Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Investing in Division, Cashing the Dividend

Eating a Casserole of Complaints and History

Some observers of the modern American political theatre suffer an unavoidable disadvantage when it comes to objectively appraising the legitimacy of its modern, violently bifurcated state.  They can't help themselves too much.  Their handicap springs from their youth. 

MeanMesa, on the other hand, having been an intermittently conscious observer of this very same phenomenon during decades of our world's recent journeys around the sun, enjoys whatever shred of perspective which becomes available from experience.  This means that MeanMesa, again, without particularly ever adopting a "whole hearted" dedication to seeing all of this, can simply remember more of the details which may, at this late stage, have been lost amid the "big ticket items" more easily recovered from our history.

What in the world does this possibly mean?  What in the world is the point?

The exact point is that MeanMesa's casual memory -- not from the halcyon days of Genghis Khan or Pope Urban, but say, only back to the Richard Nixon era, then forward -- now provides a disturbing model of the fundamental plan for the systematic division of Americans as a political priority.  The "prize" on the table all the way through this has been, of course, votes in an election.  

Clearly, traditional political discourse was calculated as having become too risky.  It's reliance on conclusions reached through consideration of actions became problematic for those with records of, shall we say, actions better left hidden and not considered.

"Hidden?"  Really?  

In such cases, "hidden" means no longer considered.  When public, political actions can be simplified and re-framed into to an altered perception from which they are no longer decisive factors in the decision making of the electorate, we may presume that they have been "hidden."  When this is accomplished successfully, these factors are no longer "players" in an electorate's decision process, a cheap, but obvious advantage to the "actors" who have performed such "actions."

Factors Making Blind Division 
More Appealing Than Discourse
as a political strategy

Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, Banging His Shoe During 1960 UN Speech (image source)
"We will bury you!"

During the "hottest moments" of the Cold War US national unity was essentially unanimous.  There were always a few, very rational, "big picture" voices posing questions about the reasonableness of a national nuclear policy of Mutual Assured Destruction [M.A.D.], but these voices were lost amid the vastly greater numbers of Americans who spent their days quietly terrified.  No one was particularly in favor of losing a nuclear war with the Russians -- even if the alternative meant effectively destroying the planet.

The politicians of the day looked back at Ike Eisenhower's "coincidental gift" of this historical national unity with covetous eyes.  With so much foreign policy vindication, all sorts of political possibilities emerged, things such as Ike's 90% capital tax rates and his massive investment in the interstate highway system.

The Nixon Agnew  Contextual Legacy
A Beginning

However, by the time Richard Nixon finally reached the Oval Office, the old "freedom and liberty at any price" energy of the Eisenhower times had begun to wane.  The M.A.D. policy no longer mustered its reckless shine.  It had become a relentless, year in year out, dismal toothache for an electorate which had previously bravely revelled in it.  Likewise, the Communist baiting gambit had also lost a bit of its earlier steam.

Nixon's challenge was clear.  How could the electorate be returned to that same state of useful agitation?  The ICBM's had already been built and paid for, NATO was successfully facing the threat of the Warsaw Pact and the seas were crawling with silent, US and Soviet nuclear submarines off the respective shores of "oceans which no longer protected anybody."

Well, fear had consolidated the country before, and that idea held the inebriating prospect of unifying American again if it could just be packaged and marketed well enough.  Enter Vice President Spiro Agnew, a fear mongering ex-Maryland Governor who had no problem coughing up red meat for a nation already obese with "Red hatred" from the Krushchev days.

Nixon's predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, the main "meat grinding" sponsor of the disaster in Viet Nam, hadn't enjoyed a good night's sleep for years.  The "peace voices" had expanded to huge numbers since the relatively quiet dissent of the Eisenhower days.  Nixon, still busily extracting the last morsel of blind nationalistic fervor -- and electoral college votes -- from what remained of the Soviet terror, decided that a carefully orchestrated division between the pro-war and anti-war voters would serve him well politically.

However, Johnson had never forcefully indicted the opposition to his war making with public comments.  Instead, he has repeatedly taken the sympathy evoking "grandfatherly approach," painting himself as an unwilling general, constantly tormented by the massive casualties.  But, very much like Eisenhower, all sorts of difficult political accomplishments were made under the "cover" of the nightmare in Asia.  Traditional criticism of things such as Johnson's War On Poverty were somewhat stilled by a patient hope that maybe the blood soaked war monger could be distracted with by success at a few domestic ambitions.

