A couple of days ago, I put up that quote from Saul Alinksy regarding his warning, in 1972, that the middle class of this country would be driven to conservatism. Go to any conservative rally today and you will hear from Beck, Limbaugh etc.. screaming about "taking our country back." Alinsky saw this perfectly when he saw quite clearly that the white middle class was living in frustration and despair, worried about their future, and ripe for a turn to radical social change, to become politically-active citizens. This is exactly what has happened since the election of Barack Obama and quite ironic considering that Alinksy is now required reading for FreedomWorks people.
This is also why Sarah Palin is doing as well she is right now.
Arianna Huffington has a wonderful piece called Sarah Palin, Mama Grizzlies, Carl Jung, and the Power of Archetypes. In it, she details the appeal of Sarah Palin and why she is so effective.
We are awash in crises right now -- crises that require smart and creative policy fixes. So why is somebody who so rarely deals in policy fixes so popular? It's because Palin's message operates on a level deeper than policy statements about the economy or financial reform or health care or the war in Afghanistan.
Clearly, this is true. Look at her supporters.
It's not Palin's positions people respond to -- it's her use of symbols. Mama grizzlies rearing up to protect their young? That's straight out of Jung's "collective unconscious" -- the term Jung used to describe the part of the unconscious mind that, unlike the personal unconscious, is shared by all human beings, made up of archetypes, or, in Jung's words, "universal images that have existed since the remotest times." Unlike personal experiences, these archetypes are inherited, not acquired. They are "inborn forms... of perception and apprehension," the "deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity."
Alinksy spoke of this archetype as well and not only correctly predicted the coming of Ronald Reagan but the shift of large swaths of the the middle class to conservatism. In fact, Palin's use of the grizzly bear is not unlike Reagan's use of it in the 1984 campaign when he alluded to a frightened Walter Mondale not standing up to bear known as the Soviet Union.
I've heard many people say that voters in this country have now "seen the light," are becoming more conservative, and will take their country back. With the advent of the Tea Party, they are convinced that voters have now adopted their ideology and will send many packing come November 2nd. I contend that it's more that the movement's leaders (Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Gingrich) know very well how to use symbols to tap into the collective unconscious and manipulate those inborn forms of perception and apprehension. How can they do this?
Alinsky...
The middle class actually feels more defeated and lost today on a wide range of issues than the poor do. And this creates a situation that's supercharged with both opportunity and danger. There's a second revolution seething beneath the surface of middle-class America -- the revolution of a bewildered, frightened and as-yet-inarticulate group of desperate people groping for alternatives -- for hope.
Their fears and their frustrations over their impotence can turn into political paranoia and demonize them, driving them to the right, making them ripe for the plucking by some guy on horseback promising a return to the vanished verities of yesterday. The right would give them scapegoats for their misery -- blacks, hippies, Communists -- and if it wins, this country will become the first totalitarian state with a national anthem celebrating "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
Sadly, he died in the same year that he gave this interview and his stated goal, which follows, was never realized.
But we're not going to abandon the field to them without a long, hard fight -- a fight I think we're going to win. Because we'll show the middle class their real enemies: the corporate power elite that runs and ruins the country -- the true beneficiaries of Nixon's so-called economic reforms.
Never in a million years would Alinksy imagine how fulfilled his prophecy would be regarding corporate power and how it became a stark reality with the 2007-2008 economic crisis. It's not that people are shifting to conservatism, it's that they are frustrated by their economic situation which was brought on largely by this corporate power elite.
But they don't see this because the people that stand to benefit the most from maintaining this power are extremely adept at channeling Jung and swaying them, as Alinsky predicted, to their views. In essence, they are supporting the people who fucked them over in the first place. How ironic it will be when they see that most, if not all, of the "taking this God Damned country back" will, more than likely, result in their situations becoming worse.
And the Democrats, whose policies aren't perfect but at least they are attempting to steer things back in the right direction, are completely terrible at using images and archetypes.
Maybe it's because they are too busy trying solutions that have practical application in reality.
9 comments:
The genius of the right is how they are able to convert middle-class aspirations for personal freedom to giving total autonomy to corporate behemoths to run roughshod over the rest of us.
How many times do we have to see Wall Street screw us over like they did in 1929 and 2008 before we learn that corporations are not people and can't be given the same degree of liberty? How many people have to die of salmonella and E. coli from corporate egg farms and slaughterhouses? How many miles of beach will companies like BP despoil before we learn? (Yet another oil rig blew up in the Gulf the other day.)
Regular guys seem to think that corporate CEOs are like Bill Gates: self-made men who deserve to keep the fruits of their own labor. But this is almost never the case. CEOs are hired guns, number-crunchers who play it safe and use other people's money to get what they want, usually fat paychecks. They sit on each other's boards of directors and give themselves bigger and bigger salaries, all the while becoming less and less competent, hiring fewer American workers, forcing ever-greater productivity out of the ones they do hire, and always, always, always finding more ways to send production to China and India. And it's not just menial jobs they're sending away: it's high-paying tech, legal and medical jobs these days.
