reflectivepundit

Democrats in Need of Soundbite Messages

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In today’s print edition of the New York Times a full-page column by Ezra Klein is headed by the headline, “Can Democrats Find A Winning Message?” (The online version has a different title). This is a pressing question for those who still hope that Donald Trump’s handiwork in favor of illiberal democracy and authoritarian rule can be stopped. Klein’s opinion piece analyzes the dire predictions of election analyst David Shor, who foresees for the near future massive losses for Democrats in the U.S. Congress, most of all the U.S. Senate. That is not only based on the undemocratic electoral process set up by the U.S. Constitution, but also on the disability of the Democratic Party and its leaders to translate even the most attractive and most publicly supported features of their and President Biden’s agenda into compelling soundbites understood by the American public at large.

These are the terms that Americans hear from Democrats in Washington day-in and day-out—not only in their conversations in the halls of Congress and the White House but also in their appearances in television and radio, in their tweets, and in their coverage by the press: reconciliation bill, filibuster, John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and so on.

Go out and meet regular people and ask them about the purpose of the voting rights advancement act. Or the filibuster controversy and the content of the reconciliation bill that Democrats are fighting about. Or the filibuster controversy.

Compare that to Trumpian soundbites:

Stop the Steal, Save America, Make America Great Again, America First. These are simple, catchy phrases.

Go out and ask regular Americans what is meant with MAGA and the other slogans above. Most know.

It is not enough for the fighting so-called liberals and progressives within the Democratic camp to get onto the same message. Although that is a precondition at a time, when democracy is under attack from the former president, his supporters, and those who disagree but fear to say so publicly.

Democrats needs to translate their bureaucratic messages into simple words that every American can understand. Soundbites that bite.

Soundbites that speak to the hopes and fears and anger that drives red and blue America further apart yet. At Trump’s rally last night in Iowa, one of his female supporters told a reporter with emphasis that the “civil war” was coming. Must come. Just one illustration of dangerous polarization in our country.

More than two decades ago, Jeffrey Scheuer wrote in his book “Soundbite Society: Television and the American Mind” that TV news was “filtering out complex ideas in favor of blunt emotional messages that appeal to the self and to narrower moral-political impulses.”

According to Scheuer, this obvious bias in favor of simple messages was not the result of intentional slants but rather the nature of the medium—TV with limited air time.

For the Right, there was and still is typically the choice between right or wrong, good or evil. Perfect for short soundbites. For Liberal, these differences were and still are far more complex to press into a meaningful soundbite.

The TV soundbite society of then has long expanded to an overall soundbite society—and not only because of Twitter’s limited text requirement.

In the last decade, but especially since Donald Trump appeared on the political stage in a starring role, aggressive, violent, shocking, insulting, threatening soundbites have become the most-used propaganda weapons of Trump’s Republicans.

Democrats must not copy the viciousness of Trumpian soundbites. But they need to quickly translate the policies they want to enact into simple, effective messages.

That’s not an easy task.

But without making it an urgent effort and succeeding, David Shor’s disheartening predictions may well come true in 2022, 2024 and beyond.  

The Two Decades since 9/11 Changed the Country for the Worse

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The attacks of September 11, 2001, by far the worse deadly strikes on the American mainland from the outside, are rightly remembered on the 20^th anniversary as a dark day in the history of the United States. But 9/11 was also a heroic day as far as first responders were concerned many of whom lost their lives as they tried to rescue fellow-Americans from the falling Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

9/11 was also a day, when true patriotism overcame the shock of what seemed an unimaginable act of evil masterminded by Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. Yes, true patriotism. About nine months after the U.S. Supreme Court decided the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in favor of George W. Bush, a very controversial decision, partisan and ideological differences made room for unity. When members of Congress appeared jointly in front of the Capitol, there was no division. The message was clear: Leaders in Washington and elsewhere—and we, the people, were not Democrats or Republicans now, they and we were first of all Americans.

As time went by, for sure, rumors and conspiracy theories circulated. The so-called Truthers sought and claimed to have found proof for a CIA/government plot that destroyed the WTC and part of the Pentagon. But while Trutherism found many believers in the post 9/11 era, these conspiracy theorists did not violently invade the U.S. Congress and threaten Democratic governors and state legislators.

