Tim the Tool Man, in the popular 1990s sitcom Home Improvement, was celebrated for his oft-misguided manly mantra "more power." Whatever its shortcomings as home fix-it advice, it's always been the pinnacle of wisdom for popular movements. Nor has it ever been more relevant. In an election where Democrats' overwhelming theme is stopping Donald Trump--a dangerous demagogue who really must be stopped--Biden and Dems have had their best convenient excuse ever for offering popular movements their lightest lip service and rudest cold shoulder.
Not that they ever needed much excuse. But now--when a global climate emergency makes popular, populist reforms more urgent than ever--the need to deep-six Trump gives Democrats every excuse to brutally elbow all talk of reform off the table. And, what's worse, with plausible appearance of holding the higher moral ground. "How dare you," Biden and Democrats seemingly scold, "bring up such controversial, divisive diversions when all decent people are uniting to defeat Trump?" (Uniting, they fail to add, behind the same corrupt agendas and callous neglect of human needs that gave us Trump in the first place.)
Such Dem establishment propaganda--successfully framing urgent, popular reforms as controversial and divisive amidst a need to unify against Trump--doubtless played a major role in Biden's primary victory over Bernie Sanders. Even such a leftist icon (and firm Sanders supporter) as Noam Chomsky acknowledged that such propaganda smeared Sanders and his agenda so successfully with mainstream voters that Bernie, if nominated, might not have been able to beat Trump.
Now, Sanders really represents urgently needed reforms--needed both to effectively address humanity's climate emergency and to keep dangerous fake-populist demagogues like Trump from again seizing power. Knowing this, our major U.S. movements should deeply resent how thoroughly, rapidly, and successfully the Dem establishment and its media propaganda machine circled their wagons around Biden--to those movements' deep, lasting detriment. But while nourishing keen resentment again that "circling of wagons," our major U.S. movements desperately need to learn from it.
Our major U.S. movements must quickly learn that 1) they're in a propaganda war where, in terms of money and messaging media, they're desperately outgunned and 2) that to have any hope of achieving their agendas amidst such depressing propaganda disadvantages, they need a unity and simplicity of messaging--a circling of the wagons around a basic, unifying message--even tighter than that achieved by Biden and establishment Democrats in smearing Sanders. As Jim Morrison memorably sang, "They got the guns but we got the numbers/ Gonna win, yeah, we're takin' over."
To have numbers remotely adequate to surmount their gargantuan propaganda disadvantage, our major U.S. movements need to escape their "issue silos" and unite around a simple, forceful message--in an unprecedented way that seems quixotic to ask for or expect. But reality itself dictates this need--and I warned that my proposals here would be an exercise in visionary, radical realism. In other words, realism radical enough to diagnose the root problem as a propaganda war and visionary enough to call for big solutions scaled to the size of the problem. Like updating the unity and discipline--in urgent, obstinate truth-telling--of Gandhi's satyagraha movement for America's current political climes.
To sum up, I've made the radical proposal that our major U.S. movements unite--for political pressure purposes--around a splendidly simple set of just two demands: a peaceful Green New Deal and ranked-choice voting. I've justified this unprecedented unity program by a need for concerted strength of voice in outshouting a propaganda machine our major movements haven't even yet identified as their foremost common enemy. Where lying propaganda is the shared root problem facing movements, unity in obstinate truth-telling--satyagraha--is the radical common solution.
In my next piece, "The Risks and Rhetoric of U.S. Satyagraha," I'll frankly face the risk our major movements--above all, Black Lives Matter--may fear of seeing their unique aims get lost under the big umbrella of a peaceful Green New Deal. I'll also discuss in more detail the truth-telling rhetoric--tailored to specific, pernicious establishment lies--our satyagraha movement needs to obstinately insist on. Russiagate will loom quite large in this discussion.
(Article changed on August 27, 2020 at 00:29)
(Article changed on August 27, 2020 at 00:41)
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