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Fear has been at the core of every conservative argument for the last 50 years: fear of Commies, fear of Blacks, fear of Fags, fear of Wetbacks, fear of Socialism, fear of Women, fear of Atheists, fear of Muslims, fear of Anything Different. Fear of Change.

And it’s far easer to craft a message around hate and fear. Just ask Joseph Goebbels, Jesse Helms, Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan, Morton Blackwell, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh.

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Just checking in. Are you intending to be persuasive or simply expressive?

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Good post, Tom! Money is a perennial problem for progressives precisely because they’re on the side of those who don’t have the money. $11 million a year is a pile to you and me but to someone like Charles Koch it’s pocket change (he’s worth $17 billion -2008 estimate).

I recall reading where a progressive organizer referred to the Tea Party bus, saying “we never had a shiny new bus with flashy graphics at any of our rallies.”

There’s nothing wrong with progressive ideas about governance, but the opposition is implacable and well supplied, and cynically willing to wreck the government if that will keep it from being used to progressive ends; hence the strategy of appointing saboteurs to run programs they don’t believe in, like Bill Bennett in Education or Christine Todd Whitman at the EPA. To our conservative readers, imagine if Obama had appointed Jane Fonda as Secretary of Defense: it’s like that.

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Your comments remind me of Tom Buckner’s recent post on game theory. If we play to win the debate on the issue while they’re playing to completely and utterly discredit our issue argument, character, and political philosophy in order to enact some unspoken goal – then we’re losing.

It’s a conundrum, indeed.

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I believe you are correct. Progressives need to be able to articulate their message in short, effective narratives if they want to win hearts and minds of the public at large. Or at least not lose them to the Conservative narrative machine.

Just yesterday, the main story was the testimony of military leaders on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) so that homosexuals can lawfully serve in the military. Out came the lunatics who not only want to reverse the status quo, going back prior to DADT, but they also want to overturn Lawrence v. Texas and many other civil rights so that they can outlaw homosexuality. They “boldly” put forth the view that the homosexual is a rampant deviant and allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military will lead to unmitigated shower rape, barracks rape and a host of other sexual problems in the “intimate” setting of combat life (intimate being their word not mine). Here it comes. Obama wants to turn Don’t Ask Don’t Tell into Don’t Drop The Soap! Or, Teh gays think there are no heterosexuals in foxholes! Lewd, born of complete ignorance and hate, and totally insulting and demeaning to all the professionals who serve us today, especially those whom are homosexual, and of course insulting to so many more. Yet, we will see the Conservative narrative machine boldly kick into high gear spewing such tripe on this one. While we Progressives have the truth on our side on this (and a few more…), I agree we are probably not prepared with a narrative. I will just try this one: If the purpose of our military is to “fight and win wars”, then surely we should expect those in the military to act like grown-ups.

There is a dilemma here. We want to fight fire with fire. But these Conservative message mongers just plain and simply LIE. THEY JUST LIE!!!! THEY ARE JUST A BUNCH OF LIARS!!!!! The most effective narratives from the right are JUST PLAIN AND SIMPLY A HOUSE OF CARDS, A STACK OF LIES!!!! From death panels and socialism to the Republican fiscal conservatism and now, the comment just above mine, no. 15. This comment is a total lie, a lie recently spoken by none other than liar Roger Ailes himself. So I think the question is, if Progressives don’t want to lie, and I assume most don’t want to, how do they message truthfully?

-writ

PS. The bit “The purpose of our military is to fight and win wars.” was Dubya campaign speak from 2000. It resonated as our CEO would-be President dazzled audiences with his ability to simplify things. Last night I heard a former soldier counter the Dubya-ism with, “The purpose of our military is to defend our country.” It made me think that even there, a contest between two short mission statements is where the battle of narratives begins. One statement leads to a narrative that puts our country on a path of fighting unprovoked offensive wars. The other attempts to preserve our general traditional (or conservative) use of deterrence against attack, and then fighting only when attacked. Here, the Conservative message machine was used to get Conservatives to act in ways that aren’t conservative. There are other examples.

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the Democrats’problem is that the only thing voters wanted last election is someone who is not Bush, but they got instead a more eloquent version of him.

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Progressives need to fund their own if they expect to compete.

I have tried, in my own modest way.

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