Nixon took an almost opposite approach.  Speaking through the already soiled jaws of his Vice President, out came the epithets of division.  Disagreeing with the President's war policies was no longer merely an acceptable debate, it amounted to a stark, crushing, self-admission of a genetic patriotism defect for all who dared oppose.  

History had conveniently provided Nixon and Agnew the necessary "others," too.  The country was still infested with millions of sex loving hippies who had little appetite for participation in a eviscerating, failed, Asian ground war.

J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew (image source)
We underestimated the enduring savagery -- and its durability.

From Wiki: (Wiki article here Note: links remain enabled.)
Agnew was known for his scathing criticisms of political opponents, especially journalists and anti-war activists. He attacked his adversaries with relish, hurling unusual, often alliterative epithets—some of which were coined by White House speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan—including "pusillanimous pussyfooters", "nattering nabobs of negativism" (written by Safire), and "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history".[14] He once described a group of opponents as "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

The Agnew gambit largely succeeded.  The population was adroitly divided between those with unexamined past biases toward unquestioned, military nationalism and those who, when asked to bleed to prove a modern "domino theory," became increasingly reluctant.

The die was cast.  Opposition to the President was not just political discourse any longer.  With the words of Vice President Agnew, it had officially become "unofficial treason."  As it turns out, the divisive inertia was still not great enough to protect the President from the consequences of his other "habits."

The Die Is Cast

The old model of the electorate was a complicated thing.  Of course there were blocks of single issue "interest" votes, but these were not in the purified form we see today.  Running all through them were voters with strong, single interest issues, but just beyond that easily detectable threshold, the same voters had all sorts of other, mixed interests, too.  To win an election, voters were confronted with a long series of questions along the lines of "How much is this worth to me compared to that?"

The analysis of such a dynamic mixture made winning an election partly science and partly poker.  Candidates such as Reagan and Bush Sr. actually nuanced some of their platform positions to tempt some part of the mixed issues, partial agreement crowd into "cutting their losses."  What Quixotic surrogate Agnew had boldly trotted out, lesser egos had only nibbled previously.

Meanwhile, however, a new realization was crystallizing in the minds of political strategists.  If the nuances could be eliminated in favor of deceptively simple phrases which were easily appealing to detectable demographics of voters, the chaos of the previous discourse would gradually be replaced by a literal marching band of true believers.

Technology cooperated in the effort.  The statistical interpretation of public opinion was been honed to an all time accuracy.  The scope and availability of media resources to further groom "kernels" of over simplified propositions into strongly held beliefs had mushroomed ten fold from its 1960's Eisenhower state.

The "fear investment" had proved its worth during the Cold War, but the emergence of the US as the last man standing when the Berlin wall fell made the mortal fear of the Eisenhower consolidation a thing of the past.  Reagan had no soul threatening wars and governed during a time when no one could hurt us.  New enemies had to be created, but a passive reliance on a hostile world to automatically provide them left the job unfilled.

The Reagan - Bush H. Divisions

Reagan, finding himself stranded without an active war, still faced the necessity of re-initiating the then already traditional Republican domestic strategy of creating some sort of "red meat" based division somewhere.  His "Cuban gambit" fizzled with the quick, non-nightmarish, military success in Granada. Yet, he still needed the cover of the "us and them" voter mentality to smoke screen the Iran - Nicaragua scandal and his relentless middle class tax increases.

Reagan found his new "division scheme" buried in gaseous comparisons of "big government" versus "small government" innuendo in the electorate.  His media handlers almost immediately aggravated this twinkly beginning into a rampage of government hatred in general.  His attack on Libya and his carefully choreographed scheduling of the Iranian hostage release as an Inauguration Gift from the Ayatollah [along with the weapons business, of course] added the prospect of an additional division of voters between those wishing to "be tough" on the world and those inclined to something more successful.

Invading Granada.  "Nancy, are these the brave boys killed by the Muslims?"
Reagan's protege', Bush Sr., was, once again, faced with the necessity of "firing up" the Party base with something divisive while violating the "no new taxes" liturgy at the same time.  Sadam Hussein's barbarism in Kuwait was low hanging fruit.

Domestic Division Under the Autocrat, Bush Jr.

The less a Republican President's capacity for leadership the greater his appetite for a possible political advantage from more division.  Although the "W." enjoyed dominance over the Congress, his personal weakness had attracted some very undesirable and opportunistic company to the White House -- companions with outrageous looting agendas of their own.  Predictably, the "division investment" lurched forward at full throttle.

