The WAWG Blog

… social change is happening and growing inequality is the great enabler.

Relative to Bill Moyer’s 8 stages of successful social change and postings in Popular Resistance, we are in Stage 6, “Majority Public Support.”

According to the review of this framework in Popular Resistance, “During the current phase, the movement seeks to create broad and deep consensus over the issues that have been raised in the ‘Take-Off[ Occupy Wall Street].’ Our job is to win over the hearts and minds of the American people.”

As Bill Moyer puts it, “The movement must consciously undergo a transformation from spontaneous protest, operating in a short-term crisis, to a long-term popular struggle to achieve positive social change. It needs to win over … an increasingly larger majority of the populace and involve many of them in the process of opposition and change … The majority stage is a long process of eroding the social, political, and economic supports that enable the powerholders to continue their policies. It is a slow process of social transformation that creates a new social and political consensus, reversing those of normal times.”

In a follow-on Popular Resistance article, the authors expanded on the majority stage:

Our goal is to build a mass movement, which has the support of super-majorities of Americans and has mobilized up to 3.5% of the population. Therefore, the target of our protests is not the government or a corporation, the target is the people, to educate and mobilize them. … The foundation of the current phase is massive public education and building support in all segments of the population for the values of the movement. This is done through grassroots organizing in the local community. People will gain a greater understanding of how the problems of the present system affects them; how the present system violates their values and principles; and how it is in their own self-interest to do something about it.

The PR article continues on with examples of how this mass mobilization has recently manifested itself as citizen action.

Another manifestation of Stage 6, or Majority Public Support, comes from a recent article by Paul Krugman, The War Over Poverty. In his article, Krugman points out the fear on the right and the new found courage on the left, “Fifty years have passed since Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. And a funny thing happened on the way to this anniversary. Suddenly, or so it seems, progressives have stopped apologizing for their efforts on behalf of the poor, and have started trumpeting them instead. And conservatives find themselves on the defensive.”

Krugman goes on to review the old right-wing neoliberal lies for why the war on poverty has failed and then points out that right-wing authoritarian lies are changing, changing because fewer of the 99% believe the old lies as they fall closer to, or into, poverty. Krugman explains this countervailing force of increasing inequality on the success of the War on Poverty this way:

… if progress against poverty has nonetheless been disappointingly slow — which it has — blame rests not with the poor but with a changing labor market, one that no longer offers good wages to ordinary workers. Wages used to rise along with worker productivity, but that linkage ended around 1980. The bottom third of the American work force has seen little or no rise in inflation-adjusted wages since the early 1970s; the bottom third of male workers has experienced a sharp wage decline. This wage stagnation, not social decay, is the reason poverty has proved so hard to eradicate.

Or to put it a different way, the problem of poverty has become part of the broader problem of rising income inequality, of an economy in which all the fruits of growth seem to go to a small elite[The ONE%], leaving everyone else [The 99%] behind.

Krugman concludes with:

You can see the new political dynamics at work in the fight over aid to the unemployed. Republicans are still opposed to extended benefits, despite high long-term unemployment. But they have, revealingly, changed their arguments. Suddenly, it’s not about forcing those lazy bums to find jobs; it’s about fiscal responsibility. And nobody believes a word of it.

Meanwhile, progressives are on offense. They have decided that inequality is a winning political issue. They see war-on-poverty programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and the earned-income tax credit as success stories, initiatives that have helped Americans in need — especially during the slump since 2007 — and should be expanded. And if these programs enroll a growing number of Americans, rather than being narrowly targeted on the poor, so what?

So guess what: On its 50th birthday, the war on poverty no longer looks like a failure. It looks, instead, like a template for a rising, increasingly confident progressive movement.

“Broad and deep consensus over the issues” enables social change. This consensus is growing as inequality/poverty expands in both impact and realization. The right-wing authoritarians realize the recognition of inequality is spreading and they have resorted to a new set of lies to try to maintain inequality while the left has started pushing for improvements in the tools for fighting inequality and reducing poverty.

As inequality grows, social change is inevitable.

For some time, I have been promoting the use of profit-free media for news. There is a long list of such sources in the sidebar of this blog which I update frequently. As I experienced recently, Twitter was the major and almost exclusive source on news of the #MillionMaskMarch organized by Anonymous.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November.

I’m promoting these other sources because today’s major news media are only about maximizing profit. If the moral responsibility of our ‘free press’ is to check and balance our government, then the profit motive has subverted their responsibility significantly. Sometimes, this subversion turns ‘The Fourth Estate’ into a stooges for hire.

