Things That Make You Say " Huh?"

        Every so often one reads a statement that is so ridiculously misinterpreted that you just go …"Huh?" Ever happen to you? It happened to me this morning in the Villages Daily Sun (not a statement by the paper, but a letter to the editor).

      The writer was quoting Saul Alinsky’s 1971 “Rules for Radicals.” The ludicrous conclusion was that all these things were the program of the progressive/liberals to lead the nation to revolution. For those who are too young to remember, Alinsky was  a Chicago born (a fact placed right up front, since if you want to present things as the fault of a single man, in this case of course President Obama, make sure you tie it to his home town) radical who died in 1972. Alinsky, like Noam Chomsky was one of the “blue work shirt philosophers” who believed that the continued enforced poverty of minorities was a recipe for revolution.  He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing. Over nearly four decades of political organizing,  Alinsky received much criticism, but also gained praise from many public figures. His organizing skills were focused on improving the living conditions of poor communities across North America. In the 1950s, he began turning his attention to improving conditions in the African-American ghettos, beginning with Chicago's and later traveling to other ghettos in California, Michigan, New York City, and a dozen other "trouble spots".

  

    His ideas were adapted in the 1960s by some U.S. college students and other young counterculture-era organizers, who used them as part of their strategies for organizing on campus and beyond. Time magazine once wrote that "American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas," and conservative author William F. Buckley said he was "very close to being an organizational genius."   He believed that the white middle class in America was angry and ripe for revolution, as the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.  He prefaced “Rules for Radicals” with “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.”

      Right up front, then, anyone who cites “Rules for Radicals” literally , instead as simply a satirical social commentary of the 1970s, clearly believes things are fine the way they are!  Alinsky lists several “strategies” (for want of a better word) which are in many ways inverse  examples of, not how to change things for the better, but how to maintain what Alinsky believed to be a very un-democratic  status quo. I had intended to address this to the editorial page of the paper, but the 300 word limit makes that an impossibility, so let’s begin to address the “rules” as described verbatim in the misguided letter writer’s own limited prose.    

1.  “Health care. Controlling it controls the people” I am sure that writer believes this to be an indictment of the Affordable Care Act, which of course is diametrically wrong. Quite the opposite of rationing, health care, the ACA is no more or less than an effort to broaden access to health care.  Far Right propaganda grossly overplays federal interface here, since all health care purchased under the Act, while possibly subsidized in part, is administered by private insurers.  Apparently the writer believes anything that makes health care more widely available and tries to curtail Medicare/Medicaid fraud is a bad thing. Go figure.

2.    “Poverty. Increase the level of poor and provide everything. Will be easier to control and won’t fight back (sic)” Other than due to the  2007 Bush Recession, there hasn’t  been an increase in the poverty level more significant than the Reagan years since “Rules” was written! Likewise the have/have not gap has increased markedly, and is almost the greatest, proportionally in the world. This is the legacy not of liberal but of conservative policies. 

     3.      "Debt. Increase it, then increase taxes. That will produce more poverty.” Again. Look at the record, record deficit increases under Reagan, Bush and Bush, with an 8 year period of reduction under Clinton, followed 8 years later by Obama struggling under the double whammy of a punitive war deficit for a war we shouldn’t have fought, coupled with a bail out which, while probably necessary (we can agree or disagree on that) was the legacy of Bush 43. Of course no one has offered a “magic bullet” to reduce the debt without reverting to recession, rather the Far Rightists simply stand on the sidelines throwing stones and undermining good-faith efforts by centrists of both parties 

    

    4.    “Gun Control. Remove ability to defend themselves (sic), allowing government to create a police state.” Once again the “self defense” lie is told. As I have so often written, there is not, and never has been any effort to limit access to guns for legitimate sportsmen. Period. The “Nugents” of the world apparently believe it is part of legitimate sport to use assault weapons as hunting guns.  This flies in the face of even Ronald Reagan who supporting assault weapon bans. There is a huge disconnect between legitimate gun ownership, and allowing any psychopath to buy rapid fire weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition which then is used on helpless civilians.

