job benefits, home equity, retirement security, consumer demand, job opportunities, employee rights and influence, employment, social mobility...
11) The War is already at a level causing not only gross economic injustice but also widespread economic dysfunction. Without demand, supply is irrelevant, which is the inherent flaw in supply-side economics, the pseudo-science special effect disguising The War.
12) The War is accelerating.
13) Because the War is accelerating, The Man is gaining and the rest of population is losing influence over The War itself.
14) We are losing The War, badly.
15) Fighting The War is hard, fighting it to win even harder, losing it worse and fighting and losing it is the worst of all.
Increases in The Gap may seem imperceptible day to day to most of us. Many of us may feel relatively secure, comfortable and content vis-a-vis basic needs, creature comforts, some luxuries, etc., more often than not. Nevertheless, the economic numbers and the political results at every level of government show that our resources are sinking and our influence is drowning. Even if you are a well-connected, well-paid decision-maker, you are assuredly falling behind relative to the Koch brothers and other predatory billionaires. Far behind. And in the paradigm of a raging war, falling behind is not merely an inconvenient, regrettable fact of life. It is a death of a thousand cuts. You become numb to the small increments of pain. Humans are incredibly resilient. We block, we bounce back. But the process is still killing us.
The contemporary progressive movement copes with specific attacks, where they occur, when they occur, to avoid damage. Frequently we are only able to minimize damage. Often even minimal damage is major. But we never say, "everything depends on this, after all." We never unequivocally declare, "we MUST stop it", "we MUST succeed".
Individually, for example, we may say "I MUST kick ass with this important presentation/ project/case/etc." We know what that means in our personal lives. We know how to proceed when we MUST succeed. We know we cannot trust the outcome to meeting "minimum requirements". We know we cannot trust the outcome to plodding and slogging along without a specific vision of success and a methodology specific to assuring it. We know we cannot achieve the outcome if we are not willing to sacrifice personal needs and wants as necessary rather than as is convenient. Not when the results really, really matter. In those cases, we know what to do.
For assured success, we know we must over-estimate, lest we fall short. We start early, taking the first, easy advantage. We become single-minded, obsessed with our progress and our preparedness, lest we miss opportunities. We make personal sacrifices, placing the long-term goal ahead of short-term objectives, no matter how shiny. As we develop mastery from our preparedness, we refuel by visualizing ourselves succeeding. It looks good. It feels good. It was worth the sacrifice. And then, in the fullness of preparedness and confidence, we stick the landing. We stick the landing.
Call it the Powell Doctrine for Personal Success. When we want and need assured success, we attack a task/problem/opportunity with overwhelming force. We can do that for ourselves.
Many of us also have applied and enjoyed the rewards of the Powell Doctrine for Group Success. In business teams, departments, even volunteer organizations.
But the progressive movement in general and on The War in particular hasn't even thought of applying a Powell Doctrine to its efforts. It is not even contemplating assured success. Not even those members who appreciate how truly important a successful outcome is.
The President and his most ardent supporters assume that assured success is undesirable or impossible, that The Man is an ally or an unalterable feature of the system. Only small measures of change, glimpses of hope are either warranted or possible. This is pragmatism. If you listen closely, you hear populism rejected on principle. And to expect and want more action on The War with a sitting Democratic President is heresy, because it contradicts DLC assumptions, embarrasses the President and endangers the Party. It's got all the protective features of one of the most unapproachable, self-replicating, self-fulfilling, self-destructive, irremediable sociopathic memes ever evolved.
As surely as progressives believe there is no future for the middle class in "supply-side" policies, as surely as we doubt the wisdom of DLC election strategies, most of us still believe that the application of some well-tuned, reasonable populism, a substantive dose of fairness and justice and respect for the law and the common good is desirable and would be an effective antidote to much of what ails us. And we believe it is both important and possible, which is why we engage in and support efforts to resist policies that increase The Gap, deepen The War and multiply its consequences.
With all its insight and good intentions and right action, however, what the progressive movement does not do is commit to and pursue broad, assured success.
Now lots of people are organizing, demonstrating, blogging, donating, contributing in-kind, etc., and they're all, every one of them, to be thanked and commended. The folks working tirelessly in WI, for example, are my heroes. (PLEASE REMEMBER I SAID THIS, LEST I BE CRITICIZED FOR NOT APPRECIATING EXISTING EFFORTS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS. I DO.)
While you ponder that, enjoy a brief intermission from my thoughts with this brilliant, inspirational passage from Kucinich's speech:
Let this be called The Madison Declaration, which is that everyone has the right to a job; everyone has the right to an education; everyone has the right to healthcare; everyone has a right to retirement security; everyone has a right to housing; and everyone has a right to peace.
This attack on our workers, this attack in Washington on working people that results in wealth being accelerated to the top, that results in tax cuts going to the rich, that results in energy policy turned over to the oil companies, that results in defense policy turned over to the arms manufacturers, that results in endless war, that results in a national security state, it's all a part of the same thing, and it's up to us to fight back, fight back, fight back, fight back! Fight back! Fight back! Fight Back! ...
And after all, isn't (privatization) what this is all about? Corporations want to steal what they feel is theirs to begin with. They don't believe in such a thing as government of the people. What they believe in is government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.
That might work in Wall Street, but it's not going to work in Wisconsin! And it's not going to work in Ohio! And it's not going to work in Michigan!
We will demonstrate to Wall Street, we will demonstrate to the corporations that we have the ability to push back, that we will stand up, that we will speak out, that we will march, that we will fight, that we will picket, we will sit down, we fight back. We will fight back! WE WILL FIGHT BACK!!
Let me start by saying, "WOW. Just WOW."
Then, "What if this were Obama...?"
(sigh)
And then I think, "but will we? Will we 'push, stand, speak, march, fight, picket, sit, fight, FIGHT, FIGHT!'?"
(I would add "boycott".)
Or, more specifically, will we pursue assured success when we engage in these activities?
Are we in it to win it?
Like that huge public speaking engagement or presentation to the Board of Directors, success is vital. Only several orders of magnitude more so. The other important matters in our life, with few exceptions, are imposters, transient annoyances and worries compared to not only preventing the present and future effects of The War, but also reversing past effects. Not just for economic justice, but for improving the economy: creating discretionary income, creating demand, creating jobs, improving wages, stemming foreclosures, reducing homelessness, for starters. These would be good, quantifiable measures of "assured success." Then, and only then, we can fix the apparatus of political democracy. And at that point, having re-established the purpose of government, solutions to all the other progressive causes become reachable to We the People.
It may be harder to act on The War than all those other things that prevent us from finishing anything uninterrupted. Personal crises can fully pre-occupy us. Personal security and comfort make us complacent. Our efforts to experience and enjoy life and indulge in escape in spite of it all divert us. As one kossack once wrote, "people just want to go home, enjoy dinner, spend time with their families and relax". And they should want to. Not only is it a perfectly reasonable expectation, it is healthy for individuals, spouses, children, families and communities to do so.
We aren't facing, like John Connor, a landscape fraught with imminent physical injury and death at the hands of machines. But it's not called The War for nothing. And, without the Powell Doctrine, the sum of our actions and inactions is a full retreat in The War, which has equally imminent and dire economic and political consequences, however abstract they may seem, especially when it's not our job, house, bank account, etc., yet...
Under siege as we are, targeted by powerful, unrelenting forces, is it responsible to treat The War as a second or third or even lower priority, when all the "higher" level priorities depend on the outcome? Personally, I wonder. When I re-read my assumptions about The Gap and The War, I doubt it. I can't help but say to myself "after all, doesn't everything depend on this?" Perhaps expecting, demanding a "normal life" in these circumstances is the pony. Maybe it's impossible to win The War and have normal lives. Maybe all of the advances in labor and civil rights were made by people who understood this? Maybe the problem of our age is not just The Man but the fact we aren't willing to fight back, as previous generations did.
The Cycle of Nations, after all, applies to both rulers and subjects:
"From bondage to spiritual faith.
From spiritual faith to great courage.
From courage to liberty.
From liberty to abundance.
From abundance to selfishness.
From selfishness to complacency.
From complacency to apathy.
From apathy to dependency.
From dependency back again into bondage."
--Sir Alex Fraser Tyler, A Scottish jurist and historian
Regardless of what our personal situations may seem, The War is an iceberg of hurt grinding the life out of us, individually and collectively, and everything we hold dear. Whether the pain has found us or not, whether we identify it or not in our lives or others', in the news and charts and diagrams, whether we understand and feel it or not, the iceberg is there. Crushing us. The comfort and safety of a deck chair bolted to the most strategic location on the ship is illusory. We are not comfortable. We are not safe. Everything is at risk. "Doing our best" to avoid the iceberg in between TV episodes, soccer games, martinis and vacations is probably inappropriate. For economic and political democracy, for any chance of influencing anything of importance in the immediate or foreseeable future, for ourselves and for everyone else, from our loved ones to strangers in the third world, boarding lifeboats and assuring success now really is do or die. And we can't do that if we aren't focused and determined.