Instead, in our own communities, common sense for the good of the whole prevailed. Most of the time. Especially, when problems and issues concerned our children and grandchildren. In school board meetings, parents disagreed. But they did not threaten and physically attack each other or the teachers of their children. 

Today, twenty years after 9/11, the “Stop-the-Steal” and QAnon conspiracy theories continue to fuel political and social polarization. While Al Gore gave a gracious concession speech and pledged his full support to George W. Bush, the former president and his supporters continue to spread the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. The Big Lie motivated lawless right-wingers to attack the very foundations of our democracy.

On September 11, 2001, 3,000 innocent Americans lost their lives. Reason enough to commemorate the victims and the courageous first responders.

Twenty years later, the Covid-19 pandemic has taken so far 660,000 lives in the United States—220 times more deaths than on 9/11. Of late, close to 1,500 Covid-19 infected persons die in this country every day. One 9/11 in two days!

And yet, given the political and social polarization, there is no nation-wide pulling together as Americans first.  

On 9/11, America was attacked by foreign terrorists.

Today, America is threatened by home-grown terrorists. By White Supremacists/Neo-Nazi groups and radicalized individuals who talk about a coming civil war. They feel emboldened by one ex-president and one political party that continue to downplay the breach of the Capitol on January Sixth.

Yes, the two decades after 9/11 did change the country—change it for the worse.

Not Racial, Ethnic, and Religious Diversity but White Supremacy and Crazy Conspiracy Theories Loom as Serious Threats to U.S. Democracy

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In his 2011 book “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” the one-time presidential speechwriter, presidential GOP candidate, and to this day right-extreme pundit Patrick J. Buchanan characterized the essence of a nation as “a people of common ancestry, culture, and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, share the same music, poetry, art, literature, held together, in Lincoln’s words, ’by bonds of affection…mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriotic grave, to every living heart and heath-stone.”

Given those characteristics, Buchanan lamented, “the European and Christian core of our country is shrinking” and “the death of its [America’s] cradle faith brings social disintegration, an end to moral community, and culture war.”

 He left no doubt that the election of President Barack Obama represented the greatest threat to the survival of “his” idea of America. And in his prescriptions to save the European-Christian America included a moratorium on immigration and rolling back any progressive gains won in what Buchanan labeled the [liberal] culture war.

Not only pundits like Buchanan but also some well-known scholars have long warned of the evils of multiculturalism. In 2004, the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington chose as the lead in his article “The Hispanic Challenge” the following paragraph,

“The persistent flow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting Anglo-Protestant values that build the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.”

It is ironic that President Joe Biden warned the other day in his Memorial Day that “democracy itself is in peril,” using the same term as Huntington. But the peril Biden spoke of has a very different meaning than the peril Huntington meant.  

Whereas Huntington and Buchanan saw multicultural challenges to what Isabel Wilkerson described in her recent book “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents” as a system of White caste dominance, Joe Biden invoked the beliefs and values of true Christianity and inclusive democracy, when he said, “Wherever Americans are, there — there is democracy: churches and synagogues and mosques, neighborhoods and coffee shops and diners, bleachers at kids’ baseball or soccer games, libraries and parks.  Democracy begins and grows in the open heart and the impetus to come together for a common cause…Americans of all backgrounds, races, creeds, gender identities, sexual orientations, have long spilled their blood to defend our democracy.  The diversity of our country and our arm- — and of our armed services is and always has been an incredible strength.”

The GOP is now the Orwellian Party

By Brigitte L. Nacos

 

“There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    George Orwell

 

The current state of the Republican Party, better understood as Big Brother cult, has hit us 37 years later than the Orwellian nightmare of 1984. But when reality unfolds in front of us, it is more shocking, more frightening than the fictitious warning shot.

