Where Did the Narrative Go?
So, um...
Where did our narrative go? You know "the Billionaires" "Oligarchs"?
Seems to me, with the sole exception of Zephyr Teachout, Progressives have let their eye get off the ball. We've got Herr Drumpf and the Crooked DNC and Clinton Foundation, but we have lost the focus on the real culprit -- the corporate sponsors.
Big Corporate & the Oligarchs have slipped back into the smoky room. Cigars, cognac & caviar, and off the record power lunches.
I think that a special part of Bernie was the narrative -- human beings vs Big Corporate & the Oligarchs. That narrative is lost these days, despite Big Corporate & the Oligarchs clobbering human beings on a daily basis.
We need to keep our eye on the ball and not get sucked in by the corporate propaganda. The politics of personality is a red herring to keep the public's focus off of the rotten corporate sponsored political system.
Progressives need to refocus.
Political Markets
We don't have elections. We have political markets. Billions of dollars per election cycle going out to thousands of Wasserman-Shultz's and a dozen media organizations.
The viability of a Presidential or important Congressional candidate in political markets is directly related to the size of the political war chest assembled through professional political fundraisers. Read between the lines and one is left with -- IOUs from Big Corporate & the Oligarchs is the deciding factor in American politics. Political favors is the currency of Political Markets.
Bernie, the young upstart, broke into the markets with a crowdfunded campaign that wowed the Establishment. His retail politics and organic nature of the internet led to unheard of collective action by a wide swath of American citizens.
Too bad the crowd don't fund the voting machines...
Business of Government
Neoliberalism is essentially the belief in the Business of Government. Profits are more important than people. People -- Citizens -- are worth what they can afford to consume. Citizens are like consumers of Government and consumers need jobs to feed the beast and keep them busy.
The People's business is not really that different from the private sector. Public programs should operate in the black, because to not profit is to waste opportunities. Under a People's Business regime, privatization of vital services is the sensible move, and it is... in a quarterly profits kind of way.
Bottom line thinking, clever accounting, and hyper focus short term gain are hallmarks of the Business of Government.
The Business of Government and Political Markets go hand in hand. These two ideas scream our political narrative -- Big Corporate & The Oligarchs run our political system and put profits before people.
Public Policy is a Terrible Business Plan
The eradication of Polio was a terrible business plan. Imagine the billions in profits available if we didn't eradicate Polio. There would be FDR Polio treatment centers on every corner. CVS would have a bunch of mechanical leg supports in high traffic areas.
And don't even get me started on the long tail of pharmaceutical profits...
Eradication of disease is terrible business. Long term treatments and pharmacological regimes are where the real money is at.
The Business of Government says that the Post Office and Amtrak have to make a profit.
Public Policy says that the Post Office and Amtrak are public services, like roads, that are worth funding to ensure that Americans live in a first world country.
Public Policy is the function of Government. Public Policy limits and curtails business interests -- that's often it's key function -- and that's a far cry from the Business of Government and Political Markets we suffer under today.
People Before Profits
We need to put people before profits and that means we must challenge, squarely, the entire Business of Government and Political Market regimes.
Syria should be framed as People before Profits. Why are we there? Who benefits? Who sponsors those decision makers. This is the Business of Government.
Universal Public Health Care should be offered at every logical juncture when talking about the ACA private health insurance program. And the ginormous trillion dollar slush-fund private insurance companies and high finance are gifted with should be highlighted. We need to put people before profits and deliver world class public health care to American citizens.
Every issue can be supplemented with the narrative of Big Corporate & the Oligarchs running the Business of Government and turning our elections and political system into a market place of corporate friendly ideas.
Comments
Global Elite Bankers
The Bernie shut-down was so complete for a time
that many of us see the battle lost. And find our own underground connection strategies. Tis scary to look at a bleaker life. Plenty of sources of that right at home now.
But you are correct, eyes on the prize. It's still out there, preening with our blood and tears.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
I Think Bernie, and More Importantly, the People Who Backed Him
really scared the shit out of the Establishment.
Look at how they were forced to upend reality.
We can't get stuck bitching about Clinton bullshit. We need to be going after their corporate and ideological sponsors. They're really in trouble right now.
We could go a long way towards some "Disaster Socialism" -- you know, having some ideas lying around for when the shit hits the fan. It would be nice to capitalize on the prophetic political outlook of the Left for once.
