{"id":14007,"date":"2014-10-02T02:42:35","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T02:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pressthebattle.org\/?p=14007"},"modified":"2014-10-09T01:00:08","modified_gmt":"2014-10-09T01:00:08","slug":"liberal-america-you-dont-see-what-were-up-against-and-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abetterhumanstory.org\/pressthebattle\/liberal-america-you-dont-see-what-were-up-against-and-it-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal America, You Don\u2019t See What We\u2019re Up Against, and It Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary: Liberal America does not perceive well the nature of the force that\u2019s taken over the right. Not perceiving what we\u2019re up against has enormous consequences, because understanding one\u2019s foe \u2013 its nature, its way of working, the disposition of its forces \u2013 has enormous implications for the best strategy for defeating it. It is one of the central tasks of the \u201cPress the Battle\u201d series to provide that understanding of what it is we are up against.<\/strong><\/p>\n

**************<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve undertaken to present this \u201cPress the Battle\u201d series because, believing it might make an important contribution, I feel a moral obligation to do so. At the age of 68, and after a whole decade of fighting against this ugly force that\u2019s taken over the right, I\u2019m certainly not doing it for fun. <\/p>\n

Maybe now is a good time to explain why I think what I\u2019m presenting here might just possibly help turn the tide of battle. A reader recently wrote me privately wondering when I was going to stop the preliminaries and explain what I\u2019m proposing to do. The fellow evidently has missed the point: getting the picture I\u2019m painting in \u201cPress the Battle\u201d as far as possible into the national conversation IS what I think is important to do. <\/p>\n

So what is it about this picture I\u2019m painting that I think could have an important impact on the battle over the future of America? The answer begins with the title here: \u201cLiberal America, You Don\u2019t See What We\u2019re Up Against, and It Matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the second entry of the series, after listing various components of The Republicans’ Extraordinary Pattern of Destructiveness<\/a>, I asked: “What is it that would express itself in all these ways?” I described that question as \u201ctoo long unasked.\u201d (Indeed, has it been asked anywhere?) <\/p>\n

But that \u201cIt\u201d is what we\u2019re up against.<\/p>\n

Instead, what we see in Liberal America is a jumble. For many, the picture lies in pieces, issue by issue, news item by news item. But I say, there is an \u201cIt\u201d that animates all these manifestations.
\nAnother way of seeing the problem on the right is to talk about how \u201cfar right\u201d the Republican Party has moved, how it has become more \u201cextreme,\u201d and dominated by \u201cultra-conservatives.\u201d But I say, there is nothing truly conservative about today\u2019s Republican Party, and that the real nature of the battle is not really at the level of right-vs.-left.<\/p>\n

At a greater level of integration, there is the idea that what this crisis is about is \u201cplutocracy,\u201d or \u201cmoney in politics,\u201d or \u201ccorporate takeover\u201d of our government. Surely, this points to an important dimension of the problem, but there\u2019s a good deal more to the picture than this diagnosis can cover.<\/p>\n

This force also has given us torture, a level of dishonesty extraordinary even by the usual standards of politics, a political dynamic in which conflict is consistently chosen over cooperation, an unprecedented indifference to the public good.<\/p>\n

America had an age of plutocracy before \u2013 in the late 19th century \u2013 and for all its faults and injustices, it was not so pervasively destructive as what now animates the Republican Party.
\nSomething bigger and deeper is involved, and I\u2019m offering a picture of that \u201csomething.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first of the two main components of our national crisis, I have said<\/a>, is this: \u201cThe once-respectable Republican Party has become the instrument of a destructive force.\u201d (I will soon argue that it is better to call it an \u201cevil force,\u201d but until I explain<\/a> what I mean by \u201cevil,\u201d and why that is the best available word for the phenomenon I\u2019m describing, the term \u201cdestructive force\u201d will suffice.)<\/p>\n

Already in this series<\/a>, this vast but coherent and discernible force has been sketched in various ways, and it will be fleshed out in other ways in upcoming entries. <\/p>\n

It matters whether or not we see this force we\u2019re up against, because seeing it will strengthen our ability to fight and defeat this force. And Liberal America needs strengthening, as the second of the two components of our national crisis, I argue<\/a>, is that \u201cThe response from Liberal America to this threat has been woefully weak.\u201d <\/p>\n

It is intuitively obvious that one will be stronger in battle the better one perceives where the enemy is, how it operates, how its various assets work together. Obvious, too, that it pays to have a good map of the battlefield. But here are a few ways that Liberal America could be strengthened by having a good, coherent picture of the force that \u2013 for the nation, our children, the planet \u2013 we must defeat:<\/p>\n