Is there a critical mass among us which recognizes this moment and accepts the challenge? It all comes down to this.
Assuming for the moment there is, how do we proceed? How do we apply the Powell Doctrine to The War? What would present an overwhelming, irresistible force to achieve assured success against the seemingly immovable object of the opposition, the vested interests, the financial elites, the ruling class, The Man?
On the heels of actions in the Great Lakes, many people are rallying around organizing locally for local change. This activity goes without saying. Local grassroots are essential for elections as well as local actions on local and national concerns and of course we only enhance the movement by continued development. If nothing else, these efforts will help re-build some of what has been lost in these organizations from dissatisfaction with Democrats since 2008.
The caveat I raise with local action is that, when the opposition is The Man, which at some level it is usually is, we allow Him to divide and conquer us if we only engage Him with smaller, local efforts. We need to recognize the limits of acting locally, especially in red zones, and especially on national problems. We may "fix" problems in isolated places but, as with the proverbial dam, there will always be leaks springing and flowing elsewhere, even in blue and purple states, and pretty much forever in red states.
One kossack recently argued that the union battles are "state-centric" problems that shouldn't necessarily involve "national Democrats" from D.C., i.e., Obama. With or without the public presence of David Koch as prima facie evidence, I completely disagreed with this comment, as many did. These union battles are a national issue, a fundamental battle in The War, and if we don't engage them collectively we assuredly will be divided and conquered. The fact that we can't rely on national Democrats who were elected to do their jobs in moments like these is discouraging, but we have to move past it: elections aren't everything. Broken as the system is, elections are a very small part of any solution for assured success.
United we stand, divided we fall. It's trite but it's true. And, in The War, it's everything.
The WI story and the inclination of some to characterize it as a local problem or, even more narrowly, a union problem, reminds me of a similar phenomenon. Here in the Intermountain West, there are many, many little conservative mining towns that have been afflicted by soil and water contamination so bad it seriously sickens and even kills people. Invariably, these communities engage in long-term denial, always failing to acknowledge and address the problem until virtually or literally every damn family has at least one affected member. I used to think this persistent lack of empathic, anticipatory appreciation for a problem was exclusively conservative. An ideological blind spot. From reading the reactions of some kossacks to events and trends in The War over the past couple of years, I've come to realize it is not. One more challenge.
This is why it's critical to remember and remind at every turn that the national crisis is comprised of multitudes of personal tragedies, and vice versa: the personal and local struggles combine for a national crisis. Also remember that what goes around comes around. Consider the recent Republican administration layoff-purge in California, which led, in one case, to suicide. For every suicide there are thousands who are deeply injured, even "murdered", by financial devastation. There are countless stories of people losing businesses and careers and jobs and unemployment income and healthcare benefits and homes and spouses and children and, yes, even their lives, as a result of The War. These people all too quickly become invisible. Some of us, probably most of us, perhaps all of us, know people who have been affected. Diaries show that many among us have been hit. And without question many, many people are suffering in absolute silence. It seems to me that we owe it to the people who have been hurt, the people who remain in harm's way and ourselves not just to try to do something about it, as we have done and are doing, but to develop and execute a strategy for assured success.
Many of us engage in writing letters and signing petitions to representatives and newspaper editors. While these efforts should not be abandoned, if only to keep the habit on hand for the day a functioning democracy is revived, just considering our communications to the White House and OFA, presumably receptive ears, it seems clear to me that we are too easily ignored in this approach, even by our own side.
Someone once said--and I have searched extensively and in vain for some time to find the source and the exact words, which is all the more vexing because it literally haunts me--something to this effect: the masses have such an overwhelming advantage in their numbers; it is a strange wonder that they so rarely use it.
It is especially baffling when we can't afford to lose. And OF COURSE we can't.
The loss of union strength as but one consequence of losing in the near term not only has direct human casualties but also diminishes the influence of strength in numbers itself. After all, collective bargaining IS strength in numbers. And let's not forget the other target: union contributions to Democrats. Some Republicans have said that this is their main objective. Kill ACORN, kill the unions, win more elections. (And win the Class War.) Say whatever else we want, it will work.
Getting together to demonstrate en masse in D.C. has the advantage of optimizing the leverage we have in strength in numbers. When we unite in one place, we stand together in the greatest numbers. We show ourselves at least the size of our community, the broad sweep of our concern, our unity and commitment to stand and be counted. And that's encouraging and inspiring, which shouldn't be underestimated. But it is an enormous undertaking on both individual and group levels. Perhaps most importantly, the corporate media has become resolute and absolute in its ability to airbrush these events out of existence. The result is that unless and until The Man's monopoly on the MSM is broken, large D.C. protests will eat tons of resources and produce limited results.