While the free press has refused to do their job, individuals, at great personal risk, have taken action. They have taken on the presses’ moral responsibility of checking and balancing the government and exposing the actions taken by the government on behalf of their corporate/ONE% owners.

The following quote is from a blog posting by Marc Farinella :

“Two final points from Lakoff; here’s the first: Don’t be fooled by contested concepts,which are abstract ideals such as fairness, justice, caring, equality, and liberty that appear to have generally agreed upon definitions but which actually mean completely different things to different people, depending upon their moral/political worldview … that is, depending upon whether they have a strict or nurturant interpretation of the concept. For example, for liberals (who value caring for fellow citizens), “fairness” may mean that the rich should be required to help provide for those less fortunate, a position that requires redistribution of wealth through government intervention. For conservatives (who value liberty to pursue self-interests), “fairness” may mean that everyone should be allowed to keep what they earn through their own efforts, a position that implies government non-interference except to protect property rights.”

Let me add to that.

“Obamacare” to conservatives, and their value of “liberty to pursue self-interests” and ‘pro-life’ stance, is a threat through government takeover of health care and death panels for grandma. Both are lies, but that’s what they have been told by their authority figures. For progressives, “who value caring for fellow citizens,” the ACA ( I would have named it Health Care Freedom Act.) is the first step to Medicare for all citizens.

Progressives claiming that right-wing authoritarians are irrational is like right-wing authoritarians claiming minorities are mentally inferior to whites. They both ignore basic biology. The human brain works the exact same away in every human without physical brain damage. This is well established by research over recent decades. So, these dehumanizing statements are just wrong.

Research shows that the various differences between individuals or groups of like-minded individuals are due to the ‘programming’ of the individual brains. This programming varies as each individual lives their lives and each life is greatly affected by circumstances beyond one’s control – until we leave the ‘nest’ and gain some control.

We do not chose our birthday (day, month, year, century, millennium etc.). We do not chose where we are born (field, house, hospital, neighborhood, city, state, country, world, universe, etc.). We do not chose our parents ( nurturant or strict-father; poor, middle class, or rich; drop out, high school grad, BS, MS, or PhD). We do not chose our siblings (none, older, younger, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). We do not chose our other relatives just as our parents had no choice. We do not chose our parents friends. We do not chose our K-12 schools, teachers, or religious leaders. Yet all these external factors greatly influence what we each became and how successfull we are.

If David Koch and I had been switched at birth, I’d at least be richer and he’d be poorer and worried about income inequality.

An updated report on growing income inequality between America’s profit makers and profit takers shows the growth of income for the profit takers – the top ONE%, who are making at least $394,000/year for 2012. The table below shows how much of the nation’s income went to the top ONE% during economic recoveries.

• 1973 Low – 7.7%
• Clinton Expansion – 45.0%
• Bush II Expansion – 65.0%
• Recession Recovery – 95.0%

Figure 2 – Decomposing the Top Decile US Income Share into 3 Groups, 1913-2012

Many factors contributed to this income shift and I discuss those in other postings. Here is a partial list:

• Excessive corporate and wealthy individual tax cuts since the 1980s
• Wage theft as savings from productivity increases by millions of profit makers were transferred to hundreds of profit takers who stashed the cash in banks instead of paying the profit makers their due
• Increased profit maker debt by borrowing their stolen wages from the banks stuffed by the profit takers
• Increasing the number of profit makers in the work force by adding women to help make up for the loss in stolen wages
• Competition from overseas as countries recover from destruction of WW II
• Removing the regulations put in place after the last profit taker excesses
• Recessions instigated by the profit takers to increase their opportunities for corporate welfare and takeover of public functions (privatization) for profit
• Replacing representative governance with corporate governance (The Powell Memo of 1971 and Citizens United decision of 2010)
• Changing corporate bankruptcy and labor relations laws to let corporations steal pension funds and break private unions
• Bankrupting public infrastructure through tax breaks for corporations to kill public unions, their pensions, and funding of public schools
• Acceptance of the Ayn Randian world view which emphasises greed and rugged individualism over the equal protection and empowerment of all citizens
• Tax laws that favor investment income over earned income

One thing that will help reverse this trend is participating in the democratic process – vote the ONE% and their bedfellows out. We can also reverse all the legislation that favors the ONE%, replacing corporations run by profit takers with cooperatives run by profit makers, and overturn the Citizens United decision.

Demand freedom from Climate disruption – increased weather extremes and human costs resulting from significant, unseen, and rampant releases of greenhouse gasses.

