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Chaunce's
Garden;
Progressives
Must Stop Tilling The Field with Spoons
Rob Kall OpEdNews.com
June 29, 2003
Progressives have been
tilling the field with spoons, while right wingers are using giant
combines. It's no wonder that the progressives are so far behind the right
wingers. It's this nice cozy urban neighborhood garden patch feeling that
we get, and that the big progressive foundations must be mal-adaptively
accustomed to. But if you are trying to feed the world, not just with
food, but with justice, fairness, protection of the commons and restraint
of greedy, corrupt people and corporations, cozy doesn't cut it. Nice
feelings are not acceptable criteria.
The garden metaphor that
Jerzy Kozinski worked so well into his classic book-turned-movie, BEING
THERE, seems to adapt well to describe the difference between the way
Progressives and right wingers are dealing with the Policy Garden. Neocons
have been using think tanks for over 20 years to push, promulgate,
insinuate, adjudicate, preach, educate, pontificate, legislate and elect
their policy preferences and agendas. Progressives keep working
independently on noble projects like rights or fair treatment for various
underserved groups, elimination of bad corporate or government practices,
etc. But by losing the vision of the forest, the progressives are in the
process of allowing their single tree-projects to wither and soon die.
The neocons have a half a
dozen massive think tanks that till the political/public opinion soil like
giant combines, making it easier for specific right wing interest groups
to plant and harvest their advocacy seeds. They spend over a hundred
million dollars a year on this basic approach to maximizing crop yields.
In Kozinski's book, Chaunce
was a very low IQ, mentally challenged gardener who talks about everything
in garden terms. He verges on being mentally retarded, but stumbles his
way into the home of a wealthy man who is friends with the president.
Those garden terms of his are treated like brilliant metaphors and cited
by the US president.
The gardeners in the
progressive world function very differently from the the right wingers.
They fail to work together, to join forces and use the heavy equipment to
do the big jobs of tilling the "soil" so their agenda's, values,
visions, missions and goals benefit from the current level of technology.
Progressives-- institutes and the funding foundations that support
progressive causes have shamefully failed to see the vast strides the
neocon think tanks have made in changing policy. I say they've failed to
SEE because most people in the Think Tank or Foundational giving fields
have not responded. The handful of people who have responded and spoken
out have found their words landing on deaf ears
Shameful is a tough word.
But they deserve it. They have been told about the power of the neocon
think tanks and failed to respond. They have been sent reports and failed
to change. That failure came about because, in failing to respond, by
continuing to do things as usual, these organizations allowed the right
wing to begin dismantling the social support systems that decades of
progressive work had built-- that decades of their narrow sighted
investments had built. By failing to see the big picture, the progressive
foundations, in particular, allowed the neocon right wingers to pursue
Grover Norquist's vision of starving government until it is "small
enough to drown it in a bathtub."
All the progressive think
tanks each till their own little garden, like using a spoon, compared to
the huge factory farm tiller the Neocons use.
Let me make this clear. The
neocon think tanks are maybe 10% think tank and 90% promotion
organizations. Progressive think tanks are plain old think tanks. They
explore ideas, they do research, issue reports. Maybe the most aggressive
devote 10 percent of resources, though probably less, to promotion. This
classic think tank work is important, valuable, even essential, but
is not enough. It has not been enough for several decades. The neocon
think tanks have been around for as long as 25 years. They've been
actively developing strategies to aid Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior,
Newt Gingrich, and the impeachment team during Clinton's years, where they
harassed him to sabotage him from getting anything done.
It is long past the time
that the progressive foundations-- Ford, MacArthur, Charles Stewart
Mott and George Soros' Open Society Institute, kick in serious
funding for not one, but five or six seriously funded think tanks that
operate like the Heritage, Cato, American Enterprise
Institutes/foundations and PNAC. I mean they need to fund organizations
that do the basic work of tilling the soil. What does this mean?
Building a web, many webs
of policy and agenda promotion channels-- high school and college student
organizations, internet organizations, support networks for Grass
roots organizations, persuasion teams for each religious group to present
format and political positions in forms that gibe with each faith's
religious views. These left of center think tanks must promote to
legislators, and to the media. They must develop teams of high profile
talking heads-- celebrities, democratic government leaders, columnists....
who work as part of the progressive team, just as the neocons have
recruited their team. One study showed that 85% of over 20,000 op-eds
generated in one year came from conservatives.
Jock Gill, former internet
campaign consultant for Bill Clinton, says that the new politics are end
to end, rather than centrally communicated. He says Bush treats voters as
passive recipient customers, that the new democratic model is engaged
dynamic partnership where voters participate in Democracy. The internet is
enabling this new form of democracy to evolve and unfold, with all its new
and emergent properties.
I have no doubt that once
the funding comes for progressive policy promotion think tanks, they will
become, in a short time, more effective than the rightwing neocon think
tanks. The progressive community must face the fact that it must invest in
this political "infrastructure." Failure to make the investment
will allow further, more drastic neocon takeover of the US. The United
States will go the way of so many other banana republics that allow
megacorporations to come in, rape the resources and leave. Roads will
deteriorate, education will worsen, national resources we now commonly own
will be privatized and a police state will ensue.
Remember, years ago when a
whole neighborhood stayed silent while hearing the shouts of a girl being
raped (or was it killed?) That's what's been happening here. It is far
past the time that the progressive foundations should have awakened to the
desperate need to run out into the street and rescue the nation from the
neocon, Bush regime rapists of the environment, the constitution, the
economy, education, social security... It is time for hundreds of
thousands of progressives to overwhelm these foundations with
messages, pleading with them, demanding that they stand up, see the light
and start making these think tanks happen. Wes Boyd and moveon.org, are
you listening? Because even if the progressive foundations do see the
light, we're going to need your help to bring in the big bucks that will
be needed to make these think tanks a success.
Since the October, mid-term
election debacle, when the neocons completed their take-over of the US ,
the interest in the news has skyrocketed. News websites have seen steep
increases in activity. Moveon.org has grown massively. Progressives are
becoming activated. Look at how 325,000 voted in the moveon.org primary.
We have the power to take back America. We have the power to put America
on a positive path to a future we can be proud of. We have the power to
throw Bush and the Neocons out of Washington. This is a war, that the
other side declared. It is time for YOU to do something. Now. Every day.
And if you work for or run or are on the board of one of the foundations
I've mentioned. Get mad, but not at me for being the messenger. Get mad
and get started. We need your help. The Nation needs you. Wake up already.
PS. The word is that John
Podesta has started a think tank like I've described-- the American
Majority Institute. So far, it's been fairly hush hush, outside of two
formal announcements.
Conversations with Jock
Gill and Bob Bothwell helped me form my ideas for this op-ed.
Rob
Kall rob@opednews.com
is publisher of progressive news and opinion website www.opednews.com and
organizer of cutting edge meetings that bring together world leaders, such
as the Winter Brain Meeting and the StoryCon
Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story. He has also
been co-developer of several software programs, and inventor of one of the
most widely selling biofeedback devices. This article is copyright by Rob Kall, but
permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so
long as this credit is attached
Other
writings of Rob Kall
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