The criticism just cited essentially has two parts: 1) I'm worsening an already toxic U.S. political atmosphere by needlessly promoting more rage and 2) while citing Gandhi's example, I'm using vulgar, ugly, and ultimately counterproductive language utterly unworthy of him. The first part, I think, can be rebutted quickly and easily; the second will require a much deeper analytical plunge. But refuting the first charge--as readers will soon see--will pave the way for answering the far more difficult second.
This section will rebut the charge that I'm needlessly--and destructively--stoking the flames of already excessive political rage. My new movement name (Justified Outrage), like this section's title itself, strongly suggests the nature of my answer.
"Why can't we all just get along?" The very natural sense that there's too much political rage simply ignores the underlying political realities of our times. "Why can't we all just get along?" shows a good--but naà ¯ve--heart and is never really much of an answer. It falsely assumes the anger poisoning the air is "much ado about nothing", when in fact it's about painful realities not even being discussed, let alone addressed. Thus the poisonous atmosphere of so many marriages, the reliably boom market for marriage counselors, and the spot-on popular description of the painful and often stormy--but desperately needed--thrashing it out as "clearing the air".
Given the adulterous, savagely abusive "marital" behavior of our governing elites, we desperately need to "clear the air"--the toxic, almost unbreathable air. There's simply no path to societal healing and harmony that does not pass through deep anger, the kind of anger that spits bullets--and will use them if not constructively channeled. Presently, that public anger exists in the vague, unfocused, and dangerous form known as rage. What we desperately need is make that rage constructive by giving it a reality-based focus--against our tyrannical ruling elites. In short, by converting it to outrage, which is always a response to something specific. The movement name Justified Outrage is carefully chosen to fit that constructive focus.
Of course, to bring an enraged--but also brainwashed and bamboozled--U.S. public to that constructive (anti-elite) focus, we'll need to overcome the elites' propaganda machines' nonstop efforts to keep it bamboozled. Roughly speaking, I'd say the elites' propaganda efforts to hoodwink the U.S. public--keeping boiling public rage unfocused or dangerously misdirected--comes in two different forms: scapegoating and false civility. While both major parties and their propaganda machines practice scapegoating, false civility is a specialty of Democrats. Republicans (for reasons I'll soon touch on) have little use for civility at all.
Since Justified Outrage is a movement designed to peacefully combat Biden as president (God help us peacefully combat a second-term Trump), I'll primarily discuss false civility in my next, deeply analytic section. Scapegoating (by both parties) may become the subject of a future "tract" in this series.
But Gandhi Would Never Approve Such Talk!
Wishing these "Tracts for Our Times" to reach a wide audience, I've consciously placed limits on their length and depth. This might seem the point to say, with singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, "Shove me in the shallow waters/ Before I get too deep." But since my chief intended audience consists of activist organizers and intellectual opinion leaders--those with the power to influence many others--I've constantly felt a need to meet their more rigorous standards by always supplying some rationale for my strategy proposals.
An idea as seemingly bizarre as "vulgar satyagraha" certainly cries out for deeper justification. How can a movement invoking the gentle, saintly Gandhi use such foul language as "shithole election" and "President Bastard"? The short answer, of course, is that the truth of this satyagraha is adapted to very different "colonial" circumstances than Gandhi's, where Americans' minds are colonized by the propaganda of our ruling elites. I touched on the earlier "tract" where I first mentioned Gandhi and satyagraha.
But without examining in detail the nature of our "colonization" by propaganda, the short answer is inevitably a shallow--and unconvincing--one. The deeper answer for why U.S. satyagraha must take a vulgar--or, at minimum, scathing--turn lies in the nature of the propaganda we're fighting. And the nature of that propaganda, in turn, lies in the characteristic behavior of the two (increasingly disgusting) political parties the propaganda is designed to defend.
Whole academic bookshelves could be filled (and probably to some extent have been) debating the description I'm about to provide. For me, it's simply the ad hoc, on-the-fly political theory a working strategist must grab hold of. I have no idea what claims it can make to originality; to the extent I'm conscious of influence, the influence is Chris Hedges in his perceptive--even prophetic--book The Death of the Liberal Class.
"Vulgar" Satyagraha's Deep Rationale: Fascism vs. Hypocrisy
Here's my guiding theory in a nutshell. Whatever Walt Whitman might say, the human mind does not like (or easily tolerate) self-contradiction. Not even the apparent self-contradiction of complexity comes easily to most minds (though better ones seem to revel in it). Of course, our moral failings offer prolific sources of contradiction between professed intentions and actual performance, but here the mind indeed balks. Thus our frequent resort to rationalization, restoring consistency by giving bad behavior fake moral justification.
Thus also our resort to hypocrisy, which (like rationalization) is an "homage vice pays to virtue". The essence of hypocrisy--what allows it to maintain comforting mental consistency--is that while our actions might contradict our moral standards, our public image (our reputation) remains in perfect harmony with them. And as psychologists have increasingly found, our public image--rather than the stricter standards of conscience--is what most of us care more deeply about. For individuals, hypocrisy functions pretty well--as long as they're not found out.
Given the multi-directional pulls on politicians--the many interests they must answer to--some hypocrisy is almost a given. What's true of individual politicians is likewise true of political parties. In fact, the Democratic Party is now in its essence the party of hypocrisy, since its reputation with its voting base, dating back to the New Deal, depends on its being "the party of the people". This is of course in flagrant contradiction with its leadership's decision, now dating back decades, to serve the interests of elite donors--those I find best summarized by the labels "Wall Street" and "War Street". Political deeds being public matters (unlike much individual behavior), such flagrant hypocrisy could never endure long without protection by constant media propaganda. For a movement seeking to successfully pressure Democrats, exposing that flagrant hypocrisy--destroying the fake harmony between public image and actual behavior--is the crucial mission.
Of course, Republican pols serve the elite donors of Wall Street and War Street at least as much as Democrats do. And, since the GOP is traditionally "the party of business", they do so with less apparent (and intolerable) self-contradiction than Democrats face. However, openly devoting themselves to elite interests faces Republicans with a dire problem: there simply aren't enough voters sharing those interests to win elections. Initially, Republicans dealt with the problem by a fake identity of interests between average people and elites: trickle-down economics promoted the notion (now exploded) that a rising economic tide automatically "lifts all boats". But this theory, while plausible, has not stood up to decades-long evidence of the rich getting much richer while average and poor people have stood still or regressed. Increasingly, Republicans have had to base their appeal to all but the rich on the darker forces of grievance and resentment, ever more resorting to the scapegoating and outright reality denial characteristic of fascism. Democrats' deep hypocrisy (unacknowledged by themselves) has provided an especially prominent target for GOP scapegoating and fomenting of resentment.
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