    

    5.    “Welfare. Control their lives with food, housing and income.”  Again, the writer hasn’t the ability to perceive that this is actually a criticism of a society which forces the poor into that situation. As with almost all of the statements taken without context, this is what Alinsky believes that the “haves” do or should do to keep the “have-nots” in “their place.”

    

    6.    “Education. Take control of what children learn in school.” Where to start, here?  OK, begin with “No Child Left Behind (NCLB),” a Bush 43 really bad idea to punish schools which are struggling to educate kids who start life behind the eight ball. Interestingly enough, this came from a president who, by his own admission “wasn’t a reader,” meaning perhaps, that he would have failed his own mandated “must read on grade level” statute! This was a Republican initiative to forcibly create a statistical impossibility – reshaping the statistical bell curve of human mental acuity. 

           There was no “common core, or NCLB when Alinsky wrote, and again, this was written as irony (as was the whole piece) as a list of ways to keep the lowly low, which was what Alinsky believed all these philosophies would do. Common Core, so vilified by some, represents an effort to, if we are to be beaten up based on NCLB,  at least uniformly define what the standards are, and how to attain them. The alternatives are children supposedly achieving academic sufficiency  in Alabama, only to find out when they move to Florida, that they  are woefully underprepared.  

    

7.     “Religion. Remove belief in God from government and schools.” This one is truly interesting, since Alinsky, to the end of his life, self identified as both an agnostic and a Jew.  Of course, historically, there has never been a greater single implement of societal control that religion. If one truly wishes to control the state, and by extension, the activities and thoughts of its populace, the one provably effective single thing to be done is to create a theocracy. Where the people fear the supernatural, obedience to its priests follows. Look at the Saudis, look at Iran, and reflect back at essentially all of Europe until the 1700s. Religion has cost more lives and been the instrument of more social repression and individual suppression of liberty than any other single force in history. Alinsky’s point was that removal of this fear of the supernatural and its mechanism for control of society would free men’s minds. If this was a recipe for control, Alinsky would have recommended a theocracy (can you say “Taliban?”  Unlike the rest of “Rules…” Alinsky was making the point with irony.

    

    8.    “Class warfare. Divide the people- wealthy and poor – creating discontent. Tax the wealthy with support of the poor.”  Citing this is interesting, obviously coming from someone who obviously has zero historical perspective. First: nothing will ever produce class warfare  as effectively as being slapped in the face by all media with daily examples of how much difference there truly is between the well to do and the underclass of society. As the rich get richer (a phenomenon accelerated under Reagan, and perpetuated by the “Bush tax cuts”) discontent is predictable.

  

        Alinsky here is not advising social stratification, he is decrying it, and its results. Since the writer obviously is of a Far Right persuasion, it would behoove her to understand a lot more about taxation before she shotguns the current administration or progressives/liberals in general. Even if the “Bush tax cuts” were repealed, personal and corporate tax rates will still be significantly (a lot!!) lower than under Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41.  This is not opinion, this is simple a factual statement of the rates at those times. Under Richard Nixon, tax rates were about 70% on highest earners, under Reagan, just over 50%. If the Bush tax cuts were repealed, high earner tax rates would still be about 36%. So let’s be clear, here, If any political group was adhering to the (tongue in cheek, for the most part) advice of Saul Alinsky, it would be those who had historically supported the highest tax rates. Of course, it’s easier to blame the current administration, saddled with trying to lessen the gap, ergo the political discontent, created by rightist policies of the past 50 years.    

