"The Village is on Fire"

Jane Hamsher offers some sound advice to the Avis of political parties:

Nobody wanted to be perceived as soft on terror, no siree, even though anybody with two IQ points knew that the reasons for going to war with Iraq had been ginned up by a bunch of crackpot imperialistic con men. Almost every Democratic leader tore at one another in a mad scramble for the center as they sought to be Tough On Terror. And it backfired. The Republicans already have that piece of emotional real estate, it is not up for grabs. The Democrats who voted for this phony war only succeeded in rubber stamping GOP bullshit.

The Joe Bidens of the world think they appear strong and manly for such stances, but they only wind up looking like battered wives who bat their eyelashes and blow kisses at the men who continue to whallop them. And when someone really stands up to the bullying Republicans like Howard Dean did when he said they were the white, Christian party and Tom DeLay belonged in jail, the thoroughly useless Bidens and Bill Richardsons and Nancy Pelosis and Barak Obamas (yes, I said it) make Republican critique superfluous as they come out and discipline him themselves.

Do they understand how bad this makes them look? They don't look centrist and reasonable, they look like a bunch of Phillis Schlafleys beating down her own so others won't have to. I can't tell you how much that one still rankles. You don't bash your own brand you fucking morons.

The construction a counter-narrative to the highly successful GOP war drama is extremely tricky. The Republicans evolved their current brand image not only by tapping into white male rage, but by playing on very powerful strains within the American psyche. "America right or wrong" and "might makes right" and "love it or leave it" play very well with the post 9/11 public. Even though the war has turned into a fiasco, the underlying story -- of Men going off to fight to defend the village from its enemies -- is very difficult to deconstruct. And to do so, the Democrats must find an equally powerful, equally limbic emotional narrative that will trump the one that the GOP has fobbed off on the public.

To wit -- the village is on fire. It's time to come home.

Basically, the Republicans got caught in a PR trap when there turned out to be no weapons of mass destruction. They had to shift into talk about Sadaam's torture chambers, but that was quite dangerous because the American public doesn't really give a shit about stuff like that when it happens in countries like Rwanda or Sierra Leone. What they were being offered at that point was an excuse for having supported the war, because nobody in the public wants to admit that they were wrong, either. But excuses last only so long, and that's why Dick Cheney will continue to talk about ties between Al Quaeda and Sadaam every time he opens his mouth. No, he's not stupid. True or not, it offers a powerful morality play to people who want to buy into it. And he knows the other side has nothing better.

Even though Katrina and other recent events offered the Democrats the perfect opportunity to say "the village is on fire," it's still hard to put that across in a way that will not be countered by the message machine of the right as sounding negative and down on America. But the fact is the village is on fire, and people are awakening to that fact. It's time to seize the "Republicans are crooks and bullies" meme, invest in some long term strategies and become a meaningful opposition party. It's the third act, Ma's fed up because the thieves are stealing her crops and she can't feed the kids, the audience is emotionally ready for her to grab the shotgun and run 'em all off so Pa will have something to come home to.

It's incredibly hoakey but it's a quite fundamental dramatic truth and until the Democrats like Joe Biden stop licking David Brooks's boots on national TV and competing for the title of Biggest Pussyman in the Democratic Party (yes I said that too, and I mean it) there will be no effective challenge to the GOP tyranny we now live under. Russ Feingold is looking awfully strong right now for having voted against the Patriot Act. The Democrats would do well to remember that and stop reaching for Dubya's prop codpiece.

Democrats acting like battered wives--not a pretty image, but one I've considered, even if I haven't posted on that topic. On the opposide side of the coin, neocons and their political party certainly behave like wife beaters--insistent in their belief that more violence will solve any problem. So, we end up killing people we're ostensibly liberating, with the idea somehow being that we'll shoot, bomb, or even just beat them into respecting the Bing, if not outright loving it.

Well, just because it works on the Democrats, doesn't mean it'll pass muster overseas. And at home, Hamsher's right--ANYONE with functioning brain cells can SEE WITH THEIR OWN EYES the devastation and destruction RIGHT HERE in this country...the Gulf Coast is simply the most obvious and egregious example of GOP contempt for the citizenry, and their willingness to allow large swaths of this country to decay into rot. Plenty of other cities--and the surrounding countryside--might not be in as serious condition, but neither are they anywhere close to thriving. A good opposition party would advise cleaning up our own house before embarking on fool's errands--particularly when said fool's errands only make things worse.