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Ways to Win by Jonathan Schell
September 2, 2003 |
Here is a very good short piece by Jonathan Schell arguing that in electoral politics speaking the truth can lead to winning change–even if the candidate who speaks the truth does not win the office. One example, McGovern lost the presidential race in 1972, but his speaking the truth about the war in Vietnam arguably created such a critical mass of awareness on the part of the public, that the war was rapidly ended after the election–by the very candidate who had been elected because he supported it.
Speaking the truth is a powerful way to create living, viral, blooming, fecund memes–ideas that take root and change the consciousness of the nation. The problem with “centrist Democrats” is that they plant no seeds of change–they plant no seeds of new ideas, and so the centrist, DLC-type of non-agenda leads over time to an increasingly barren political debate–dominated by the weeds of resentment-based politics and authoritarianism sewn by the Republican Right. Centrism is, for Democrats, a classically-addictive process. It seems to work in the short term, because it can sometimes help a candidate to win an election by pandering to the ecological status quo. The problem is that the Republican Right, meanwhile, keeps bioengineering and spreading new species–and so over time the ecosystem shifts rightward. The Democratic Progressives, meanwhile, seldom use campaigns to lead the electorate, to spread new memes, to help cultivate a more progressive, open political landscape. And of course, over time, the Democrats thus lose more and more often, as the ground shifts under them, and as Republicans take the ecological advantage.
By the way, Jonathan Schell’s new book, the just-published The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (Metropolitan) is probably the best, most profound new political book of the season–read it alongside the best critique of first superpower politics, Rogue Nation by Clyde Prestowitz.
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