JohnHenry.US

Tag: overton window

  • More Two-Party Myths

    Clearly we need further discussion of the two-party myths that are rampant in our discourse.

    I ran into this on Facebook. For those of you with screen readers or other visual impairment which makes it difficult for you to read text in images, it reads as follows:

    “We won’t be able to elect third parties if we never vote for third parties.

    It doesn’t make sense for someone in a deep red state to theor their vote away on Biden when they can try and run up higher numbers for Cornel West

    If they reach 5% of the popular vote, that guarantees ballot access and funding in the next election cycle.”

    It doesn’t guarantee a platform though. Nor does it circumvent Duverger’s Law.

    It’s important to point out at the top that this has been the operating strategy of “third parties” in this country for decades and it has yet to bear meaningful fruit. The two “third” parties that have made any headway at all, the Greens and the Libertarians, have yet to seat a federal legislator, and have only had spotty, inconsistent, and functionally useless success at the state level.

    You won’t be able to elect “third” parties in an electoral system based on single-member districts decided by simple majority vote until one of the two existing major parties decays so much on one end of the spectrum that a challenger from the other end can rise effectively, while the party in the middle drifts into the space formerly occupied by the fallen second party. That’s what we’re seeing right now as the GOP implodes and the democratic party continues sliding to the right under neoliberal capitalist-plutocrat stewardship and patronage.

    When serious leftist candidates have the confidence they can split off from the Dems and have a viable challenge from the left, it will happen. Then you’ll have a few cycles when the DNC basically runs the show while the GOP desperately tries to save itself by doubling down on plutocracy and the “new left” gets organized and gathers power from within the current Democratic party. We are probably in the early stages of this right now.

    It’s never one time happened any other way, even the direction of the shifts and rises are consistent – a leftist party becomes one of the two “majors,” and in the process of trying to protect and grow its power begins compromising and sliding to the right.

    As that slide – frequently called the “Overton Window” (* see below) – happens, the current right-wing group keeps moving further right until they hit the point of no longer being able to plausibly deny they’ve gone fascist/totalitarian. As the old left calcifies and stagnates it slides into the “moderate” right position.
    In every functional democratic system that has existed, it ends up either like this or with the hard right being so successful they rise to a level of power where they’re functionally capable of imposing the autocracy they crave and then you have a big war and a reset to more or less the status quo that existed prior to the rise of the right.

    Examples of the earlier process can be found in the demise of the Whigs in the US in the 19th century; examples of the latter can be found in Germany and other nations in the mid-20th century.
    It always goes one way or the other. Not once in human history has a populist left-wing movement coalesced into a viable party from outside the existing party structure.

    Focus on empowering your genuine leftists within the democratic party and helping them gather strength and viability so when the GOP finishes falling off the edge of fascism the new left has the confidence to believe they can step up. Your only other realistic option is sitting around carping about “third parties” and voting for almost universally unelectable candidates until you’re left with a one party system, and nobody wants that.

    Short of everybody getting off their asses and actually learning their individual candidates and deciding on an individual basis who they’re going to vote for, which absolutely will never happen because people are generally lazy and love to be part of an in-group, that’s the only way you’re going to find a viable pushback against the fascism and autocracy that has wholly swallowed the GOP and taken in a horrifying portion of the DNC as well.

    I know that’s not easy to hear and I’m sorry for that, but it’s the truth, and when we acknowledge it and work within it instead of trying impotently to fight the weather because it gratifies our egos to feel like we’re “too smart for that,” we’ll continue losing this country to fascism until we have to fight – literally – to get it back, and I don’t think anyone wants to go through that except the fascists, who think they’ll win that fight too.

    (* We shouldn’t use the “Overton Window” labeling. Overton’s description is deliberately malformed to present the process as being unrelated to left or right but rather, disingenuously, as a question of what is “socially acceptable.” Fundamentally it’s an attempt to advise right-wing politicians how to avoid social disapproval and loss of electoral power by being too honest about their intentions. Overton was a fellow of the radical right-wing, plutocratic, self-described “think tank” The Mackinac Center For Public Policy.)

  • Yes, “Defund The Police” Is Exactly The Right Position

    So this is happening, now.

    Over the last few days, the hashtag-slash-movement #DefundThePolice has been making the rounds.  Predictably and disappointingly, the Professional Left™ have been clutching their pearls and collapsing with the vapors because they just can’t understand why anyone would say something so radical.

    Frankly, I’m sick of it.  Folks in the audience, okay, I get that because that’s the narrative you’re fed and there’s little motivation to look outside it.  People like Cenk Uygur at popular left wing media outlet The Young Turks, however, simply don’t have that excuse.

    I want to be clear:  I like Cenk.  I like TYT.  But it’s time we stopped letting them have those excuses.  So here’s the basic breakdown:

    – When you are negotiating, you always start from a position far in excess of what you actually expect.  You want to pay ten bucks for that depression glass at the flea market, you start off by offering three and then haggle.  This is the root of #DefundThePolice.  It’s also a tactic that’s thousands of years old and there’s not the slightest excuse for anyone to not be aware of it.

    – The “left” in the United States have always failed miserably in this regard, which is the root cause of what’s now known as the “Overton Window.”  Like this:

    Left: “fascism is bad.”

    Right:  “that’s very intolerant of you.  Also, anyone who isn’t white and doesn’t own property is garbage.”

    Left:  “well, for the sake of upholding free expression, we guess we can allow some things to be said without accountability or challenge, if it’ll make you feel better and bring you to the table.”

    Right, now at table: “Anyone who isn’t white and doesn’t own property is garbage.”

    Left: “Well, that’s kind of racist.”

    Right, now screaming, “anyone who isn’t white and doesn’t own property is garbage and how dare you call me a racist, that’s outrageously rude and we won’t stand forit!”

    Left:  “Well, we can understand that some people who aren’t white and don’t own property are garbage, so we can compromise on that.  How about we only let you subjugate 90% of the non-whites, and agree that the 10% of them who own property aren’t garbage?”

    Right:  “Well, I never, how can you suggest that someone who isn’t One Of Us could be anything but garbage?  You’re comparing us to garbage?  And half those people don’t deserve their property anyway!”

    Left: “Okay, we’ll give you half the non-white people’s property and agree that anyone who isn’t white and doesn’t own property is garbage, stipulating that garbage has rights too.”

    Right:  “No, garbage doesn’t have rights, you liberals are ridiculous!  Now you want to give rights to garbage?  You must be stupid, middle America will never allow that!”

    Left:  “Okay, we’ll compromise. We’ll take away half the property owned by non-whites and give it to you, and agree that everyone who isn’t a white property owner is garbage.”

    The left then smugly announces they’ve forged a compromise with the right to secure the basic rights of white property owners.  Progress!

    That is an illustration of the Overton Window, and the right wing has owned it in the US since the mid-20th century at least.

    With #DefundThePolice, someone on the left finally figured out how to play this game effectively.  It’s intended to have shock value.  It’s intended to jostle and upset and discomfort.  Why?  Because that’s what gets people talking, and it’s working.  Dialogue is happening, people are being presented with propositions they believe unthinkable, and then when their attention is centered on the issue, being brought around to accepting basic realities about police and military over-funding, over-prioritization of punitive and authoritarian tactics instead of substantive and good-faith negotiation to ensure human rights are protected and the ideals of this nation upheld.

    Note again:  it’s working.  People are having these conversations.  Even the esteemed Mr. Uygur, in the middle of decrying and disclaiming the tactic, has done precisely what the statement is meant to do – get people thinking and engaging and talking about these issues, working toward real change, and being unafraid to be radical or outside the box.

    What the people behind that movement-hashtag have done is deliberately stepped outside Noam Chomsky’s “range of allowable debate”:

    The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.- Noam Chomsky, ‘The Common Good‘ (p. 43)

    This is a tactic employed many times by Bernie Sanders, with great success, and it will be successful here as well.

    I’m not going to go into “what defund really means” because it means what it says.  Police and paramilitary authoritarian agencies are far and away the most highly funded public service in this country, and those funds are tragically misallocated away from education, health care, mental health, social services, housing, food, transportation, and a thousand other things that actually do reduce crime.

    Now we’re finally having that conversation in earnest, and we wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for those radical, “unworkable” hashtags and dialogues that are supposedly so self-defeating and off-putting.

    QED:  It’s working.  And when we get to the “compromise” position instead of “well how about we just promise not to use the tanks unless we really really need them,” the compromise position is “get rid of all the tanks,” and the hard position is “or we’ll just get rid of your entire existence.”

    That’s how we win, and that’s why #DefundThePolice, #AbolishPolice, and other “radical” hashtags and ideas aren’t just “not the wrong way to do this,” but the best way anyone’s even tried in a long, long time.