Is Change Impossible (Part 2)

A continuation of Sunday's post...


Mastery of — or at least the ability to master — the extant technologies by which the Ruling Class maintains its power: A little over ten years ago, I looked into applying for an LPFM license with a couple of friends under the aegis of Dreamstreets Press. The idea was to build a radio station that would showcase the wide range of Wilmington’s cultural offerings, with an emphasis on local under-served communities. We planned to feature the work of local musicians, have interviews with visual and literary artists, do in-depth local news reporting and generally be a clearing house for the city.

We had a bit of a head start. I basically already owned everything to start a radio station except a transmitter. Our little group had several members with both deep roots in the community and audio production experience. We might have even been able to wrangle a little money from somewhere since funding for non-profits was hardly as tight as it is today. But unfortunately, the lower end of the FM band is rather crowded in this area, so no frequencies were available. I think the closest available frequency was somewhere south of Dover.

Why was a radio station so important? Because consistent access to the media is important. It’s the way you get your message heard — and unfortunately, progressives have fallen way behind in this area.

I’ll confess I have no idea as to how we might remedy this situation. Blogs, zines, books, websites, and podcasts are all well and good, but what we need is a TV station, indeed a whole network, since TV is the medium that is most readily available and popular. It is also the most expensive to produce well. Cheap TV looks cheap and the people will not be fooled.

The support of a major foreign power: I learned when I was a teenager that if I wanted something kind of iffy, that my parents might not want to give, that it was better to ask for it when outsiders (company, extended family) were present. Since my parents tended to avoid public displays of conflict, they usually gave in to avoid an argument — and with very few exceptions I got what I wanted. I took advantage of their efforts to save face.

Bliss asserts the specter of the former Soviet Union served a similar function for America’s capitalist ruling class. Since there was a strong, viable alternative lurking somewhere on the planet (they beat us into space after all) the robber barons couldn’t put their ugly butts on full display. The USSR might have been imperfect; they might have been oppressive and cruel, but we always had to show we were better than they were. We at least needed to look like we had the moral upper hand.

Now, Bliss maintains, for all practical purposes, socialism is dead and the new globalism has initiated a planet-wide race to the bottom, at least for most of us. Even in nominally Communist China, to get rich is glorious. Who cares if you wind up with some of the most polluted cities on the planet, thousands of people die in your mines or occasionally you are tempted to taint your products to maximize your profits? (It’s been a long time since I’ve read Marx, but I think that’s enough to have him spinning in his grave.)

Maybe nation states are no longer the true power. Corporations are. They have the money; they have the equipment; they have the jobs; they transcend borders and they can write their own rules. This is starkly apparent in the case of the BP oil disaster. Everyone yearns for the government to “do something”, but in reality there is only a limited amount the government can do. BP has the money, the equipment and the expertise. The government is very much at their mercy.

The time to have done something was before the drilling began, with strong regulation, oversight and planning. Of course then there would be the risk of BP taking its toys to play elsewhere, where perhaps the “small people” wouldn’t try to meddle as much. Even as Bobby Jindal tries to advocate for Louisiana’s endangered ecosystems, he doesn’t want drilling to end forever. It’s hard to slap the hand that feeds you.

These new world powers have given rise to an enemy just as ruthless. Al Queda in all its permutations is globalism’s darkest reflection. Despite all pretenses to the contrary, I wouldn’t call it a legitimate revolutionary movement because as far as I can see, it is completely nihilistic; it seeks to build nothing, only to destroy. It is the last desperate shout of the damned.

***

Yes, I know. It’s almost the Platonic form of depressing. But like I said, I refuse to give up. I also don’t want to discount the progress we’ve made so far. Obama has accomplished far more in his 18 months of office than he’s given credit for. However, I increasingly get the sinking feeling we are trying to patch up something fundamentally broken and that radical, paradigm shifting changes are needed if the human race is to survive.