This would be much better than hanging the status quo around Clinton's head, solely and personally, while electing a "respectable moderate Republican" to shift gears from the tyranny of "Liberals".
That's what is going to happen if we take the corporate media bait and make this election about Herr Drumpf and Queen Hillary.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Exactly right
When did we stop doing this, and why is it progressives' fault if it stopped? I hear what you're saying, but blaming "progressives" seems unnecessary. We don't exactly run the media and therefore, we do not set the agenda.
If you're saying we have to get bigger and badder and louder, I'm all for it, but wondered what ideas we have about getting folks' attention with same. Where are we going from here?
I Think We Stopped Doing It When Bernie Acquiesced and Hillary
fans spiked the football.
Even Hillary's email problem, popping at this moment, is more than just Hillary. It's Nation of Men kind of stuff -- it's far more about Oligarchy and corporate sponsored public policy than it is about "corruption" or the Clintons.
The fact is that our political system has been reduced to political markets where money = speech and big corporate and the oligarchs are allowed to sponsor and directly influence elections.
If you are well connected and serve the oligarchy well, you can conduct the business of government unmolested. Open your mouth or stand up for the American citizen, and you can expect institutional pushback.
That's a fact... regardless of Hillary and her email problems.
Hillary's emails are a symptom of corporate sponsored public policy, not an aberration of American politics.
Selling offices and accepting foreign invest is not corruption. It is the business of government.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
The best thing happening with new email oopsies and leaks
is the naming of names. A fairly complete list of villain targets, of the invisible >1% can be made. That is one strategy.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Who Other Than Hillary Looks Bad?
I mean, she's the ethically challenged one, right?
We could just flush her, Bill, and Drumpf, and have a better political landscape, right?
I think the names falling out of the emails falls under tactics, which are only as useful as the strategy they support.
Rotating villains, historically, says Hillary will go down, and the Democrats will pay electorally in 2020 for her personal failings.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Its time to come up with different strategies
Demonstrating, and playing a game with cheaters doesn't work.
Lets use their greed and corruption against them. Why not work together to make them an offer they can't refuse and buy them out of their businesses. Then change the system so that it isn't rigged against regular people anymore and the money they just got is worthless?
Imagine playing Monopoly with a bunch of cheaters, you would never win. So, stop playing with the cheaters, change games, and now all of that Monopoly money is just that, Monopoly money and loses all of its power.
I like it
but where do we start?
This is it!
One of the big problems that we are dealing with is that these people see themselves very differently from the rest of us. Their unyielding belief in meritocracy is how they are able to justify the funneling upward of wealth and power to themselves. This is exactly why we can never appeal to neo-liberals based upon a moral or ethical argument.
In my series on neo-liberalism, I have stated that if one only reads one essay in the series, the essay on the neo-liberal myth of meritocracy is the one I always recommend. Thomas Frank hit the ball out of the park when he explained how meritocracy works.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Look, the Bank Is a Box Full of Paper. And the Banker Is Giving
that paper to his buddies and shorting you.
Of course nobody is going to play that game, but put people over a socially acceptable barrel and what's the alternative?
And I mean that, seriously, "What's the alternative?"
Jill Stein?
Bernie wasn't about Bernie. Bernie gave voice to the alternative: free college, free medicine, an economic floor ensuring human dignity. Not exactly radical ideas from an historical perspective, but given the state of 21st century political markets, it is the unthinkable.
Those things are incompatible with the Business of Government and corporate sponsored public policy, and as such they are political non-starters because they don't create direct profits and profit streams.
I think that is what we should be trying to articulate; the idea that the business of government, a completely legal perversion of self governance, is incompatible with a sustainable and prosperous future for the American citizen.
Profit at the expense of People (and the friggin' planet!!!) is one of the great threats that government exists to protect us from.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
What will we do with the message once articulated?
BTW, I like where you're going with this.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
We Spread It. Memes... Articles, LTEs, Video, Podcasts...
That really is the missing link, the distribution network. Memes and viral media are great, but they're memes dependent upon zeitgeist, wit, and chance to be picked up and ran with. And even then, they're weak compared to wall to wall corporate media.
Creating an alternative media delivery system is absolutely key to a Progressive future and an end to this neoliberal nightmare. I've had a few ideas over the years, connecting Mom & Pop, Mainstreet, and thoughtful consumers, but I pitched them to the gatekeepers of the gatecrashers and they declined to act, preferring to do google ads and whatnot.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
You are right, k9.
