The Republican Dictionary ('04)

Link: The Republican Dictionary

by Katrina Vanden Huevel
The Nation, Nov. 2004

[excerpted; full text at the link above]

BI-PARTISANSHIP – When conservative Republicans work together with moderate Republicans to pass legislation Democrats hate.

CLARIFY – Repeating the same lie over and over again.

FAIRER – Regressive.

FAITH – The stubborn belief that God approves of Republican moral values despite the preponderance of textual evidence to the contrary.

HONESTY – Lies told in simple declarative sentences: "Freedom is on the march."

MORAL VALUES – Hatred of homosexuals dressed up in Biblical language.

MANDATE – What a Republican claims to possess when only 49 percent of the voting public loathes him instead of 51 percent.

THE MEDIA – Immoral elitist liberally-biased traitors who should leave Republicans alone so they can complete God's work on Earth in peace and quiet, behind closed doors.

PHILOSOPHY – Religion.

SIMPLIFY – To cut the taxes of Republican donors.

Believing in Miracles ('04)

Link: "Believing in Miracles"

by Hal Crowther
Dec. 2004

[excerpted; full text at the link above]

...The United States of America, technologically advanced, technically literate and nominally civilized, now stands in the dock of world opinion with little choice but to plead guilty to pernicious, pandemic, pre-Enlightenment, near-medieval gullibility....

The great abyss of difference that now yawns between Europe and America is the average American's eagerness to believe damn near anything....

Creationism, the kind of thing that leaves Europeans speechless, is the pièce de résistance of imbecile fundamentalist rubbish. When the Darwin-bashers crawl out and try to flex their muscle, bookburners and witchburners are never far behind....

The United States was founded by post-Enlightenment intellectuals, many of them agnostic, who pursued the science of liberty with the support of austere Anglicans, Congregationalists and Quakers. If you could poll the shades of the Founding Fathers, you'd be hard pressed to find one who believed in the Virgin Birth. What they all believed in passionately, and believed to be the cornerstone of democracy, was the strictest separation of church and state.

"What have been its fruits?" asked James Madison of state-supported Christianity. "More or less in most places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

In the USA ... the Dark Ages seem to loom ahead of us. What nation's intellectual history ever ran in reverse? ...


[emphasis added]

Jesus and Alinsky ('04)

Link: "Jesus and Alinsky"
by Walter Wink

[Excerpted; Full text at the link above.]

...There are three general responses to evil: (1) violent opposition, (2) passivity, and (3) the third way of militant nonviolence articulated by Jesus....

[nice explanation / re-interpretation of "if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" omitted here...]

Jesus' Third Way

• Seize the moral initiative.
  
• Find a creative alternative to violence.
  
• Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person.
  
• Meet force with ridicule or humor.
  
• Break the cycle of humiliation.
  
• Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position.
  
• Expose the injustice of the system.
  
• Take control of the power dynamic.
  
• Shame the oppressor into repentance.
  
• Stand your ground.
  
• Force the Powers into decisions for which they are not prepared.
  
• Recognize your own power.
  
• Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate.
  
• Force the oppressor to see you in a new light.
  
• Deprive the oppressor of a situation where force is effective.
  
• Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws.
  

... Maybe it would help to juxtapose Jesus' teachings with legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky's principles for nonviolent community action (in his Rules for Radicals) to gain a clearer sense of their practicality and pertinence to the struggles of our time. Among rules Alinsky developed in his attempts to organize American workers and minority communities are these:

• Power is not only what you have but what your enemy thinks you have.
  
• Never go outside the experience of your people.
  
• Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
  
• Make your enemies live up to their own book of rules.
  
• Ridicule is your most potent weapon.
  
• A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
  
• A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
  
• Keep the pressure on.
  
• The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
  
• The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure on the opposition.
  
• If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through to its counterside.
  
• The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
  
• Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.
  

... To Alinsky's list I would like to add another "rule" of my own: never adopt a strategy you would not want your opponents to use against you.

[This piece is reprinted from The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, edited by Paul Loeb]

How to Respond to Conservatives ('04)

Link: How To Respond To Conservatives
by George Lakoff

[edited; full text at the link above]

[I'm not very good at this. I get too angry. And I believe the facts should convince any rational person.]


1. Show respect
2. Respond by reframing
3. Think and talk at the level of values
4. Say what you believe

Now the details:

Progressive values are the best of traditional American values. Stand up for your values with dignity and strength. You are a true patriot because of your values.

• Show respect to the conservatives you are responding to. No one will listen to you if you don't accord them respect.
  
  
• Listen to them. You may disagree strongly with everything that is being said, but you should know what is being said. Be sincere. Avoid cheap shots.
  
  
• What if they don't show you respect? Two wrongs don't make a right. Turn the other cheek and show respect anyway. That takes character and dignity. Show character and dignity.
  