The Gulf of Mexico oil gusher is an excellent case in point. Thankfully, at this writing, there is reason to hope. The oil has finally stopped flowing, but what about the oil already released? How long will it take the ocean to recover and will it ever recover completely? What will it mean if it doesn’t? And why were we going around poking holes where no human could go in the first place? How close are we to running out of oil and how much of the earth are we willing to rape to get it? What does a clean energy, post-petroleum economy even mean? A Prius in every garage — or something far deeper? What does the end of the easy oil age mean for agriculture, manufacturing, city planning, or medical science? Oil is in everything, you know, from the fresh tar coating on my parents’ driveway to the rather ingenious contraptions that allow me to stand and walk again. What will happen when there simply is no more?

The questions are endless. How long can the United States afford to spend the bulk of its resources remaking the world in its image and dreaming up new and exciting ways to kill people while it lets its own infrastructure rot? What will happen when it gets too expensive and dangerous to import basic goods from 12,000 miles away? What will happen when all those people in the world’s cheap labor markets finally stand up and say, Show us the money! Give us our due!

Bliss compares global capitalism to the Borg and maintains not only is resistance futile, but “rebellion is suicide”. I disagree. The challenges ahead are daunting, but not impossible. If I can imagine the dangers ahead, I can also imagine ways to conquer them — and imagine I must. I have no choice but to walk towards the future. So I write as if it matters, dream as if it matters, live as if it matters.

Because, in the end, it really does.

Between Barack and a Hard Place

Last Saturday during the forced downtime of Snowmageddon Part 1, my mother and I were discussing President Obama’s recent woes. “Why don’t they just leave that man alone and let him do his job?” Mom asked. “How come they have to pick apart everything he says? Don’t they know he’s only human?"

“Well Mom,” I replied, “it’s because he’s President and not only that, he’s the first Black President, so of course they’re going to pick apart everything he says.”

She heartily agreed.

During her highly anticipated (and compensated) Tea Party keynote, Sarah Palin derisively referred to Obama as a “charismatic guy with a teleprompter” and a “law professor at a lectern” as if being charismatic and having a formidable intellect were somehow undesirable qualities to have in the leader of the free world.

But, ironically, these are precisely some of the qualities that make Obama such a perfect opponent for Palin and her compatriots — or indeed make him an opponent at all. Because if Obama had affected the folksy, befuddled persona of say, George W. Bush, during his campaign, he would have never been elected. Seriously. Think about it. If Obama (like Mary Poppins) hadn’t been nearly perfect in every way, if he hadn’t gone to Harvard, made Law Review, had an expert command of the English language, many voters would have never given him a second look.

Even though Obama doesn’t like to highlight his race, the fact that he is Black immediately places him under incredible scrutiny. Whether he likes it or not, his words are never entirely his own. When Barack Obama speaks, many Americans don’t see just a man speaking, they see a Black man speaking and his words are parsed with all the unspoken baggage that fact brings with it. He can’t, for instance, make a grammatical error, and have it just be an innocent (and maybe even an endearing) mistake. For some that error may just prove what they unconsciously have believed all along: that’s he’s Black, ignorant and therefore unfit for his office.

Being a Black woman who’s spent most of her life in extreme minority situations, I am quite familiar with that kind of pressure. From an early age, my parents taught me that it was not enough to merely be good; as the only Black kid in the school for much of my academic career, I had to be the best. So-called Black English and slang were discouraged even during casual family gatherings. If you didn’t learn how to properly read, speak and write the King’s English, the cruel White world was never going to give you a chance. If you dressed sloppily, had even a hair out of place, no one would bother trying to see your true potential. In short, you had to be perfect — just to have a crack at being human.

My lack of an obvious “ethnic” accent and command of standard English has allowed me to do some pretty amazing things like attend excellent schools, publish in an elite academic journal and do a two-hour telephone interview with a local skinhead with him never suspecting he was speaking with the enemy. It’s also gotten me labeled as uptight and elitist. (“You actually spell-check your e-mails?” a co-worker once asked me in disbelief.)

Similarly, President Obama’s considerable strengths cut both ways. The qualities that helped get him elected, namely his exceptional oratorical skills and quick mind, also get him labeled intellectual, elitist and out of touch with the people, even though before the sales of his books, Obama was a man of relatively modest means.

Recently Obama has been letting his hair down, speaking in his shirt sleeves, using more casual diction in his speeches in an effort to prove that yes, he hears us. But even this more populist Obama chooses his words deliberately and is keenly aware of the effect his language has on his image — which is as it should be. The President of the United States is not your beer buddy; he’s President and should carry himself as such. But I also suspect he knows — whether he likes to discuss it or not — that as a Black man his every word and deed are being watched and that even on a bad day, he has to give 120% just to break even.

Telling Stories

Obama, and anyone else even the tiniest bit left of center, have had a tough time lately. Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts destroyed the Democrats’ so-called super-majority in the Senate putting already tenuous health care reform legislation on life support. So much for Ted Kennedy’s legacy. Then the Supreme Court decided that corporations, being the immortal fictitious superpersons that they are, are entitled to as much free speech as they can buy. Given the size of some of their coffers that’s quite a lot. Much more than Joe the Plumber or Betty the Waitress could afford.

I’m not exactly sure what those five Supreme Court justices were thinking, but the reasons for Scott Brown’s victory have been analyzed to death. Basically, Brown won because he told a better story while his lackluster opponent didn’t bother to tell a story at all. He presented himself as a man of the people, who drove an old pickup truck, who could show those corrupt do-nothing Washington insiders a thing or two. He promised to reign in government spending, lower taxes and kill the health care reform bill. Somehow this would produce jobs and security for everyone. Now you might argue that doesn’t make any sense, but Brown’s campaign told a story that made it feel right and people tend to vote with their guts more than their heads.

Progressives lack a cohesive and, more importantly, a compelling story. We tend to think speaking truth to power means providing people with the facts. If we only make the right information available, people will have no choice but to come to the logical and right conclusion. But speaking truth to power is more than spewing data; it is speaking the truth in a way people will hear it. They hear things like “public option” and fall asleep, but tell them you’re going to take away their “freedoms” and their ears perk up and their blood starts boiling.

How might progressives learn to tell better stories? For one thing, don’t be snobs. It’s amazing to me how many writers refuse to read some authors like Dan Brown or John Grisham on general principle. Well, why the hell not? It’s what people on the bus are reading. Don’t you want to be read?

The point is not to copy these authors word for word, or to flood the world with substandard literature (after all some stuff is popular because it’s actually good) but to discern the “rules” for constructing an engaging narrative for a general audience. People like to read about a black and white world. They like to read about people whose lives are more exciting than their own. They like snappy dialog without a whole lot of description. They like humor; they like pathos. They like good to triumph. They like a happy — or at least a fully resolved —ending.

More lessons in popular storycraft can be learned from watching top-rated TV shows, listening to the lyrics of country songs, etc. This is what holds peoples’ attention. Believe me, more people thought about the morality of torture watching Jack Bauer’s dark night of the soul on the last season of 24 than did reading Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side.

Watch and listen with an open mind — and learn the language that appeals to the masses. I once explained taxes to one of my more conservative colleagues in terms of tithing — and he got it. But I never would have come up with that analogy if I hadn’t taken the time to find out what tithing was.

Secondly, don’t be afraid to appeal to people’s emotions, specifically anger and fear. Anger and fear are mind killers for sure, but they also run deeper than blood. Many PSAs against health care reform play to people’s fear of change. You might not be able to keep your doctor. You will be forced to change health plans. You will lose what little security you have. Very few ads have spoken to the fear of having no health insurance at all. What if you break your arm, can’t pay rent for a couple of months and lose your apartment? What if you lose your job and your health insurance and you have Type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure? What if you get cancer (Delaware still has one of the highest cancer rates in the nation) and lose your job and insurance? Should you be so afraid in the world’s lone superpower? Should you be so fearful in a nation that bills itself as the greatest country on earth?

See? Sure beats talking about the “public option.”