History had gloriously fermented the casks of division which had been so lovingly placed in the wine cellar below the White House.  Amid his Bible Study infatuation with invading the non-believers and his own Inauguration Gift of 9/11, the GOP division campaign opened to doors to a "festival of hate and fear" beyond anything seen before.

While the ancient Agnew had threatened dissenters with "being thrown under the jail," the autocracy launched all engulfing campaigns of "They hate our freedom." and the now infamous, "Cut and Run."  The thoughtful acquisition of massive media influence by his predecessors had also provided an astonishing addition to the "spring wine's aging process."

The media saturation was so immense that a new phenomenon developed almost over night.  There were now blocks of the political base which existed exclusively within the bubble of hate radio and television.  These were no longer residents of the previous "Venn Diagram" of mixed issues.  Within this incendiary minority the hate message constituted their full experience of political reality.  The previous discussions of "pros and cons" had been replaced by a sterile, narcotic, single mindedness defined by the endless stream of low syllable count, ideological "simplisms."

The new form of thought was as accessible, convenient and as filling as factory sliced white bread.  No effort was required, and, naturally, it "caught on" like gang busters.  The result was a country fundamentally divided not just on opinions, but with an overly agitated minority defined artificially by what came to be perceived as "basic facts." 

Where Do We Go From Here?

Although there have been more than a few moments of "hysterical success" as the division plan has unfolded, things have now entered a new phase for the "flame salesmen."  The country has become so ossified in the scheme of division, even the language we use while describing national possibilities has become conceptually obsolete.  An example would be Congressman Kucinich's traditionalist insistence that authorization for Obama's Libyan plans be approved by a Congress which couldn't approve a plan to fix a broken Capitol Hill urinal.

The well engineered divisiveness which had been initially employed to provide political cover and distraction and only later, a mindless, ideologically consolidated voting base, has now reached a cannibalistic stage.  Previously, it guaranteed voices of blind support for questionable executive schemes, but now, questionable political schemes are being fabricated with the exclusive ambition of attracting the support of the consolidated minority.

All this would be "good politics" if the product of the divisiveness has been an actual voting majority, but the scheme consistently failed to produce that majority.  Instead, it produced a minority -- very nicely amplified by the corporatist media -- which was louder than the majority, not more numerous.  This worked for a while.  For example, it "worked" in the 2010 mid term election.

The "voice" of a starkly underpopulated product of the division effort was synthetically enhanced into what momentarily appeared to be a "groundswell" of public opinion.  Corporate law firms such as Freedom Works demonstrated their well honed expertise at manufacturing such deceptions with the complicity of the corporate media -- and not just FOX, either.  Every "news" network eagerly participated.

In fact, the "value" of an ever increasing expertise to further inflame and manipulate this minority grew similar to claims of a technological breakthrough in buggy whip design.  The argument for the value of it could only be sustained so long as one didn't notice all the Model T's rolling by the factory.

Now we have reaped the "rewards" of our political folly.  Among us we find a highly consolidated minority with opinions which cannot be swayed by current realities.  As MeanMesa makes plans for campaigning in the 2012 election, little effort need be reserved for discourse with this minority.  To them, facts mean nothing.  Although this state may be considered a success by the division mongers, it is a cul de sac -- one which is draining the essential diversity from what had been a dynamic system previously.

Those voters who either already agree to vote --  or even might agree to vote -- with the politics of MeanMesa are the only ones we want to talk to and canvass.  The reactionary minority has no interest in casting a vote even a single millimeter beyond the boundaries of the what they have been told are the facts.  They are hostile, frightened denizens of a cheap, un-American scheme of political subterfuge.

They are the modern Republicans.

There is no particular reason to count on their help with the responsibilities of operating our democracy.  This is not a hand wringing, hopeless lament about the "good old days."  This is a 21st Century embrace of reality.

A Conclusion:  The Dog Story

You have a dog.  You really like him.  You love him like a child. You really like having him around the house.  He's lively and animated.  When you have company, your dog jumps up on them.  You make a few excuses and, perhaps, scold your dog a little, but both you and your dog know that these are nothing serious.  You have no intention of disciplining your dog because you think that such behavior would be cruel.

Then you die.

The word travels among your friends.  "Would anyone like to take the dog?"  Of course, no one wants the dog.

Although it used to seem like "love," the true nature of "cruel" is revealed.

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