Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee: a political ecology of change

These are not alien values to most people. If you asked people you know about running our society along the lines of these principles, the most common response would probably be that it would be nice if it were possible but it's just not realistic. In other words if we were to organize explicitly around such a core vision statement we could expect opposition from two sectors: those with a vested interest in defeating these values and those who wish they could embrace them but don't believe it is possible. That is not a bad starting position in an ideological struggle.

Let's bring this back to the perceptioneers, the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs and others who provide the intellectual soundtrack for the right wing movements. A major part of their effort is devoted to protecting their followers against contagion by such values. More specifically, they want to make it clear that only a deserving few are worthy of such respectful treatment. Outside that small circle of wagons is a big world of jealous, hostile enemies whose very souls cry out to destroy us. A big part of the perceptioneer's job is to define and police those borders, continually explaining why Muslims, immigrants, dark people and GLBT folk are a threat to all that is civilized and decent. It is worth noting that they are actively engaged in keeping their own base from drifting toward values that no voice in the public square is even advocating for. Can anybody say "vulnerability"?

When an animal senses danger, its "fight or flight" response is triggered. Its heart rate and blood pressure rise, blood rushes to its motor muscles and bodily systems not relevant to crisis management--digestion, energy storage, reproduction, normal immune function and construction of bone and tissue--shut down or go into low gear. It's a good emergency reflex but comes with a cost if left activated too long. The right wing sound machine is a perpetual panic generator, continually stimulating the fight or flight response in their followers. Fear makes every shadow into a potential enemy and makes people easier to manipulate. It also meshes with a carefully cultivated narrative of white victimhood in which US history is remembered as a series of unprovoked ambushes by ruthless enemies. In this sanitized narrative, all that remains of the genocidal conquest of the continent is Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn. The annexation of Texas becomes the siege of the Alamo. The seizure of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines is the sinking of the battleship Maine. Pearl Harbor summarizes the war in the Pacific and the war against Viet Nam is about MIA/POWs. The struggle for racial equality is merely a backdrop for "reverse discrimination." The attacks of 9/11 are just the latest evidence that our bright city on the hill is under perpetual siege"

This sense of victimhood is put to work by the perceptioneers in the interests of capital. Restrictions on tobacco sales, pollution limits, assertion of worker's rights, regulation of food additives, social services for the poor and, in fact, any limits on corporate power, are proclaimed to be assaults on personal liberty. Little 9/11s.

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