Big Brother and his servants in GOP are signaling the upcoming purge of Congresswoman Liz Cheney from her leadership post in the House in purely Orwellian terms: While ideologically fully in tune with the GOP’s far right policies, she refuses to embrace and repeat the Party’s Big Lie that Leader Trump won the 2020 election, that Biden is not the legitimate president, that January 6 was a patriotic Stop the Steal act.  

The other day, Cheney stood again her ground, when she said,

“We can't embrace the notion the election is stolen. It's a poison in the bloodstream of our democracy. We can't whitewash what happened on January 6 or perpetuate Trump's big lie. It is a threat to democracy. What he did on January 6 is a line that cannot be crossed."

But telling the truth means in today’s GOP to be disloyal to the Party and its Dear Leader. As the Orwellian Party propagandist explains, “Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”

That describes today’s loyalty test in the Republican Party. You cannot claim that 2 times 2 equals 4, when Big Brother and his cultists insist that 2 times 2 equals 5. If you do not follow the party’s lies, you become the enemy.

Do all of the pure Trumpian GOP officials believe the Big Lie and many other lies? Probably not. But they all understand that the vast majority of the party’s core followers hold the Party’s truth to be the truth. And only loyalists in that sense can look forward to be renominated and reelected next year. Again, the Orwellian fascist model provides a plausible explanation for the scarcity of truth tellers in the rank of GOP officeholders, “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…Power is not a means; it is the end.”

The news that the ban of Trump from Facebook will continue for the time being renewed the discussion over a private company’s right to decide who can use its social media platform. But since the hate speech is not criminalized in the United States, I believe that right now it is best to deny the former president and his servants to once again disperse their Big Lie and a bunch of supportive conspiracy theories via global social media.

Four months without Trump’s posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram did not diminish Trump’s influence in his movement.

Elected GOP office holders are very much aware of this. They all want to please Dear Leader Trump and his base. Holding on to power is much more important than upholding truth and reality.

 

Women’s Liberation reached the White Supremacy/Neo-Nazi Movement: Females had Leading Roles in the Capitol Breach

By Brigitte L. Nacos

“I can’t predict. I don’t understand the resolve of the Deep State. Biden may still yet be our president. If he is, our way of life as we know it is over. Our Republic would be over. Then it is our duty to fight, kill and die for our rights.” This was the answer given by Jessica Watkins, the self-described commander of an Ohio militia affiliate of the Oath Keepers, when asked by one of her recruits after the 2020 presidential election what she predicted for the new year 2021.

Following the violent assault on the Capitol earlier this year, Watkins received a great deal of news coverage because of her prominent role in the preparation for and execution of the violent invasion. Along with eight others in the Watkin’s led group she was indicted by a Grand Jury of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia with conspiracy to stop, delay, and hinder the congressional certification of the Electoral College vote and four other crimes.

Lost in the “breaking news” barrage in the post-January 6^th days and weeks was the starring role of a surprisingly large number of females among the first wave of violent intruders. Four of the nine members of the Watkins group were women—besides Army veteran Jessica Watkins who is 38 years old, the others were significantly older females: Laura Steele (52), Connie Meggs (59), and Sandra Parker (60).  As surveillance video from the Capitol shows, these four women were in the thick of the crowd pushing into the Rotunda.

 While important as supporting cast, women did not participate directly in violence in right-extremist movements of the past, including White Supremacy/neo-Nazi movements. That was in stark contrast to violent left-extremist movements and groups starting with the anarchists of the 19^th century and more pronounced in the Marxist terrorist organizations of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the latter, such as the Red Army Faction in then West Germany, had at times more women in the leading strata than men. And females were instrumental in planning and carrying out brutal terrorist attacks. Thus, a saying in some police circles was, “Shoot the women first…”

Now, it seems that female White nationalists are no longer excluded from violent activities of their movement. On the first Friday in March, there were a total of 259 persons charged with crimes in the January 6^th breach of the Capitol according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia.

More remarkable, of those 259 defendants, 31 were women. When adding Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, who was shot by Capitol police as she forcefully tried to enter the Speaker’s lobby near the House chamber, 12,4% of those forcefully storming into the Capitol were females as aggressive as their male counterparts—in deeds and words as the following examples show: