And fourth, the essential strategy is to begin to win against the Bushites, thus shifting power from them to us. As the regime becomes discredited and weakened, then other issues that were unwinnable before start to become winnable. So what is needed is not to forget about the other issues but to find the optimal sequence of battles so that each victory sets the stage for the next.
That is the strategy I proposed to this group.
Immediately, I was attacked. By saying that we need to defer addressing some issues --in order to save the system that allows us to fight our battles in the political arena at all""I was allegedly "disrespecting" the great struggles of the oppressed. What about the plight of migrant laborers? What about the rights of gays and lesbians?
But still they insisted that we must hoist the banners of all their dear causes.
I asked them how, with their approach, they saw us defeating the Bushites.
Did they disagree with me that --in order to prevail over the Bushites-- we need to rally the mainstream of the public to our side? Or did they have some reason for believing that these causes they were faulting me for deferring provided a basis on which we could rally such a majority? Could they find a single instance in the past decade or more in which one of their favorite causes -or indeed any issue that registers on the liberal-vs-conservative spectrum""had worked to the political advantage of the liberal side?
They really had no reply. But more fundamentally, it seemed they saw my questions as entirely beside the point. They evidently were not really concerned with defeating the Bushites. They were not interested in the question of what strategy might work to give us victory. It seemed to be much more important to them to strike a noble pose, to carry aloft the worthy banners, regardless whether or not their approach guaranteed their political defeat.
There might be a better strategy than mine, but they were not putting forward a different strategic argument. Indeed, they seemed uninterested in thinking strategically at all.
"Who cares about winning?" the attitude seemed to be. What matters is to stand tall, even in defeat, even as the world goes straight to hell because it is the forces of darkness that have won.
Sometimes It's Important to Win
In the mainstream American culture, to be sure, the value placed on winning is excessive. Vince Lombardi's famous dictum that "Winning isn't the most important thing; it's the only thing." is arguably a warped way of looking even at football, much less at life in general.
Nonetheless, sometimes it really is important to win. Throughout human history, the outcome of certain important battles has determined the course of whole societies, for better and for worse.
We Americans are now at such a juncture in our own history. Our future may well hinge on whether or not we can now defeat these Bushites.
If we succeed, the American people may have some sovereign say over their own destiny. If we fail, we may yet become yet another of the many peoples in history who have been coerced and manipulated onto a course regarding which we have no meaningful say whatever. And if the lights of democracy do go out in America, there is no way of knowing just when they might ever get relit.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