  
• Avoid a shouting match. Remember that the radical right requires a culture war, and shouting is the discourse form of that culture war. You gain a victory when the discourse turns civil. They win when they get you to shout.
  
  What if you have moral outrage? You should have moral outrage. But you can display it with controlled passion. If you lose control, they win.
  
  
• Distinguish between ordinary conservatives and nasty ideologues. Most conservatives are personally nice people, and you want to bring out their niceness and their sense of neighborliness and hospitality.
  
  
• Be calm. Calmness is a sign that you know what you are talking about.
  
  
• Be good-humored. A good-natured sense of humor shows you are comfortable with yourself.
  
  
• Hold your ground. Always be on the offense. Never go on defense. Never whine or complain. Never act like a victim. Never plead. Avoid the language of weakness, for example, rising intonations on statements. Your voice should be steady. Your body and voice should show optimism. You should convey passionate conviction without losing control.
  
  
• Conservatives have parodied liberals as weak, angry (hence not in control of their emotions), weak-minded, softhearted, unpatriotic, uninformed, and elitist. Don't give them any opportunities to stereotype you in any of these ways. Expect these stereotypes, and deal with them when they come up.
  
  By the way you conduct yourself, show strength, calmness, and control; an ability to reason; a sense of realism; love of country; a command of the basic facts; and a sense of being an equal, not a superior. At the very least you want your audience to think of you with respect, as someone they may disagree with but who they have to take seriously. In many situations this is the best you can hope for. You have to recognize those situations and realize that a draw with dignity is a victory in the game of being taken seriously.
  
  
• Don't expect to convert staunch conservatives.
  
  
• Avoid the usual mistakes. Remember, don't just negate the other person's claims; reframe. The facts unframed will not set you free. You cannot win just be stating the true facts and showing that they contradict your opponent's claims. Frames trump facts. His frames will stay and the facts will bounce off. Always reframe.
  
  
• Once your frame is accepted into the discourse, everything you say is just common sense. Why? Because that's what common sense is: reasoning within a commonplace, accepted frame.
  
  
• Never answer a question framed from your opponent's point of view. Always reframe the question to fit your values and your frames. This may make you uncomfortable, since normal discourse styles require you to directly answer questions posed. That is trap. Practice changing frames.
  
  
• Be sincere. Use frames you really believe in, based on values you really hold.
  
  
• Tell a story. Build up a stock of effective stories.
  
  
• Always start with values, preferably values all Americans share like security, prosperity, opportunity, freedom, and so on. Try to win the argument at the values level.
  
  
• Remember that our goal is to unite our country behind our values, the best of traditional American values. Right-wing ideologues need to divide our country via a nasty cultural civil war. They need discord and shouting and name-calling and put-downs. We win with civil discourse and respectful cooperative conversation.
  

Examples

• If they are nurturant at home but strict in business, talk about the home and family and how they relate to political issues:
  
  Real family values mean that your parents, as they age, don't have to sell their home or mortgage their future to pay for health care or the medications they need.
  
  
• Use rhetorical questions: Wouldn't it be better if…? Such a question should be chosen to presuppose your frame:
  
  Wouldn't it be better if we had a president who went to war with a plan to secure the peace?
  
  
• Suppose someone argues against a form of universal health care. If people don't have health care, he argues, it's their own fault. They're not working hard enough or not managing their money properly. We shouldn't have to pay for their lack of initiative or their financial mismanagement.
  
  Most of the forty million people who can't afford health care work full-time at essential jobs that cannot pay enough to get them health care. Yet these working people support the lifestyles of the top three-quarters of our population. Some forty million people have to do those hard jobs—or you don't have your lifestyle. America promises a decent standard of living in return for hard work. These workers have earned their health care by doing essential jobs to support the economy. There is money in the economy to pay them. Tax credits are the easiest mechanism. Their health care would be covered by having the top two percent pay the same taxes they used to pay. It's only fair that the wealthy pay for their own lifestyles, and that people who provide those lifestyles get paid fairly for it.
  
  
• Your opponent says, “We should get rid of taxes. People know how to spend their money better than the government.”
  
  “The government has made very wise investments with taxpayer money. Our interstate highway system, for example. You couldnʼt build a highway with your tax refund. The government built them. Or the Internet, paid for by taxpayer investment. You could not make your own Internet. Most of our scientific advances have been made through funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health—great government investments of taxpayer money. No matter how wisely you spent your own money, youʼd never get those scientific and medical breakthroughs. And how far would you get hiring your own army with your tax refund?”
  
