I still listen to Sam Seder and Thom Hartmann. Sam does it better, but the call-in show format doesn’t really work, maybe not at all. There need to be visuals.
I’m sure there’s some useful strategy here, but the fundamental difference is that progressives are out to build and conservatives are out to destroy—and the game is weighted in favor of destruction. If you want less government, you can accomplish that by saying NO to everything while monkey-wrenching existing programs. Progressives can say NO to giving up what we already have, but we still have the additional burden of building something new and maintaining it over time.
People have already mentioned The Daily Show, and that illustrates our creative strength. The Republicans can’t even find cool songs to play at their rallies that the musicians are willing to license to them — that’s how creatively barren they are. However, while John Oliver, Samantha Bee and The Daily Show are great for rallying the base, they’re probably not winning over many conservatives. Not many people are persuaded by facts and reason, however artfully presented.
What we need is to build a counterculture around our values that invites participation. We had this during the 60’s. Sex, drugs and Rock & Roll made a far more compelling case for progressive values than any form of persuasion. I think the maker movement is likely to form an important part of this, especially insofar as it offers people a satisfying alternative to wage slavery. On a more fundamental level, anything we create will express our values in some way, so as long as we’re creating we’re influencing the culture in a positive direction — there doesn’t need to be a political goal in mind.
The conservatives, meanwhile, can continue stockpiling food and ammo and shaking their fists at immigrants, but what fun is that?
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Adapting this would be turning the left into a reactionary movement. In both senses of the word. In the less-terrible sense of the word, it is a good idea to have a defensive wing. We’ve been doing defense for years. Our current batch has been doing defense longer than the Republicans have. We’re good at defense.
We’ve let the neoliberals take over just like the right allowed the neocons to take over. Instead of arguing our own case, we’ve let ourselves be tricked into arguing the neoliberal case. A softer, safer, more boring argument even we don’t really believe in.
There are some good ideas here. Small, organized, locally-focused groups are a good way to organize effective activism. Our defeats (other than the self-defeat of subsuming our agenda to conservative democrats) have been local level. It’s time to stop ignoring the local level.
But we are a democratic blob. We’re not doing anyone favors if we don’t effectively state and argue our case. Not the conservative “left” and not just what we’re against.
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Trump winning suggests merely having The Daily Show isn’t enough…
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As much as I love John Stewart and miss him on the Daily Show, it felt like he was a bit too unwilling to take a side on many issues. The Rally to Restore Sanity kind of highlighted that issue. I like John Oliver’s un-abashed taking a side better.
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I’d much rather have President Woody Harrelson
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This election really created a new definition for “Neoliberal” in the public mind.
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