Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee: a political ecology of change

Don't fight the riptide. It'll wear you down. A riptide occurs when water at high tide gets pooled behind reefs or sand bars so when the sea goes out again, the trapped water has to find a channel through which to escape the pool. It empties through that opening with such force that it can sweep a swimmer out to sea. Our instinct is to start swimming toward shore as hard as we can. The better strategy is to swim parallel to the coast until you are out of the riptide, then ride the regular waves to shore. Left activists know the feeling of being caught in a riptide without knowing the way out. When the political tide runs against us it takes all our effort just to stay in place. Our standards slide until a "victory" just means that we didn't get screwed as badly as we could have been. Our gains are swept away the moment we turn away.

When conservative activists faced this problem, back in the mid-1960s, they tried something different. Instead of swimming faster they looked into what it would take to turn the tide around. They pulled it off. With the tide behind you, you can achieve all kinds of success even with less that brilliant leadership. It's a lot easier to slash local school budgets when half the population already believes that government is incompetent, teachers are lazy, taxes are evil and the private sector can do it better. That's the tide.

One swimmer swims against the rip tide and is steadily pushed out to sea. Another heads out of the current and floats in on the surf. They both faced the same challenge. The difference is what was in their heads. This essay is about what's in our heads and how it can transform the terms of struggle and therefore the course of history. It is also about butterflies.

When butterflies migrate they don't just start flapping their wings in the right direction. They don't want to work that hard and get blown in to bushes and buildings by every gust of wind. They go straight up, sometimes up to twelve thousand feet high, find a current headed their way and ride it for a thousand miles. Their light, fragile wings--a liability among the treacherous ground winds--are now their great asset.

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