———————————–
Naomi Klein spoke to the members of UNIFOR, a new mega union created by the Canadian Autoworkers and the Canadian Energy and Paper Workers Union, on September 1, 2013.

Here are excerpts from her statement:

“It’s not even enough when you can mobilize millions of people in the streets to shout “We won’t pay for your crisis.” Because let’s face it – we’ve seen massive mobilizations against austerity in Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Britain. We’ve occupied Wall Street and Bay Street and countless other streets. And yet the attacks keep coming.

” … We need to figure out together how to build sturdy new collective structures in the rubble of neoliberalism. …

“We can’t just reject the dominant story about how the world works. We need our own story about what it could be.

“We can’t just reject their lies. We need truths so powerful that their lies dissolve on contact with them. We can’t just reject their project. We need our own project.

“The case I want to make to you is that climate change – when its full economic and moral implications are understood — is the most powerful weapon progressives have ever had in the fight for equality and social justice.

” … This is a green labour revolution I’m talking about. An epic vision of healing our country from the ravages of the last 30 years of neoliberalism and healing the planet in the process.

“Environmentalists can’t lead that kind of revolution on their own. No political party is rising to the challenge. We need you to lead.

“The battle lines have never been clearer. Climate change is the argument that must trump all others in the battle against corporate free trade. I mean, sorry guys, but the health of our communities and our planet is just a little more important than your god-given right to obscene profits.”

If you’re a union member, share this information with your representatives. If you are not a union member, become a climate patriot like Tim DeChristopher and fight climate disruption where you can.

John Dean referred to them as Conservatives Without Conscience in his 2007 book by that title. (There was no Tea Party in 2007.) Robert Altemeyer, a key contributor to Dean’s book, refers to them as right-wing authoritarians (RWA):

• Social/religious RWAs are mostly Followers and are mostly members of, or identify with, the Tea Party
• Neocons, or Social Dominators, are extreme punishment RWA leaders who run pro-war think tanks
• “Double high” RWAs are psychopathic Social Dominators – jury, judge and executioner – like Cheney and most corporate CxOs, and all are plutocrats.

Most followers depend on Fox News and hate radio for reinforcing their right-wing world view, and few even elect a small number of RWA Democrat followers. All RWA leaders are either elected officials from the Republican Party or work for Fox News, conservative think tanks or hate radio – along with some Libertarians.

RWAs represent only 20 to 25% of the populace, but they control most state governments and our federal government. A fearful RWA minority of followers, who always vote Republican, elected this RWA minority leadership that has brought our democracy to the brink of total destruction.

Equally troubling is a larger group of citizens, who have been tricked into thinking shopping is more important than voting or participating in any way in our politics. This group’s lack of participation has made it easy for the politically active RWA minority to take control.

In Comment on the Tea Party Professor Robert Altemeyer puts it this way:

… Most Americans do not like radicals of any stripe, they want gifted people running the government, and they will turn on liars once they discover the lies. Thus Sarah Palin hurt the GOP ticket in 2008. But in the short run, meaning this year of 2010, I see a great danger. The rock-solid Republican base has been recharged and augmented. It will bust a gut to send as many radical social/economic conservatives to Congress as possible. While the Tea Party movement is opposed by a significant part of the population, the rest of the electorate is up for grabs. And not many people understand who is controlling the Tea Party movement, who is in it, and what they will do if they come to power. Significantly more Republicans than anyone else tell pollsters now that they are certain to vote in November. And although Democrats appreciably outnumber Republicans in the country, more people say they plan to vote for a Republican candidate than a Democrat. Combining the zeal of the Republican grass-roots with a slowly recovering economy, a less-than-popular president, and the sentiment that “Whoever‟s in/running Congress now should be thrown out on his ass,” I predict the Republicans will score a great victory in November[, 2010].

Unless. Unless the least authoritarian part of the American population out-organizes, out-hustles, out-reaches, out-recruits, out-communicates, and out-delivers the votes drummed up by the most authoritarian part. They did exactly that in 2008, and achieved unimagined victories. So it can be done, by patiently and sensibly explaining to moderate, independent, “middle” voters exactly who got us into this mess, and who has done nothing to get us out of it except constantly say “no”—like someone who stands on the hose when you‟re trying to put out a fire. And if the Tea Partiers succeed in getting more and more extremists running on the Republican ticket, that should open huge differences between the Democratic candidates and them. That can produce victory after victory—thanks to the Tea Partiers.

But alternately, the least authoritarian folks can find a dozen reasons to do little or nothing, and then the authoritarians will win.

Unless more non-participating, non-RWAs get out and participate, the election in 2014 will at least maintain RWA control.