The Real “Tipping Point”
We’ve heard much in recent days about how the situation in Iraq is improving, about how things passed the “tipping point” with the January elections there. About how everything will be just peachy in the Middle East sooner than later.
I want to discuss another “tipping point.”
In the last week, I’ve had several extemporaneous conversations with Republican friends and relatives. Some of them are Born-Again Christians. Some of them are fiscal conservatives. Some of them are moderates who voted for Bush because they thought the Republicans were the best equipped to fight terrorism. One of them is a Republican blogger. To cut to the chase, they’ve all got “buyer’s remorse.” And it isn’t because of the bankruptcy bill, social security reform or the rise of the influence of the religious Right.
Perhaps ironically, they believe Iraq is FUBAR. And they started thinking that right after the elections there.
I bring this up because I believe we have an opportunity if we play our hand deftly. When the “buyer’s remorse” crowd makes their anxieties more public, how shall we react? It’s a serious question that demands a better answer than “I told you so.”
March 13th, 2005 at 5:41 am
How about, “so what are we gonna do about it”? It’s inclusive and has no “neener, neener, neener” factor.
March 13th, 2005 at 6:13 am
That’s a good start.
March 13th, 2005 at 7:17 am
How about, “lets see if we really do have grounds for impeachment?” The reality is that we are stuck with this lemon unless we impeach him, so anything else is just talk.
March 13th, 2005 at 7:22 am
It surprises me that more has not been made of the fact that we seem to have fought the Iraq war to bring Islamic theocratic governance and Sharia law to what was a secular nation. Perhaps this is what all the Baghdad Spring triumphalism is designed to obscure.
March 13th, 2005 at 7:34 am
Good observation. And rather than I Told You So, we should offer sympathy over the fact that they were lied to and betrayed. Then options 1 and 3 both seem appropriate.
March 13th, 2005 at 8:24 am
Count on a judicious silence from me. I’m so sick of playing canary in the coalmine that I really have stopped caring what the people who put him office think. Isn’t this the age of “personal responsiblity”, as that end of the political spectrum likes to endlessly babble? Well, then, fuck it. Let them feel some personal responsibility for it. After all the hard work I did before the election to try to make a difference, only to see the whole thing sink into a quagmire of ecstatic marginalizing the day of the coronation, I’m not interested in soothing anybody’s worried brow. Let them start thinking up ways to fix the mess they made. In fact, I think it behooves us to demand they get to work to make amends for the clusterfuck they helped create. Let them be the ones to sweat it for awhile.
March 13th, 2005 at 8:53 am
Riggsveda: I understand your anger, believe me. But maybe we need to think about how it’s easier to attract flies with honey than with vinegar.
At some point, in order for things to change, we need them to join us.
March 13th, 2005 at 8:56 am
The grownup in me knows you’re right, Rox, but damn. How will they ever learn? If just telling them the truth would do it, it would have changed hearts and minds a long time ago. People never seem to change till their own ox gets gored.
March 13th, 2005 at 10:09 am
My biggerst concern from September 11th onward has been how history will see these days in retrospect. As the push to go to war with Iraq progressed, my anxieties compounded. It seems like large swaths of the population learned nothing from the Vietnam War other than how necessary it is to tie yellow ribbons.
We should welcome the troops home as heroes, and go out of our way to demonstrate our sincerity. The problem is not that the troops answered the call to serve their country.
We should not blame the people who voted for Bush, because as Rox points out, it’s easier to catch flies with honey. They were lied to. Voting to support the defense of America is not the problem, and I think that most of them believed that they were doing just that.
The problem is the neoconservatives who lied their way into the Oval Office, and the Republican and Democrat legislators who gave them political cover. If in fact this is a tipping point of opinion, we need to use this historical moment to broaden the popular concept of “integrity” to cover more than our leaders’ sexual conduct.
March 13th, 2005 at 10:11 am
Sorry to say I agree with Riggsveda — If just telling them the truth would do it, it would have changed hearts and minds a long time ago.
Those who were shown the truth and still decided they were more comfortable with the good ol’ boy who was scamming them won’t be won over by reasoned discourse with any of us. When their buyer’s remorse becomes strong enough that they decide they need to think about how not to have this happen again, then maybe our input will be of value. Until then, it’s just whining on their part for somebody to help fix the mess they’ve made.
March 13th, 2005 at 10:25 am
Most of the Bush voters I know have only heard the litany of complaints (Bush lied, Bush is wrecking the Constitution, Bush is a warmonger, etc.) but aren’t well versed in the events that led to those conclusions. It’s easy to say that “they should have paid better attention,” but that doesn’t answer the problem that most people simply don’t pay attention in the first place. The GOP has an effective and well-oiled message machine, and the corporate media have nothing to profit from fighting it.
It’s not a matter of simply “telling the truth.” No one hears you. You have to sell the truth, because the only thing on the market is lies.