In summary, while Alinsky’s writings seem extreme, they must be contextualized. There are many of the middle class, who with no real sense of history,   labor in ignorance of why they are where they are. “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism",  by Doris Kearns Goodwin, does a far better job than I could ever do of really analyzing the true societal crises created by runaway corporate greed and individual malfeasance during the post Civil War industrial consolidation of the Morgans, Rockefellers, etc.  The conditions alleged to be Alinsky’s prediction if government grows larger already existed to a far larger extent purely because government turned a blind eye. Conservative estimates place at a minimum forty U.S. Senators in the pockets of corporate interest! Commodity and basic food item prices were set by huge corporate trusts which cared little for any individual except their stockholders and managers. While Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson made inroads into this corporate stranglehold of America, they did not greatly narrow the societal gap, but did improve the lot of society’s underclass sufficiently to avoid revolution, or at least nationwide social unrest.

          World War I, fought on the soil of most of our industrialized world trade competitors, left the US as the top industrial producer in the world, and even that status didn’t protect us from the collapse in 1928 of the economy for many reasons, not the least of was huge unpaid debt by those nations to which American bankers had loaned billions during the war. Other factors, including overuse of credit and overproduction, left the under classes in dire straits and the government fearing revolution. 
         “Fortunately” WWII once again brought full employment as well as huge corporate profits. Post war, rather than deal with quality of work life issues, corporations flush with wartime profits and turning record profits overseas in a ravaged Europe, threw money at many of the social issues of the workplace, along the way, catering to some unreasonable demands of unions, once the only means of worker advancement, now essentially corporations themselves. This resulted in the largest increase in the middle class in our (or anybody else’s) history. 
       As the world economic equation slowly began to rebalance in the 1960s, 70s  and 80s, the US lost its lead in numerous areas, among them auto manufacturing and other heavy industrial production, electronics, clothing manufacturing. Reasons include scarcity of raw materials, “Boomers” entering the workplace, and corporate decisions to move manufacturing and assembly overseas, maximizing the corporate bottom line, while putting increasing numbers of Americans out of work.  Many of today’s adherents to the Tea Party were raised during that 25 year “bubble” of middle class upward mobility and job plentitude. Unfortunately, having no geopolitical sense, they are stuck there, ignorant of the change taking place year by year.   

          The tragedy here is that those who made these decisions simply kept cashing dividend checks as profits remained high. One of the most tragic, and to me mysterious, phenomena of the last 50 years is that as they watch their middle class status diminish, many Americans choose to remain ignorant as to why this is true. When a lower middle class white Christian supports a Mitt Romney because “he’s like us” or a George Bush for the same reason, it is simply an example of what a con job corporate America has done of many of our fellow citizens.  Neither Mitt Romney, the Koch brothers, Donald Trump,  nor George Bush (41 or 43) has anything significant in common with the “average” American. They are not "like us!" They are products of the arrogance of wealth, and job one is keeping it, and supporting their wealthy friends in keeping theirs. That is not to include all persons with wealth , since Gates, Buffett and Zuckerberg clearly don't identify with their crowd, nor does their financial stewardship or sense of social responsibility reflect it..

          When Far Rightists bemoan “government regulation” in their non specific way, there is a reason for it.  The specifics regarding why the government has exercised regulatory authority in areas such as the environment, drug and food safety, auto safety, etc.  are too numerous and obvious to refute, so the corporations simply shotgun the issue with platitudes and generalities, since some regulatory measures might cut dividends. Again, read Kearns-Goodwin’s   book to see what conditions truly were in the pre-Progressive period of 1870 - 1900. Laissez- faire was great for JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, JD Rockefeller and the other “robber barons” but it sucked for the rest of us. It still does.     

          If you are a sycophant of the Far Right, ask yourself what you and they really have in common. While it may come out as some sort of “religious, God fearing, feel good, rugged individualist” drivel, reflect, then, on how your life would be better with acid rain, no health insurance, essentially slavery to your employer, unregulated credit institutions and banks, etc.  That’s the real cost of laissez –faire, and it existed, and persons of all levels were worse off for that, except of course for the Romneys, Bushes, and other beneficiaries of institutionalized wealth.  Totally contradictorily to the alleged  philosophy of Saul Alinsky, the things listed in the letter referred to at the beginning of this essay, are almost absolute guarantors of greater oppression of those who labor in life’s margins, not their success.