I have a software engineer friend who worked at an IC design company. He went to China to train the Chinese how to do his job a couple of years ago. Now he's been fired and all the design work has been sent to China. Almost 10 years ago the company I was working for was bought out by a British company, who insisted that Indian software contractors be hired, and all Americans be fired. High-paying legal research and medical imaging interpretation jobs are going abroad.
CEOs are selling this country out. The right complains about the government, but it's the CEOs who are literally selling the heart, mind and soul of this country to foreigners. It's no accident that it was foreign companies like Toyota and BP that have time and time again blown off safety concerns on US soil in favor of profits.
It's time the Tea Partiers follow Glenn Beck's advice and follow the money. Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers are financing the Tea Party, and they don't give a whit about regular Joes. Just you wait: if the Republicans regain control of the Congress there'll be an immigration reform bill with a guest worker program that will put even more downward pressure on American wages: it's what the corporations are paying for, and they always get what they pay for.
>Maybe it's because they are too busy trying solutions that have practical application in reality.
It must be frustrating to see that your preferred solutions fail dismally in the real world, as we are currently seeing. It might even make a reflective person consider whether their conception of the "right direction" is flawed in any way, but then again, we know you aren't such a person, so you won't have to confront that problem.
Define "fail dismally" Haplo. Read blk's comments above and explain why you are supporting people like this. Great post, Mark. How many more times, indeed, blk.
How many times do we have to see Wall Street screw us over like they did in 1929 and 2008 before we learn that corporations are not people and can't be given the same degree of liberty?
The genesis of the wall street mess, simplified, is:
1. Home buyers got greedy and did not do their homework, but they all wanted to buy.
2. Mortgage marketers got greedy and did not do their homework, but they all wanted to sell to those eager buyers.
3. Wall street brokers got greedy and did not do their homework, but they all wanted to buy. Likewise, they all wanted to sell to eager investors, who likewise got greedy and failed to do their homework.
4. The SEC was too busy watching porn on the job to actually do their jobs.
So what are you saying here? Caveat Emptor should not apply? If someone commits suicide with a screwdriver, is it the fault of the screwdriver manufacturer?
Note that the only people in the above chain who actually failed to do their jobs (rather than just doing them stupidly) was the SEC. But they're about the only ones not being punished, huh?
...corporations are not people and can't be given the same degree of liberty?
Does this apply to corporations like the SEIU? Corporations like ACORN? Corporations like the Nation of Islam?
Silly me, of course not. The people behind those corporations are people, the people behind the corporations you dislike are only 6/10 people or something.
They sit on each other's boards of directors and give themselves bigger and bigger salaries, all the while becoming less and less competent, hiring fewer American workers, forcing ever-greater productivity out of the ones they do hire, and always, always, always finding more ways to send production to China and India.
Wow, sounds like 'nationalistic chest-thumping'...
Becoming less and less competent? Care to back that statement up?
Why is "forcing ever-greater productivity" a bad thing?
The reason companies outsource jobs is so they don't have to meet the government's minimums here. Wages and benefits tied to minimum wage laws, working conditions ruled by OSHA, more regulatory paperwork that time must be spent on, etc. Unless you consistently refuse to buy things at cheaper prices, and always go for something more expensive because it's more expensive, why do you expect anyone else to? Now assuming that you (like me) don't wish to increase the number of American workers dying on the job, that only leaves a few choices: Allow people to work for lower wages, decrease the weight of regulations that have to be complied with (and checked for compliance), "force greater productivity" than they can get elsewhere, or watch jobs leave.
Making sure that both the cost of American labor and the regulatory burden a business operating in the US faces rise is a Democrat Party hobbyhorse, is it not?
Just you wait: if the Republicans regain control of the Congress there'll be an immigration reform bill with a guest worker program that will put even more downward pressure on American wages: it's what the corporations are paying for, and they always get what they pay for.
And the Democrats' "immigration reform" would fix that how?
Regular guys seem to think that corporate CEOs are like Bill Gates: self-made men who deserve to keep the fruits of their own labor.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't a huge slice of Microsoft's profit from about 1990 to about 2000 come from using two factors as leverage in the marketplace: 1) The ignorance the average customer had of precisely what he was buying (twofold, as Microsoft primarily sells OS software, so sales benefit from ignorance not only of OS's but of the computers the OS's run), and 2) a scarcity of other choices in products to accomplish the same task?
How is that different from what mortgage brokers and Wall Street speculators did?
"I've heard many people say that voters in this country have now "seen the light," are becoming more conservative, and will take their country back. .... they are convinced that voters have now adopted their ideology and will send many packing come November 2nd."
Substitute the word Liberal for Conservative and that's what you said 2 years ago.
Democrats don't have immigration reform. All they do is rip apart others plans without passing something of their own.
The shift of large swaths of the the middle class to conservatism, as you said, also has something to do with the bitter experience with the alternative to conservatism we experienced with Jimmy Carter and are experiencing again today.
Why is it so strange to read the writings of your opponent? I think it's wise to know what's in his head. If you know and understand his belief system, it's easier to defeat him.
Are you reading www.the blaze.com yet?
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