I was inspired to write this after scanning the current debate in California about “budget cuts.” Hope my stab at humor brings you some light. – Joe
In eight short years, conservatives have effectively bankrupted many state governments and left the fed in shambles. And now citizens have to “make tough decisions” and share the suffering equally across the land (unless of course, you’re part of that lucky 1% who co-opted the functions of government to serve their own ends… they’ll be cozy with their offshore bank accounts, golden parachutes, and permanent tax holidays).
Are you a teacher who educates our future citizens? Too bad. You’ve got to tighten your belt and let that job go. Manual laborer? Sorry but that job can earn more money for our shareholders if its done in Micronesia. Need a college degree? Prepare for indentured servitude because you’ll be working to pay us off for most of your adult life. Health care? Ha! That’s just a ponzi scheme dreamed up by a bunch of socialists.
Ever wonder how conservatives did all this?
Well here’s your very own how-to manual for getting Big Government out of the way so you and your buddies can horde all the wealth to yourselves and build your empire.
Step 1: Blame the Individuals
Every battle has to have two sides, so you’ll need to divide the people against each other. This means that you’ll need to declare that “there’s no such thing as society” and focus the entire debate on the faults of individuals.
Enron screwed people over? That’s just a few bad apples. The business news a lap dog for corporate excess? That’s just Jim Cramer doing his thing. The economy in shambles? That’s just George W leaving his legacy.
And of course the housing crisis is the fault of greedy buyers. Industry can’t do right for us because of that welfare queen. And government can’t serve the people because of that corrupt politician and his special interest crony.
Get the people talking about individuals and it’ll be easy to blind them to the public infrastructure they depend on. You don’t want anyone to make a peep when we gut the schools, defund public works, and empty out the treasury. Those problems will just be fodder to throw at the sorry Democrat we’ll blame when the fit hits the shan.
Step 2: Cut Taxes
Now that you’ve gotten everyone bickering about each other (and ignoring us), you can get to work dismantling the government. All you have to do is cut taxes. Yes, it’s that simple. One move and you get all the benefits of (1) weakening every social program; (2) making government services inadequate; (3) setting the stage for calling out “waste” and inefficiencies (more of that blame game!); (4) keeping your richest friends from ever having to pay for the infrastructure they exploit to make all that money; (5) getting nonprofits and opposition leaders in the government (progressives… eck!!) to spend all their precious resources fighting to keep things in the budget; and (6) outsourcing government operations to your buddies in the corporate world so they can profit from them.
This one move is strategic. It does all the work for you.
And when life starts looking dire, you get opportunities you never dreamed possible in a democracy.
Step 3: Exploit Disaster
If you’ve managed to accomplish steps 1 and 2, people will be in a panic. And we all know that panicky people make rash decisions. Now is your chance to push that unpopular agenda through the cracks – disaster capitalism at its best!
Remember how we tricked the populace into an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq to secure oil revenues? That wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t scared out of their wits by the fright of terrorism. Think people would have gone for No Child Left Behind and allowed tests to replace learning in the classroom? We had to fabricate a crisis (which took years of hard work to create) to push that one through. And you know that there’s no way we could take away so many civil liberties with the Patriot Act if the debate was drawn out for weeks under public scrutiny.
So there you have it. Three easy steps to destroy the government.
If you’re an overachiever (you know who you are!), you might even try giving away billions to your buddies in the banking industry when the bottom falls out. Or consider no-bid contracts to our old pals in the energy and defense sectors when no one is looking. Or, and this takes some special skill, you might call any efforts to “increase revenues” just another example of irresponsible spending that got us into this mess in the first place.
Note 1: Take care that progressives don’t ever learn about this strategy. It could be nullified and made ineffective by exposing our agenda, allowing people to organize, or letting government work well enough for people to start thinking that government isn’t inherently bad and (gasp!) that it might be useful for something other than empire-building.
Note 2: Want a more detailed discuss of how these ideas were so successfully implemented? This excellent series by Sara Robinson will help you learn how to take over the common sense of an entire culture:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Note 3: Not satisfied with this strategy? Maybe you’ll want to build a different kind of politics that works in another way.
Update: Many readers on Truthout suggested that we should make a list of names of the people who enacted this strategy. I think this is a great idea. If you know of anyone (e.g. Karl Rove, the Coors family, etc.), add their name in a comment below this article. I’ll come back and collect these names into a list for us to use.
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Why all the debate over labels? It’s the motives that are important. Follow the money. Wealth begets wealth. If funding one party over another to achieve less government oversight means more profits for huge global corporate entities, then that’s the issue; not who is liberal or conservative or neo this or that. Let’s stop pretending that the people have a chance against the partnership between goverment and the wealthy. Its so easy to promote blind loyalty through fear mongering. Objectivity has almost vanished from the media. I know this debate isn’t over about labels; and it helps some people to grow in their capacity to assess holistically and choose a path to follow. And I prefer that discussion over the rants and threats of the right wing idealogues. And I will engage in this debate as long as I’m interested in what you have to say. But lets not ever confuse labels with informed holistic assessment of the whole picture. Everywhere on the planet, people’s lives are driven by their ability to respond to economic power. The empowered life stands firm in a committment to the commonality of the human condition. Disempowered movements such as neo conservatives (or progressives) are always disfunctional in their approach to claiming and keeping power. The disfunction consists of choosing to split and polarize the issues that affect people’s emotions. Along with this sadistic emotional torture are the economic monsters that are set loose on the world purposefully to manipulate one’s quality of living; my space, my time, and my well being. I am as apt to respond in a disfunctional disempowered way as my global counterpart in countries other than the North American U.S. I know that my disfunction is treatable; but the “cure” that I can espouse politically is often diluted by interests other than those that I share in common with my global counterpart. My strong sense is that like so many other of our planet’s resources, our minds and hearts are being raped, extracted, mined, and squandered thoughtlessly. Unless we as humans use our gift of “humanity”, we are sure to lose it completely.
In my opinion, and it is only conjecture, the Republican party had only a synical interest in winning the 2008 elections. McCain and Palin were not serious choices. It was a win-win situation for the GOP. If somehow they were able to win, well then, full steam ahead, but nothing lost if the Democrats take control. They did destroy the economy and the government at all levels. If the Democrats control the White House, the legislature and most of the State governments, then when the house of cards falls in on itself, they can sit back blame the Democrats, with seemingly clean hands. Pretty much ending any hope of a formal opposition party to the GOP.
This is a chess match that we have not been playing strategically, we plan one move ahead, they are looking at the end game. Always, the end game.
It is often spoken of how the Republicans now have a lack of leadership and are in disarray, I don’t believe this to be the case, they are pushing even harder with their agenda and spin machine. The Democratic party has been largely without direction for 30+ years. With the destruction of the Unions the party turned into another Corporatists party with slightly less left leanings than the Republicans, but far from liberal.
This is something I try to hammer home, what is the actual goals, platform and direction of the Democratic Party? There seems to be no solid consensus.
Some excellent references.
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http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/lilley190606.html
On Neoliberalism:
An Interview with David Harvey
by Sasha Lilley
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http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376&printsafe=1
What is Neoliberalism?
A Brief Definition for Activists
by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
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Militarizing Class Warfare: the historical foundations of the neoliberal/neoconservative nexus
DAVID GABBARD East Carolina University, USA
http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/validate.asp?j=pfie&vol=5&issue=2&year=2007&article=2_Gabbard_PFIE_5_2_web
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199283265/104-3636081-5316754?v=glance&n=283155
A Brief History of Neoliberalism
Hi Jim,
Your passion about this issue is noteworthy, but I think you’re reading more into this than the situation warrants. I am not part of the “conspiracy to blur terms” and “make them meaningless.” Please take care not to over-analyze what is a short, tongue-in-cheek article meant to illuminate a strategy – a strategy that you haven’t commented on at all (even though it’s the whole point of this conversation.
I will not be available to continue this conversation further – as I’ll be traveling for the next several days – so this will need to be the end of my contributions to this particular thread.
Best,
Joe
I appreciate the courtesy of your reply, yet I still have to disagree. In the first place metonymy is not really in question here: the term has to have an intimate and real association with the term for which it stands: the classical example being “the crown” for “royalty.” The term “crown” substituted for “royalty” is perfectly intelligible. The isolation of the one characteristic leads to no confusion or ambiguity. If the neoconservatives hijacked the term “conservative,” as they surely did, that was not due to their skill in the use of metonymy. In the case of your supposed use of it, I don’t see it in evidence. Neo-conservatism is not to “crown” as Conservatism is to “royalty,” for example. It is precisely a creative misnomer, pure and simple, in order to hijack the category. As Kristol put it candidly: “…one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.” He is plainly saying that neoconservatism is something at variance with conservatism, and not a branch of it.This is not a subtle distinction. Essentially, neoconservatism is a kind of neo-jacobinism, as has often been pointed out. Their hijacking of the term is a kind of intellectual crime. It is the way words come to mean anything and therefore nothing, and hence simply tools to manipulate people rather than to illumine. One cannot say that it is legitimate to blur essential distinctions on the grounds that the distinctions concern subtleties beyond the grasp of a general readership–a readership composed, not of watchers of American Idol, but of your newsletter; a readership, therefore, interested in the subjects and issues at hand, and presumably capable of understanding them. To blur essential distinctions is simply to misinform, not to clarify. It is simply an exercise in error. What should be done is to unmask and refuse the hijacking. Let’s take another very clear and popular example: Ron Paul is considered a “conservative.” Can one imagine a more clearly outspoken and well-known opponent of the neoconservatives? Or take the case of a Buchanan, equally at odds with the neoconservatives. And then there is Paul Gottfried, the so-called Paleo-conservative, also plainly and sharply at variance with the neoconservative line. Finally, there is the conservative site antiwar.com, also very plainly against everything neoconservative. It doesn’t get any clearer. One cannot argue with the notion that conservatives share important characteristics with the neoconservatives; that is not true. Dogs and cats share the characteristic that they possess tails, along with tadpoles. So what? The species are in each case totally different. In reality, what counts are the essential and decisive differences. They are not subtle. It is the intellectual’s responsibility to articulate them clearly. Clear distinctions and definitions are what the intellectual’s job is all about. This is the service they perform, and it is absolutely vital.