March 13th, 2005 at 11:50 am
I agree. I’m from an overwhelmingly Republican family and live in a blood-red state. What most concerns me (other than slaughter in Iraq) is how gullible so many Americans are when it comes to political propaganda. A large part of the problem is the paucity of decent information in the news to counter it, but that aside, most people I know who voted for Bush did so because they believed the lies and didn’t have the time or energy (or feel the need) to find out the truth. Stunningly, they didn’t smell a rat. I’m all for selling the truth, however that might best be done. God knows, I’d love to gloat over Mark Steyn and others, but maybe we can use the opportunity to get Bush-voters to actually listen to us next time.
March 13th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
“I told you so” seems appropriate to me. Their mess, their fault. Rub it in. They didn’t just screw themselves. They should take responsibility.
March 13th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
Partly I say that though, because it doesn’t matter what people like that think. The struggle is not there. “If I want their opinion I’ll give it to them” is how it works with those people. They weren’t paying any attention and that’s alright too, but they’re not going to turn into political types now.
The struggle is more between the so-called liberals and the far left. The right don’t have an opinion in the fight. They just have a behaviour.
March 13th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Yes. And time to consult the Luntz playbook and take back our agenda.
If you take the time to read it, you’ll see they STOLE OUR STUFF!!!
The Luntz handbook does not address the Iraq war per se but this chapter addresses general strategies.
The last line is good strategy for us:
empathize, personalize, humanize our message.
March 13th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
okay, for constructivity, why not try the Socratic Method? Ask them, instead of telling them, *why* they think things went wrong. Let them voice their own cogntive dissonance, don’t pressure them, that always generates negative pressure. But don’t be afraid to “lead the witness,” either - Socrates wasn’t! After all, if they’re talking to you about their concerns, that means they think somehow you just might have the answers. But the answers will mean more to them if they come to them themselves, even if it’s just by being shown the evidence. Since you already have an alternate model of the world that makes sense (even if it is an unappetizing sense) and they sense this, since they’re coming to you with their doubts, the trick is to give them access to that model without forcing it on them, letting them take as much truth as they’re ready for. Keep niggling at those flashes of cognitive dissonance and nudging them towards breaking free of the “Truman Show” world of propaganda they’re in, and raise the question of *why* they might have been pushed there (ie who was using them and to what ends?) and point out the money trail, too.
March 13th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
This is more than “buyer’s remorse” - many of the people who believed all the emotionally charged messages that the GOP and Christian right have used to perpetuate their agenda are now suffering severe inner conflict. The road that they so blindly followed now a appears to be a back road to hell instead a highway to heaven.
March 13th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
Hate to say this, because it goes against every human instinct I have, but we have to listen to these people! We have to understand what mixture of wilful ignorance, misinformation, and misplaced resentment enables the GOP and the Christian Right to get over on them. Giving them alternatives, especially as a target for the resentment, is vital. And that means we have to listen and even care about what they say.
It would be a lot easier if we could just say “I told you so.”
March 13th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Bellatrys, your “Truman Show” metaphor is so dead-on I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. I love that film. Thanks for pointing it out.
Everything else you said was ten times more dead-on than that, though. We aren’t going to impose this from the outside. I for one don’t fully understand why Bush voters didn’t “smell a rat” as Rob points out, and until we know why the ball is in their court.
March 13th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
Echoing janinsanfran, perhaps we can use this moment to make a party policy out of soliciting opposition input.
March 13th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
The people who have bought the lies, half-truths, and deceptions are emotionally tied to what could almost be called a €œbelief system€. The trick is to get them to understand how they are being exploited. Logical arguments will not be very effective against an emotionally based belief system.
March 13th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Once the general impression that Iraq is FUBAR sets in, we’ll be faced with a clear choice between understanding the problems with the Iraq War as essentially tactical/operational or essentially strategic. That is to say, was the problem that we fought this war with too few troops, too few allies, and no plan to win the peace, or was the problem that we fought this war at all?
I think we’ll find that this question will actually divide opponents of the war (recent and longstanding) within both parties and across the political spectrum. As someone who thinks that this war was fundamentally wrong, and that the Clinton administration’s approach to international affairs, while smarter and less aggressive, still bore a family resemblance to what we have now, I think it’s important to make the case that the Iraq misadventure represented deep problems with America’s approach to the world, and not just a case of gross mismanagement.
Supporters of a radical reassessment of America’s position in the world will be able to find some folks on the right who are very sympathetic, people who, for example, were attracted to Bush’s renunciation of nation building in 2000.
March 13th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
I also wonder how Rove and his people will react. Likely they have already thought of this and will have something to run up the flagpole when the time comes.
March 17th, 2005 at 11:56 am
Buyer remorse, huh? Well you knew what you were voting for and you still choose ‘W’. I really don’t have any sympathy for you. You probably believed in the concept of ‘compassionate conservatism’, right? Guess again there’s no such thing as you are slowing beginning to realize.
All I have to say is sit down, stop whining and take your lumps like all the others who are going to get screwed by this administration.
Have Fun!
Midnighter.
Sorry for sounding so unsympathetic, but I’m one of those people that the Bush administration has in their cross-hairs.