If I could just get my head out of my ass, you, me, and some others should have a meeting and talk about this.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
OK, so, you're right, but it gets difficult because
at this point, some of the political employees have become oligarchs themselves. That's if you're a Clinton. If you're a Bush, it works the other way around: you are a hands-on oligarch who wants to get into politics yourself and work next to (but always implicitly above) your colleagues. Cheney is like that too.
So in hating the DNC and Clinton and the mass media, people are actually hating the oligarchs and the oligarchy, because the Clinton family absolutely are oligarchs at this point--even if they are comparatively small fry. When you've got a 100 mil, you're moving into oligarch territory.
That said, you're totally right that we are getting overly distracted by our hatred of the DNC and what was just done to us. It's why the conversation is so relentlessly partisan these days.
It's understandable--if you just dealt with Dudley Dursley and his gang for the past 8 months, egged on by Veruca Salt, of course you're going to be distracted by your hatred of them. But you're right--we need to back up and regain perspective.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Neo-liberalism
The United States is a fully neo-liberal country. Along with its close cousin (neo-conservatism), neo-liberalism is exactly why the people of this country are losing ground. This ideology bleeds people dry and is intened to funnel all the wealth and power upwards toward a small group of people known as the meritocracy. I have been attempting to write a series on neo-liberalism for the last fifteen or so weeks.
I know that you disagreed with my framing in the last essay on infrastructure, but am not sure that you have read any of the other essays in the series. In the fourth essay, I listed the characteristics of neo-liberalism so that we would all be aware of just how this ideology has permeated our lives. Below are the characteristics of neo-liberalism as compiled by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia of Corporate Watch.
The reason the movers and shakers were so scared of Bernie's candidacy was that it showed just how deep the resentment of the people is toward the neo-liberal ideology and its impacts upon the people. The curtain has been pulled back and the people are no longer being fooled by neo-liberals masquerading as faux progressives.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
As a sidelight that I think illustrates your point, Brexit is
important because it clearly shows the neoliberal suppression of wages. In 2015, the UK took in over 300,000 immigrants, most came for jobs, most were legal under the EU. This put UK citizens up against the Poles who get, at home, 1/3 the wages of UK workers or the Portuguese who get, at home, 1/2 the wages of UK workers. And those who control the UK political economy are surprised that workers voted to try and keep their jobs by keeping out those who would undercut their wages?
I wish we could have a similar vote here in the USA.
Interestingly, a majority of registered Republicans oppose NAFTA and other fake-trade deals while only 50% of Democrats and Independents oppose them. I think you'll find a lot of Trump supporters among these people and they are trying to protect their jobs from the neoliberal onslaught.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
I Read Pretty Much All of Your Stuff, gulfgal.
I agree with exactly what you just wrote.
So how do we clue people in to this reality?
I believe one way to do it is to completely and repeatedly point a finger at Big Corporate & the Oligarchs (great name for a band, eh?) and leverage our clear understanding of the graft and ugly that is neoliberalism.
Bernie was great here during the early part of the campaign, when he was competitive. He skewered them with gut-punch, human framing.
Hillary and the Neoliberals ( heh, another great band name) can't use this gut-punch framing to foster change because neoliberalism is all about channeling that emotive political messaging to short-circuit solidarity between citizens that are getting screwed. The dispassionate "affordable health care" marketing crap and the platitudes of conventional wisdom fall flat on their face if you're paying attention to the con are the rhetorical tools used to talk about public policy.
These rhetorical tools are failing as the Big Lie is becoming un-believable.
I think that trafficking in human frames "All Americans deserve health care" and sussing out the rhetorical platitudes of corporate sponsored public policy (neoliberalism) -- expanding upon what the language really means and what the corporate sponsored policies actually do is the winner.
This is pretty much what Bernie did, but in addition to the gut-punch framing we can explore the realities of the dominant metaphor:
"Costs are not passed on to the consumer. Businesses charge what the market will bear." That is a sacrosanct law of the Market. It's a fact in business school. How could we miss this for so long?
"Flexible labor markets are good for the economy." Do you know what that means? What Greenspan actually said during the 2008 bubble is that ease of firing people is what is making our economy strong. That's not a healthy or secure citizenry.