  
• Use wedge issues, cases where your opponent will violate some belief he holds no matter what he says. Suppose he brings up abortion:
  
  Raise the issue of military rape treatment. Women soldiers who are raped (by our own soldiers, in Iraq, or on military bases) and who subsequently get pregnant presently cannot end their pregnancies in a military hospital, because abortions are not permitted there. A Military Rape Treatment Act would allow our raped women soldiers to be treated in military hospitals to end their rape-induced pregnancies.
  
  If he agrees, he sanctions abortion, in government-supported facilities no less, where doctors would have to be trained and facilities provided for terminating pregnancies. If he disagrees, he dishonors our women soldiers who are putting their lives on the line for him. To the women it is like being raped twice—once by a criminal soldier and once by a self-righteous conservative.
  
  
• Suppose he starts touting smaller government:
  
  Point out that conservatives donʼt really want smaller government. They donʼt want to eliminate the military, or the FBI, or the Treasury and Commerce Departments, or the nine-tenths of the courts that support corporate law. It is big government that they like. What they really want to do away with is social programs—programs that invest in people, to help people to help themselves. Such a position contradicts the values the country was founded on—the idea of a community where people pull together to help each other. From John Winthrop on, that is what our nation has stood for.
  
  
• Your opponent may use language that means the opposite of what he says, called Orwellian language. Realize that he is weak on this issue. Use language that accurately describes what heʼs talking about to frame the discussion your way. Suppose he cites the “Healthy Forests Initiative” as a balanced approach to the environment:
  
  Point out that it should be called “No Tree Left Behind” because it permits and promotes clear-cutting, which is destructive to forests and other living things in the forest habitat. Use the name to point out that the public likes forests, doesnʼt want them clear-cut, and that the use of the phony name shows weakness on the issue. Most people want to preserve the grandeur of America, not destroy it.
  

Dubya's supporters ('04)

Link: "The Homecoming"
by Hal Crowther
Oct. '04

[excerpted; full text at the above link]

... If ever there was a deal-breaker, a faith-breaker between a president and the people who elected him ..., it's this bloody-minded travesty of a war that Bush concocted out of far-right obsessions and cooked intelligence, lied flagrantly to legitimize and then pursued to such a tragic, pitiful cul-de-sac. Such poor judgment yoked to such abysmal incompetence is unprecedented in all presidential history known to me....

I disagree with Bush on virtually every issue; most of his supporters support him for reasons I find incomprehensible or abhorrent. In four short years his administration has poisoned or criminally neglected our economy, our environment, our international reputation and our tradition of human rights and civil liberties. Even science has come under fierce attack by a right-wing coalition of corporate thugs and fundamentalist illiterates....

The great mystery is, who are The Others--the 45 percent or more who manage to believe in this man and his war?...

When you add up neocon imperialists, assault-gun psychos, shallow-closet segregationists, fat-wallet whores who coddle fascists for the sake of deeper tax cuts, fundamentalists for whom pro-choice is pro-Satan, Darwin is Mephistopheles and the Book of Revelation is the literal word of God -- this loose federation of unsavory cults and cliques that make up the modern Republican Party -- you know they don't add up to anything close to an electoral majority....

Where, then, are the rest of the true believers, the Bush bedrock...?

"People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about," writes [Thomas] Frank [in What's the Matter With Kansas]... He describes "a panorama of madness and delusion ... of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of working-class guys delivering up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life and transform their region into a 'rustbelt.'" ...

It's here in the empty country that the great Republican gullibility holds sway. People surrender their soldier-children, their votes, their meager taxes without a murmur, then call in to right-wing radio hosts to rage about abortionists and same-sex marriage. Where hope is hard to find, people turn to more accessible emotions, like anger and fear.

It takes enemies to give them purpose in the world, and if Osama bin Laden is out of range they're happy to substitute you and me--the too-tolerant, too-skeptical "secular humanists" for whom, ironically, the post-Enlightenment American democracy was expressly designed.

The Republicans are wondrous manipulators of these lost souls, these disenfranchised Middle Americans....

The Day the Enlightenment Went Out ('04)

Link: The Day the Enlightenment Went Out

by Garry Wills
New York Times
Nov. 4, 2004

[excerpted; full text at the above link]

... [Dubya's re-election] might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage....

Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?...

We now resemble [the secular states of modern Europe] less than we do our putative enemies.

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.

President Bush promised in 2000 that he would lead a humble country, be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by being a divider, pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue nearly half of the nation....

The moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay even to nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment.

Why Americans Hate Democrats ('04)

Link: "Why Americans Hate Democrats"
by Jane Smiley
Slate, Nov. 4, 2004

[excerpted; full article at above link]

... It's time to be honest about our antagonists....

The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry....

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states....

The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America.... The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind.

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you -- if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it.

Next, they tell you that you are the best of a bad lot (humans, that is) and that as bad as you are, if you stick with them, you are among the chosen....

The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do -- they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable....

Third, and most important, when life grows difficult or fearsome, they (politicians, preachers, pundits) encourage you to cling to your ignorance with even more fervor.... (* See below)

A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey -- workers and consumers.

The architects of this strategy knew perfectly well that they were exploiting, among other unsavory qualities, a long American habit of virulent racism, but they did it anyway, and we see the outcome now....

remember that threats to democracy from the right always collapse. Whatever their short-term appeal, they are borne of hubris and hatred, and will destroy their purveyors in the end.

- - - - - - - -

(*) Now, in 2010, that reminds me of this:

Barack Obama caught on cellphone video during a campaign fund-raiser in April '08:

"... Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives....

"It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations...."

Full video (Click "more info" on the right for the transcript.)

Unitarian Jihad ('05)

Link: "Unitarian Jihad"
by Jon Carroll
San Francisco Chronicle
April 8, 2005

[excerpted; full text at the link above.]

... Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary....

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression!...

Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea?...

We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other.... Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.

We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone....

People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again!...

This startling new underground group spreads lack of panic! Citizens declare themselves "relatively unafraid" of threats of undeclared rationality. People can still go to France, terrorist leader says....

- - - - - -

Find your Unitarian Jihad name at the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator.

Why are gay pride celebrations still needed? ('88)

[OK, so I'm cheating a bit with the "best letters" tag below. This isn't exactly a letter, but it's my best article (so far) on the need for being out and speaking out.]

This appeared in The Occidental April 22, 1988:

FROM THE DESK OF
Rodney Hoffman

Maybe you're saying, "Lesbian and Gay Awareness Week? Why? What more do I need to be aware of?"

Let me tell you a story. This is a story from the bad old days, say 20 years ago.

You're in high school. Dating and sex are even more confusing than they were supposed to be. Something isn't right. Your hormones are raging, but not always "correctly." Your eye is caught by the "wrong" people and pictures. Your daydreams veer in unintended directions, no matter how you try to keep them on course.

You try to talk to friends, family, clergy, but they don't want to hear about it, or they don't believe it, or they just condemn it, or they say, "Ignore it. It will go away."

But nothing seems to work -- not prayer, not counseling, not cold showers. You try dating much more often, but it's clear your date's feelings and expectations don't match yours. You fear you're just using people, and you worry about hurting them.

You know what "homosexual" means -- queer, cursed, sick, sinful, criminal. You live in a society that hates you. You begin to hate yourself.

            - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Well, I won't stay with the story; you get the idea. Pretty depressing. It was a pretty common true story. Those of us who lived through something like that don't enjoy remembering it. After I fought my way past all that confusion and hatred, I was still bitterly angry, and I asked myself, "What can I do to make life easier for others? What in the world can help a sexually confused 15-year-old?"

"But," you say, "that was 20 years ago. Things are different now." Yes, a little bit, but not enough.

Thankfully, one difference is that many colleges now have gay and lesbian student groups like Oxy's GALA. GALA offers a safe support group, a source of friends and social activities, a resource for learning about the outside lesbian and gay community, and a place to work for further needed changes.

Another difference is political. We've successfully changed some of the worst laws, educated some politicians, even elected some of our own. We have non-discrimination laws in some cities like Los Angeles. But the opportunistic hate-mongers are still with us. Look at Proposition 69 we'll be voting on in a few weeks. The state defeated it less than two years ago by more than 70%, but it's back on the ballot again, a little worse. State Assemblymember LaFollette wants to blackmail the Los Angeles School District into stopping its groundbreaking gay counseling program, Project 10 at Fairfax High. There's lots of work still to do in politics.

What about other institutions? Religion, psychiatry, media, schools, the arts, employers, .... In every field, there have been some positive changes, and there is plenty of work still to do.

Still, all of this desperately-needed work with institutions and organizations is only a small part of the answer. As one gay writer has put it, "We demand only the freedom to be who we are. The fact that this demand, which takes away nothing from anyone else, is met with such obstinate resistance is a noteworthy indication of how deep-seated is the hostility against us."

People feel such hostility because they were brought up that way. To really help that anguished 15-year-old, I have to reach his or her parents and family and friends and clergy and .... you. The hurt can only stop if the world around that 15-year-old changes. THAT'S why we have a Lesbian and Gay Awareness Week. THAT'S "what more" there is to be aware of.

When I was younger and more idealistic I wanted to change the world. I still do. Join me.

Dubya: changing a lightbulb ('05)

Floating around online in 2005:

Q: How many Bush Administration officials does
it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light
bulb; its condition is improving every day.
Any reports of its lack of incandescence are
illusional spin from the liberal media.
Illuminating rooms is hard work. That light
bulb has served honorably, and anything you
say undermines the lighting effort. Why do
you hate freedom?