Hi Jim,
I understand your concern. Please allow me to clarify my communication method. I am using what linguists call a metonymy, which is that a category exemplar (in this case, a neoconservative ideologue) represents the entire category (conservatives in general).
This is not a tactic I’m using to misrepresent the situation. Rather it is the tactic used by elites of the conservative movement to hijack the term “conservative” and give it the radical meaning that it has taken on in our culture at large after they took over the movement forty years ago.
The subtle distinctions you describe may be valid in nuanced discussions, but they only get in the way of communicating when the goal is to simplify an idea to its core so that it makes sense to a lot of people. I am writing for a general audience, not an academic audience. The communication style is very different in this forum.
Hope this helps clarify things for you.
Best,
Joe
I would repeat:
The neoconservative movement, and its “New American Century” plans have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with classical American conservatism. Russell Kirk, for example, has nothing to do with the ideas of a Bill Kristol. The neoconservatives are reformed Trotskyites, and it shows. Nowadays, the most disparate elements are lumped together sloppily. Conjectures regarding nurturing versus strict upbringings are beside the point. Ideas are one thing, psychology–or psychologizing–is quite another.
In Lee Iacocca’s book “Where Have All the Leaders Gone,” he laments about our sorry state of the union and world, asking the titled question.
On about page 43 in my reading a light bulb went on – the Bush administration did have the best leaders they could find, great leaders for their program, their objective. So what could that end game be that makes sense of all the otherwise nonsensical happenings and appointments? Discrediting of our governmental bodies and traditional institutions in order to promote privatization of everything with a government label and to promote a form of capitalism befitting an oligarchy.
With that end in mind, Iacocca’s disbelief and rightful questioning have answers. Bush did lead for his constituency – and he lead well. So too did the silent regulators and delighted hedge-fund managers and anyone else who would personally benefit (at the expense of the general public)who bought into this objective.
So your article on “How to Destroy the Government …” appears right on. Bankrupt the government at all levels, discrediting it. Scale back so many services that the public loses faith. Sell off precious assets … and wallah, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Couple this with a general (engineered before Obama?)collapse in the financial system and just enough panic is instilled to easily take down a government.
But the 2008 election might have thrown a monkey-wrench into the works – if Obama does not cave in to the lurking “get it done quickly” proponents who are likely part of the “leaders” of the Bush years. These guys just want their status/influence restored so that the government can again be undermined by their private interests.
Can you imagine the bargains for the super-rich privileged few who could buy up national highways, state and national park lands, federal and state buildings? Wow, such a deal!
Mr. Iacocca’s book laid a perfect roadmap for future Bushes to follow. And Mr. Brewer’s article about destroying the government was right on.
Hi Jim,
It is not intellectually dishonest to use a commonplace term to describe a group of people who share an ideology. Furthermore, there are very important similarities among all stripes of conservatism – which is that they share a core worldview that is based on a model of the family.
Please refer to the work of George Lakoff (read about it here) to learn how progressive and conservative political thought are both shaped by different moral worldviews.
Rather than questioning my integrity, you could focus on the kernels of truth that this article alludes to, albeit in a humorous and light-hearted way.
Best,
Joe
This article has a kernel of intellectual dishonesty: the label conservative is being used instead of the correct word: neoconservative. The error might be pardonable in the case of untutored people, but not on the part of people with intellectual pretensions. The neoconservative movement, and its “New American Century” plans have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with classical American conservatism, and the author must surely be aware of this. Russell Kirk and others of his type have zero to do with the likes of a George Bush, a Dick Cheney, a Wolfowitz, a Kristol, and so on.