Corporate sponsored public policy is killing America. It's hijacking government and making it serve and protect profit instead of people.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
I find your essay
to be the next big step in informing people and for me, the key word is "empowering' the people. Framing does matter and informing the people that we can do these things to benefit every one of us if we shift priorities.
It really does not take a large percentage of people to make the mountains move. I honestly believe we are in the last stages of the neo-liberal myth. The Occupy Movement, BLM, and Bernie have all helped pull the curtain back on the fleecing of the people. The question is can we turn things around before climate change dooms us all?
I hope you will write more on this subject. I am traveling this week and am not sure if I will get an essay up before next week.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
It Does Not Require Many People, But It Does Require Strategic
messaging and message discipline.
It also requires a complete wrapping of corporate sponsored public policy into identity politics. We should flip the script on them. We have our demographic research. There are rough spots between factions.
A well honed messaging routine could pop the wheels right off the corporate sponsored bus -- Right and Center.
Hell, just saying "Right and Center" for a couple years ought to make a dent. I think we've all been contributing to this cumulative social effect for some time -- Occupy, BLM, Bernie, etc...
Anyway, I would love to work on a project to blend identity politics with the Business of Government and corporate sponsored public policy.
Here are a few illustrations:
Liberal Media
The media is not liberal. It is corporate. Big corporate are the customers. The viewers are the product. This is true of social networks as well.
If it's free, you can bet that you are the product being sold.
Businesses pay the media to create a profit friendly reality. The End.
We don't get what we want -- we don't want "American Pickers" on the History Channel. We get whatever we will endure that is agreeable to the sponsors.
The Media is corporate and has a corporate bias.
For Profit Health Insurance and the ACA
American (the ACA) health insurance provides a yearly trillion dollar slush fund for Big Corporate & the Oligarchs. Mandated individual contributions are a pool of gold that the Masters of the Universe play with. "I just love how it glistens off my skin..."
This is the reason we can't have universal health care. To eliminate a trillion dollars of dumb money across ALL markets by getting rid of insurance companies would be terrible for GDP and corporate profits.
Public health care goes into a public pool for sensible, sovereign investment. Who benefits there?
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Neoliberalism is just a slick way of saying/writing
Nonliberalism. These yahoos control the verbal/written language. They studied the relationship between psychology and linguistics for years. Hence, the successful use of propaganda. REC'D!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
The problem with Bernie was...
He ran as a Democrat. If he where an independent, he would be beating both Clinton and Trump. BUT - there is no way he could have gotten his message out if he ran as some no-name independent. A catch 22. Perhaps, if he started running in 2004, then by now everybody would know who he was and his message would have been ripe in 2016. But that didn't happen. It took him many tries to win in Vermont; it would take him at least that much to gain traction in the Presidential setting. Bernie doesn't have that kind of time left. And frankly, I don't think we do either.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
The Narrative Is What Chris Matthews Says It Is
The M$M defines the narrative for 75% of Americans. The narrative is wehat Hillary says the narrative is. The progressive "narrative" is ridiculed out of existence. Who cares what a bunch of whacko "Berniebots" have to say?
Joe Scarborugh defines the narrative. Judge Judy and Jerry Springer define the narrative.
The medium is the message.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
The Question of our Time
[video:https://youtu.be/LHV8r4DxxDE]
If you want to beat the Oligarchy, you have to do it where it hurts them most, their bank account. They can buy all the private security contractors they want to physically protect themselves from some of the crazies, but they can't keep us from pulling our money from their banks, stop going to Walmart and finding local sources for food and other necessities, and most importantly, stop buy shit we don't "need".
I was watching a video with Killer Mike and he was advocating for people in Atlanta to move their money to a community bank, not all if it but at least $100 dollars and then getting 1 million people to do the same so as to suck 100 million out of the TBTF banks and stop using "national chains' and going to local stores.
[video:https://youtu.be/8Za4D4f3WPM]
From the YT channel:
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
It's Not the Money They Want, It's the Power.
It's not about depriving them of money or taking their money. It's about removing their lock on the electoral and regulatory process. I, literally, do not begrudge people shit tons of money. I do, however, begrudge people like a mofo when it comes to them leveraging their wealth against my and the American Citizen's interests.
And they could lose 50% of their cash tomorrow, but if the 99% lost 51% or more, they'd be totally happy.