Some say the only thing that the ruling class will respond to is an armed revolt. This is not a sanctioned topic on DKos, and appropriately so. Even beyond moral objections, I for one do not believe it passes muster on close examination, anyway.
When assured success is on the line, the only question to answer first is: what solution will produce an overwhelming, irresistible force? Not: is it feasible, but: will it work? This is a hard concept to keep in mind. With a long history of under-achievement, clearly we need to think outside the box of past approaches. I've spent a lot of time at this and I've really only been able to come up with one strategy. I've tried to come up with others, because this solution IS really difficult and IS mind-numbingly daunting. But I think it's pretty clear it would work, it would produce assured success, while other solutions haven't and don't appear that they will. Not if we are talking about assured national success on abating The War.
And that's why I believe it is essential that this strategy should be discussed first and solely on the basis of its foreseeable efficacy. Then and only then, if it seems worthwhile, should we bother to discuss implementation, logistics and feasibility.
The only strategy for assured success that I have been able to imagine rests on this hypothesis: some large number of people gathered for some lengthy, indefinite duration of time will deliver substantial results, results that will satisfy previously set measures of assured success for abating The War.
A couple of assumptions underlying this hypothesis are:
1) An umbrella organization can be identified or created to liaise with existing organizations to plan, prepare and execute all facets of this effort for assured success. Glue it together with like-minded, committed opinion leaders. Avoid message hi-jacking by underscoring at every turn the value of this mission for all progressive causes.
2) This strategy does not require anyone to stay in D.C. the entire time. Duh. It does mean that some people will need to be there most of the time. And it likely means that many people will need to go there multiple times, if not frequently. Most people would likely only make it once, but could also participate in other ways.
Additional objectives, features and tactics:
1) Create a substantial, continuous presence ("encampment") in D.C.
2) Hold massive demonstrations in D.C. on the weekends
3) Develop and maintain substantial, publicly visible representation of the movement throughout the country.
4) Create a compelling message.
5) Recruit spokespeople.
6) Develop a massive media and public relations effort to overwhelm and/or flank the MSM, The War's partisans for The Man.
7) Create a set of legislative objectives.
8) Develop a lobbying function.
9) Employ technology to optimize our efforts and magnify our presence.
10) Maintain the will to continue growing, organizing and lobbying until the objectives are met and desired, measurable results are achieved
To give the idea a little more dimensionality, I am thinking
1) The "encampment" would grow from a few thousand to many tens of thousands, perhaps up to 150,000. In a city of 675,000, this number would be noticeable throughout the day.
2) The" encampers" would wear bracelets, buttons, armbands, hats, t-shirts, etc. to maintain a day-to-day presence all around D.C. They would develop relationships, expand their ranks from the local community and gather from time to time in small and large demonstrations. As with weekend mass demonstrators, encampers would be coming and going.
3) The encampers would be joined by the demonstrators on the weekends, when hopefully the crowds would grow to hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
I sketch out some of these specifics purely to help create a vision and understanding of the strategy. The actual operational specifics, as I've mentioned, can be hammered out in subsequent diaries, if we go there. I've already given them quite a lot of thought, and I have a background as an operations' executive, so I'm not approaching this blue sky as a complete novice...
I have tried but I can think of no alternative strategy for achieving assured success. And I do believe that if it were executed it would succeed. I also believe the timing is good in terms of current events, the national mood and the timeframe preceding the 2012 elections.
The War is not optional. We are in it. The only discretion we have is whether or not we choose to "fight back", as Rep. Kucinich insists we will do. To that I would add the choice to use the Powell Doctrine, the conscious intent and will to fight for assured success.
In conclusion, until we abate The War and achieve some degree of economic and political parity, it doesn't really matter whether or not we continue to support Democrats or develop a Third Party. Sure, Republicans are worse. And they'll over-reach and we'll get some Democrats. And they'll play Republican and accomplish little and we'll get Republicans. It will go back and forth indefinitely and produce the same result over and over: we lose The War. But the electoral system as with the governing system is broken by The Man's design. We can't really use elections to address The War. A perfect assembly of surrogates is not in the cards. We can only "fight back" against the politicians we have. We present them with an overwhelming, irresistible force. We neutralize or overwhelm the captive corporate media. We confront The Man with direct action when he attempts to trump our efforts. Instead of reacting, we act. Instead of The Man's rulebook, we set our own rules. We change the system. We put in place safeguards, canaries and watch-dogs. We resume electoral politics. We maintain direct action. And we watch for the next Takeover.