John Boehner says he understands Occupy Wall Street "frustrations"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Try not to snicker as the Speaker plays the faux populist card:

"I understand people's frustrations," Boehner said during an appearance at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville. "The economy is not producing jobs like they want and there's lot of erosion of confidence in our government and frankly, under the First Amendment, people have the right to speak out... but that doesn't mean they have the permission to violate the law."

Allow me to respond:

First, only an extremely tiny minority of protesters, and not even real protesters, are violating the law or otherwise acting in anything other than a peaceful manner. But of course those who oppose the protests, those in the GOP and right-wing media, are holding up those rare exceptions as a way to discredit the entire movement.

Second, the movement is not only, or even mostly, about the current state of the economy. It's not about jobs or confidence in the federal government. To put it that way is to suggest that the movement is angry with Obama, whom Republicans like to try to blame for the bad economy and lack of jobs (when of course they really only have themselves to blame for opposing adequate measures to get the economy, as well as the job market, going again). The movement is about the plutocracy of the 1%, the domination of America (and the vast majority of Americans) by the wealthy few, specifically those in the financial industry. Note that it's Occupy Wall Street, not Occupy Capitol Hill or the White House.

Third, calling them "frustrations" is a way to write them off as irrational and essentially unworthy of being addressed in any serious way. The protesters aren't just frustrated with the way things are, they're speaking out against the gross injustice that is rotting the core of American society. (Calling them frustrations also allows for those committing and profiting off that injustice to be excused of all responsibility. You can be frustrated with the weather or with the traffic. So what? This is about so much more.)

Fourth, Boehner may understand these "frustrations" more than most other Republicans, but that doesn't mean he gets what the movement is all about. He clearly doesn't.

Fifth, understanding doesn't mean giving a shit (or wanting to do anything about it). That's the key distinction here.

Fighting Fire With Fire

 

By Carl

 

I was watching a re-run of Stephen Colbert last night, the one where he consults with Republican strategist Frank Luntz regarding the message that Colbert Super-Pac wants to sell to the American people: Corporations are people, too.

 

Luntz is a master of the summing up complex concepts into sound bites.

 

Let me rephrase that: he's the master of summing up noxious concepts into palatable sound bites and vice versa (for example, he came up with "death taxes" for estate taxes.)

 

His phrasing evokes emotional responses. He's very good at that.

 

We have to get better. And here's where this ties in to the current situation in this country.

 

Occupy Wall Street terrifies the people in charge. After all, there are tens of thousands of people nationwide who are camping, day in and day out, to protest the inherent inequality of income and the inherent unfairness of the US tax code.

 

I've been straining to recall when a Teabagger rally on similar topics lasted for more than a few hours, and that was in clement weather in the spring and summer. These kids have made it through a freak snowstorm and are still hanging in there.

 

How could the powers that be not be afraid?

 

Think about that imagery: the right, via their useful idiots and tools, has tried to cast OWS as a bunch of spoiled white lefty brats who's mommies and daddies cut them out of the will because they were dope-addled and sexually promiscuous (itself, a pretty powerful trope: the scary hippy.)

 

That imagery, which had some legs at first because of the way the news reported the story (up until the pepper-spray incident,) as a bunch of disgruntled interns and low-level clerical workers with English degrees getting fired and thrown out of their apartments, sort of falls apart after the first week of camp-outs, much less the subsequent brute force by the police, the cooling temperatures, the world-wide solidarity, and the general genial mien taken by the protestors.

 

The right couldn't just mash this into the dirt and cover it over, is what I'm saying.

 

The imagery the OWS folks have out there is now too powerful, and although the colder weather will likely lessen in its impact, it can always be picked up again in the spring. It's an emotional, gut protest, and people have responded to it.

 

This is the kind of imagery and argument we need to raise elsewhere. Right now, the craftsmen of the right, like Luntz, have co-opted the dialogue. We need to get it back. But how?

 

We need to look to marry language to logic, but also to emotions. We need arguments that are so simple and so powerful that they defy rebuttal.

 

Let's take the abortion argument for a moment. The single biggest protest in America is the annual March For Life. March for Life attracts upwards of a quarter-million people consistently. 

 

Abortion is an emotional matter for them. We can cite statistics until we're blue in the face, like how the US birth rate has not declined one bit despite all these "millions of dead babies" (their term,) or we can talk about the improvement in the quality of living the babies which are eventually born not to teenage mothers but to women with jobs and careers and long-term partners will have. Not one second of these arguments will sway a single mind on the right.

 

And those are perfectly logical arguments. But why not tie those to the alternative: women who spend twenty years in servitude (slavery even) because they've made a mistake.

 

Why not provide imagery, in the form of a counter-protest: get five thousand women to march in torn dirty muslin smocks, chained at the neck and feet with dolls dangling from the other end of those chains?

 

After all, if the scare tactic of showing photos of an aborted fetus is within bounds for the religious right, then equally alarming and disturbing imagery ought to be utilized in response.  

 

We need to make an emotional case to the American people about the progressive agenda. We don't have much time and there is much to be done. The nation is heading down a bleak path, even if we can all pull together and we must all pull together or things will get dire, indeed.

 

(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)

What the hell's wrong with Rick Perry?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, this is from a speech Rick Perry gave in New Hampshire last Friday. (Enjoy it with your morning coffee/tea.)

Some are speculating that he was drunk. I have no idea. Maybe.

Whatever he was, sober or not, he doesn't appear to have been in his right mind, to the extent that he has a right mind.

He certainly wasn't presidential.

As Blue Texan wrote: "I've been watching the Secessionist up close for a number of years now and never seen him quite like this. Had one of the Texas Rangers he's traveling with administered a sobriety test after this speech — I'm pretty sure he would've flunked."

As Politico reported: "The Texas governor gave what can generously be described as an odd performance before the conservative group Cornerstone Action.

Odd. Bizarre. Call it what you want. For some time now I've been saying that Perry is on the way back, that he can get his campaign going again and challenge Romney for the nomination, that he's in a great position to unite the right.

Let's just say I'm having my doubts.