My problem with "hitting them in the pocketbook" is that it's a money based solution. We need a human solution. And I know that's asking for a lot, but we've got to have a solution that doesn't evoke the idea of money or business.
Good luck, right?
And Killer Mike's Idea would be great, but we're getting ready to move to negative interest rates, and that means popular assault on corporate banking from the depositer's end could yield quite counter intuitive results.
Again, I think we have to attack the Government as Business metaphor and reinforce the idea of Government as a check against rapacious business.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
I reckon I'm not being clear
cause I'm an ignorant fool or just don't write worth beans. Not that I disagree with you, but to clarify, individually we have very little money or power, but together, we have more. I don't care how much one makes, it's the actions and their words, that proves if their human or not.
Humans, feel when others feel pain and suffering, and are compelled to act. But the oligarchy we have in place around the world today couldn't care less. They are not human. (Yes, I am dehumanizing them by their own actions, not just rhetoric) World poverty could be wiped out within a year, with the hidden capital stashed away in illegal tax havens.
I reckon I'm also a serious, diehard pessimist. If we're going to have a political revolution, it's not going to happen at the ballot box. It's not going to happen by logic and reasoned articles, essays and such things, not unless you can find another Thomas Paine. But obviously common sense went completely out the window with GWB.
The Oligarchy has only gotten more entrenched, because the f(expletive)ers we vote in office, screw us in the wazoo and pocket the money, and don't have a human heart in their body, evidenced by their indifference to massive human suffering all around they help cause and perpetrate. From Flint to Afghanistan to Iraq to Greece.
We need to coordinate bank withdraws with civic actions against the multinational corporations in our local communities, but on a planetary scale.
For get marching on Washington, march on our local city halls, in coordination across the country and the globe. And yes, where we can leverage the human element, I'm all for it, but obviously these people really don't give a flying two cents. (I realize these are kind of broad brush statements, not all rich people are turds. Some actually are living, breathing humans that do care and do contribute a lot to ease the pain and suffering of others)
Jamie Dimon, and his ilk, needs to feel like their way of life is threaten and could possibly lead to the poor house or jail for the multiple felony convictions his business has racked up since Dodd Frank was passed and he was CEO.
Money, is power, in the mind of others, who allow themselves to be bribed or seduced by it.
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
This is How We Win:
Your post, main ideas:
Actions, not words prove your human.
Humans empathize. The Oligarchy has no empathy.
The system is not working. New ideas, Reason, and persuasion is necessary.
We're getting screwed by moneyed factions, planet wide.
Protest bankers and global conglomerates.
Go Local.
Vampire squid Jamie Dimon should fear for his freedom.
I'm bullish on all of it. And we're talking about economic strong-arming and not once did you offer monetary or transactional metaphor.
This is key!
This is the Bernie Gut-Punch framing. I bet you could take this rant and rile the Left and the Right with it.
But how do we weaponize it? I think this is where framing comes into effect.
The masters of the universe don't care whether you can eat or feed your family. All they care about is that you pay your monthly service fees for vital services and that you don't have enough discretionary income to have the time to weigh your lot in life.
Nose to the grindstone, kid. Maybe you'll be a Drumpf some day. Don't slough off or you'll find yourself poor and destitute.
That's the conventional wisdom, and we all know it's bullshit -- Left, Right, and Democrat.
All we have to do is call it out because,"Working hard is for suckers." Real success means easy money. Workers are schmucks. They are consumers.
That's a fact. That's the rub.
We want to be humans, citizens, and at worst customers. But we're not. We're consumers.
We are worth what comes out of our wallets, and nothing more. We don't have enough in our wallets to warrant their attention. Until we realize that, this system will continue to chug along.
That realization, that consumers are worth less than citizens, and that freedom is not earned or purchased, if it happens, will be the catalyst that fosters change.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
The elite don't respond to 'humanity'
The respond to the loss of power. Money = Power. It is going to have to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
Neither Do the Populace, Apparently...
The Elite will never move due to human needs. But human needs will move the Elite. The only question is do a critical mass of people believe in humanity?
If not, can they be persuaded?
I believe if we can be persuaded, it will not be a money or economic argument. It will be a human one.
I also believe if the Elite are ever overthrown, it won't be the result of economics that does it. It will be humanity. Economics means 4 legs good, two legs better.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu