Root political ideas and how to promulgate them
Last edited Thu Nov 9, 2017, 06:21 AM - Edit history (1)
The Kaiser Foundation has a nice explanation of the concept of expanding Medicare and statistics and analytics on who would be affected. It includes an umbrella that shows the gap in people who are covered.
But have you seen any ads on TV showing the umbrella with the gap, and people getting caught in the rain? I haven't either. They don't exist. Are there ads showing a doctor in the ER picking and choosing who will get treatment based on their insurance card? I haven't either.
The right wing has spent billions building think tanks that incubated and packaged "conservative thinkers" who have spent 35 years teaching people to believe that "the rich are the ones who create jobs" and "you shouldn't be taxed just for dying" and tax policy is all about "the family farm". They have reframed the meaning of government and the perception of wealth and the economy n the minds of tens of millions of people. They transformed "civil rights" into "special rights", and progressive ideas into "political correctness". They created the cult of Fox.
David Frum told Lawrence O'Donnell tonight that "Steve Bannon doesn't use words the way that you use them." Bannon uses words to evoke emotions. You (O'Donnell) use words to describe an external reality.
Health care is relatively easy, because people FEEL the consequences.
A liberal billionaire was on MSNBC the other morning who donates a lot of money to Democrats, but he reacted sharply when questioned about the leftward tilt in the Democratic Party. He became animated in his contempt for the use of the word "billionaire". "I've warned them, if they say it again, I'm cutting them off." It speaks volumes about where the party is at. This man is a major funder who believes in Democratic principles, and we on the left depend on him to balance the millions (or billions, in a lifetime) of dollars from Koch brothers and their ilk. Our problem is not with him -- no one is perfect, and he seemed genuinely concerned -- and yet depending on a. handful of individuals is fundamentally undemocratic.
Do they fund liberal think tanks? Do those think tanks concentrate on fact based white papers, like the Kaiser foundation, or on the influencing of emotions and memes among the general public? The former, I think, because billionaires are rightly afraid of populism and its torches.
But somehow we have to undo the brainwashing of "trickledown economics", and "big government is the enemy", and "the rich give us jobs". White papers aren't going to compete with Fox. MSNBC doesn't compete with Fox. Ideas that break through the absurdity of the right wing memes, that make people laugh at the absurdity of ..? Foxes guarding henhouses?
A fundamental idea that needs to evolve is the idea that "less government is better.". We can think of lots of examples where it isn't better, and we can illustrate just how much of our government is devoted to supporting elites and corporate interests?
We don't have our heads around the massive gap between the Main Street economy and Wall Street economy. Capital has found a way to inflate itself, while labor is a dime a dozen. People have only hazy ideas of the tax shelters. The gap between tax brackets on capital gains vs wages is not widely known and is pretty indefensible. Why are we calling it a "working for a living" tax.
We need some cultural waves that carry liberal economic perspectives into the mainstream. How?