Progressives Must Stop Tilling The Field with Spoons
Rob Kall OpEdNews.com June 29, 2003
Progressives have been tilling the field with spoons, while right wingers are using giant combines. It's no wonder that the progressives are so far behind the right wingers. It's this nice cozy urban neighborhood garden patch feeling that we get, and that the big progressive foundations must be mal-adaptively accustomed to. But if you are trying to feed the world, not just with food, but with justice, fairness, protection of the commons and restraint of greedy, corrupt people and corporations, cozy doesn't cut it. Nice feelings are not acceptable criteria.
The garden metaphor that Jerzy Kozinski worked so well into his classic book-turned-movie, BEING THERE, seems to adapt well to describe the difference between the way Progressives and right wingers are dealing with the Policy Garden. Neocons have been using think tanks for over 20 years to push, promulgate, insinuate, adjudicate, preach, educate, pontificate, legislate and elect their policy preferences and agendas. Progressives keep working independently on noble projects like rights or fair treatment for various underserved groups, elimination of bad corporate or government practices, etc. But by losing the vision of the forest, the progressives are in the process of allowing their single tree-projects to wither and soon die.
The neocons have a half a dozen massive think tanks that till the political/public opinion soil like giant combines, making it easier for specific right wing interest groups to plant and harvest their advocacy seeds. They spend over a hundred million dollars a year on this basic approach to maximizing crop yields.
In Kozinski's book, Chaunce was a very low IQ, mentally challenged gardener who talks about everything in garden terms. He verges on being mentally retarded, but stumbles his way into the home of a wealthy man who is friends with the president. Those garden terms of his are treated like brilliant metaphors and cited by the US president.
The gardeners in the progressive world function very differently from the the right wingers. They fail to work together, to join forces and use the heavy equipment to do the big jobs of tilling the "soil" so their agenda's, values, visions, missions and goals benefit from the current level of technology. Progressives-- institutes and the funding foundations that support progressive causes have shamefully failed to see the vast strides the neocon think tanks have made in changing policy. I say they've failed to SEE because most people in the Think Tank or Foundational giving fields have not responded. The handful of people who have responded and spoken out have found their words landing on deaf ears
Shameful is a tough word. But they deserve it. They have been told about the power of the neocon think tanks and failed to respond. They have been sent reports and failed to change. That failure came about because, in failing to respond, by continuing to do things as usual, these organizations allowed the right wing to begin dismantling the social support systems that decades of progressive work had built-- that decades of their narrow sighted investments had built. By failing to see the big picture, the progressive foundations, in particular, allowed the neocon right wingers to pursue Grover Norquist's vision of starving government until it is "small enough to drown it in a bathtub."
All the progressive think tanks each till their own little garden, like using a spoon, compared to the huge factory farm tiller the Neocons use.
Let me make this clear. The neocon think tanks are maybe 10% think tank and 90% promotion organizations. Progressive think tanks are plain old think tanks. They explore ideas, they do research, issue reports. Maybe the most aggressive devote 10 percent of resources, though probably less, to promotion. This classic think tank work is important, valuable, even essential, but is not enough. It has not been enough for several decades. The neocon think tanks have been around for as long as 25 years. They've been actively developing strategies to aid Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Newt Gingrich, and the impeachment team during Clinton's years, where they harassed him to sabotage him from getting anything done.
It is long past the time that the progressive foundations-- Ford, MacArthur, Charles Stewart Mott and George Soros' Open Society Institute, kick in serious funding for not one, but five or six seriously funded think tanks that operate like the Heritage, Cato, American Enterprise Institutes/foundations and PNAC. I mean they need to fund organizations that do the basic work of tilling the soil. What does this mean?
Building a web, many webs of policy and agenda promotion channels-- high school and college student organizations, internet organizations, support networks for Grass roots organizations, persuasion teams for each religious group to present format and political positions in forms that gibe with each faith's religious views. These left of center think tanks must promote to legislators, and to the media. They must develop teams of high profile talking heads-- celebrities, democratic government leaders, columnists.... who work as part of the progressive team, just as the neocons have recruited their team. One study showed that 85% of over 20,000 op-eds generated in one year came from conservatives.
Jock Gill, former internet campaign consultant for Bill Clinton, says that the new politics are end to end, rather than centrally communicated. He says Bush treats voters as passive recipient customers, that the new democratic model is engaged dynamic partnership where voters participate in Democracy. The internet is enabling this new form of democracy to evolve and unfold, with all its new and emergent properties.
I have no doubt that once the funding comes for progressive policy promotion think tanks, they will become, in a short time, more effective than the rightwing neocon think tanks. The progressive community must face the fact that it must invest in this political "infrastructure." Failure to make the investment will allow further, more drastic neocon takeover of the US. The United States will go the way of so many other banana republics that allow megacorporations to come in, rape the resources and leave. Roads will deteriorate, education will worsen, national resources we now commonly own will be privatized and a police state will ensue.
Remember, years ago when a whole neighborhood stayed silent while hearing the shouts of a girl being raped (or was it killed?) That's what's been happening here. It is far past the time that the progressive foundations should have awakened to the desperate need to run out into the street and rescue the nation from the neocon, Bush regime rapists of the environment, the constitution, the economy, education, social security... It is time for hundreds of thousands of progressives to overwhelm these foundations with messages, pleading with them, demanding that they stand up, see the light and start making these think tanks happen. Wes Boyd and moveon.org, are you listening? Because even if the progressive foundations do see the light, we're going to need your help to bring in the big bucks that will be needed to make these think tanks a success.
Since the October, mid-term election debacle, when the neocons completed their take-over of the US , the interest in the news has skyrocketed. News websites have seen steep increases in activity. Moveon.org has grown massively. Progressives are becoming activated. Look at how 325,000 voted in the moveon.org primary. We have the power to take back America. We have the power to put America on a positive path to a future we can be proud of. We have the power to throw Bush and the Neocons out of Washington. This is a war, that the other side declared. It is time for YOU to do something. Now. Every day. And if you work for or run or are on the board of one of the foundations I've mentioned. Get mad, but not at me for being the messenger. Get mad and get started. We need your help. The Nation needs you. Wake up already.
PS. The word is that John Podesta has started a think tank like I've described-- the American Majority Institute. So far, it's been fairly hush hush, outside of two formal announcements.
Conversations with Jock Gill and Bob Bothwell helped me form my ideas for this op-ed.
Rob Kall rob@opednews.com is publisher of progressive news and opinion website www.opednews.com and organizer of cutting edge meetings that bring together world leaders, such as the Winter Brain Meeting and the StoryCon Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story. He has also been co-developer of several software programs, and inventor of one of the most widely selling biofeedback devices. This article is copyright by Rob Kall, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached
