Their Own Weapons Against Them

Over the past week and a half, I have been researching the union protests in Wisconsin with considerable interest. What we are seeing is not only a reversal of script considering who some of the more vocal of protesters have been the past two years, but we are seeing the tactics of the modern American Right used against them.

Chief of these is the idea first espoused by a saint of the Right, Ayn Rand.

It's called "Going Galt".

First, some background.

The entire premise of Rand's seemingly endless preamble - which culminated with a 70 plus page speech from Galt on what would become known as the foundation of "objectivism" - is that is the "producers" separated themselves from the rest of the country, that they would prosper, as people relied on them - as they "produce the wealth" that all Americans enjoy.

For the avid reader of Rand, her prose is akin to Holy Writ, but upon further examination of the woman, she comes across as more of a hypocrite than a patron saint of modern American Right theology.

So how does this connect with the 14 lawmakers in Wisconsin that have left the state to prevent a "quorum" in the State House?

First, we have to look at how many of the loudest voices on the Right are criticizing the tactics they once embraced.

Vocal protests, suddenly the "thing to do" amongst "real Americans" after the election of Barack Obama have become something to joke about, to smear, to claim are nothing more than astro-turf gatherings that benefit no one but the "hidden" behind the scenes. Naturally, this was to be expected, as the modern American Right are want to embrace the Pee Wee Herman defense on a variety of issues.

But what has happened of late, and something that the 14 Democrats from Wisconsin might not have realized, is that they are using Ayn Rand's/John Galt's positions against them. And as this is something difficult for the modern American Right to reconcile - considering how they rallied around Sarah Palin's swift exeunt from Alaska - it becomes all too apparent that the double edges of this "Galtist" standpoint likely won't work for either party like they want.

For the Right in America, this idea of "leaving" would benefit no one outside of those that they idolize - the "producer". For the Left, those that "leave" are likely to face some form of punishment while those they are helping will see the bulk of the benefit. And in that, we see the clear separation of how the "Galt Cultists" in modern day America have a distorted view of whom needs representation.

That being said, the union workforce in America - in relation to the remainder of workers in America - is quite small. The number floats around 7%. But what is happening in Wisconsin has more to do with "disparate impact" than anyone on the modern American Right is willing to admit. It starts with teachers in Wisconsin and then spreads through the country like wildfire. And it's already happening in Indiana and Jersey. But why teachers? That's one of the real questions here.

Public school teachers have been a target of the modern American Right for decades, and will likely remain one regardless of what happens in Wisconsin. Why? The answer is one that is ultimately far too simple to be true, but it is. Public teachers that have organized simply desire a minimum of compensation for what they get each year and what they would get upon retirement. And to that, we need to face the reality that the Right in America have a seriously distorted view of what teachers make and what they do each day.

Does the average public school teacher make a salary equivalent to the average CEO? Not by a long shot. How about "Federal Employees"? No. But that is another point where the modern American Right shows their utter hypocrisy - not only in their accounting used but in whom they are really speaking about. Are we to believe that ALL Federal employees agree with and vote for Democrats? No, but this is what stories of this nature are designed to produce - a false equivalency. But this also goes by to what the Right often pushes as one of their pillars - being held responsible for your individual choice. Was one person forced into working for local and state government while another forced to take a job with a private company? No.

What will happen to the 14 Democrats from Wisconsin when/if they return to their State Capital? The narrative from the modern American Right reveals much, but nothing that would do much but benefit one side. Why are teachers being targeted? And that's the real question here. It's all a matter of perception versus perspective, as the former is being seriously skewed.

This goes beyond teachers, beyond Wisconsin, and far beyond simply just the average workers desire to fair treatment in the American workplace. This is about creating a wider income disparity, a decrease in the middle class, and a further elevation of monstrous private sector usurpers that want to control government to protect their own interests. This is the M.O. of the modern American Right, and it will ultimately see the downfall of even the least of them - they just aren't willing to admit that yet.

Some Thoughts For Your Morning

- And the teabaggers are set to beseige DC once again. Over the last 48 hours, Michelle Bachman has rallied her ill-informed, mouth-agape, masses into another twitching later over healthcare reform. It makes one wonder how exactly these people are able to just pack-up and run to Washington each and every time Congress has a sit-down. It has been postulated that some, perhaps many, are unemployed and that their blathering fist-pumping is somewhat hypocritical as they are using public unemployment benefits. But moreover, it's a fair assumption that some are also drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits, another example of the Socialist structure that they claim to rage against. It would be an interesting set of polling data that someone really needs to examine.

- While conservatives continue their diefication of Ayn Rand, one has to wonder why these people would rally behind a person that was a avowed athiest. And not only that, but these same people that wave copies of Atlas Shrugged in the air everytime Glenn Beck cries on television have no real sense of the "going Galt" meme that they threaten to perpetrate. The very idea behind it means that society will faulter if they simply quit their jobs, quit using the skills that they have cultivated over their lives. The question is this - what do any of these reactionary conservatives truly have to offer this country? Will America really be reduced to a Dark Ages landscape if Michelle Malkin, Ed Morrissey, Mary Katherine Ham, and Glenn Beck just disappear?

- Are conservatives really going to gain anything by winning the three elections they have continually ranted about with drooling anticipation? And while some are preparing for both the worst and the best by placing themselves outside the equation and "spinning the spin that hasn't even been spun" once the last vote is cast today, the bottom line is that today isn't a referendum on Obama, it's the continued manifestation of the GOP's identity crisis. I'm looking for Hoffman to lose and the conservative movement to make him into some martyr for the teabaggers.

The Conservative Movement As A Study In Agnotology

Robert Proctor, historian of science at Stanford, has developed a word inspired by what he sees as an increase in ignorance when people view a variety of "contentious" subjects.

Via Wired

As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because special interests work hard to create confusion. Anti-Obama groups likely spent millions insisting he's a Muslim; church groups have shelled out even more pushing creationism. The oil and auto industries carefully seed doubt about the causes of global warming. And when the dust settles, society knows less than it did before.

"People always assume that if someone doesn't know something, it's because they haven't paid attention or haven't yet figured it out," Proctor says. "But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not."

After years of celebrating the information revolution, we need to focus on the countervailing force: The disinformation revolution. The ur-example of what Proctor calls an agnotological campaign is the funding of bogus studies by cigarette companies trying to link lung cancer to baldness, viruses—anything but their product

When viewing the Republican party, and the conservative movement in particular, you begin to see that Protor's thesis statement is quite equitable.

Conservativism, by its very nature, focuses on "self" rather than the needs of the "community". A perfect example of this is the conservative Right's diefication of Ayn Rand and her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged.

The "Going Galt" movement within the party is intended to show those within the opposition that they are going to remove the "wealth" that they produce as a form of punishment. To that, I would as what it is that they produce that the remainder of America would even want.

The latching on to the fictional John Galt character - his actions, and their intended results - remind me of Texas Governor Rick Perry and his threats of secession. As stated in a previous post, where I discussed the very real fact that conservatives love to say things that "sound good", Perry and his ever eager compatriots tout removing Texas from the union simply because it is nothing more than a talking-point that is top-of-the-list at the moment.

What would happen, should Texas become it's own country? They would lose any and all federal dollars that come into Texas, for a start. Any and all representatives of Texas would be removed from both houses of Congress. And that's two big points for a start. It was, perhaps, the ignorance of Governor Rick Perry that caused him to make these threats of secession during the recent teabaggery in his state.

The rapid and consistant discemination of misinformation by the conservative movement has contributed to the pervasive ignorance that weaves itself into the Republican party as a whole. The advent of Fox"News", as well as the internet, has increased the level of ignorance to near stratospheric proportions.

The way in which Fox"News" presents information to their audience is not only consistant with right-wing, conservative ideals, but further feeds the ignorance within their target demographic. A recent example can be seen in he following video excerpt:



Had you not seen the original footage of Obama speaking about healthcare, you would then be laboring under the assumption that what Wendell Goler and his Fox"News" producers were presenting you was the complete story.

We can see the distribution of ignorance directed at the Republican demographic in other areas such as The Employee Free Choice Act, Obama has made he country less safe, and a gaggle of other prattling nonsense.

The primary inclination of conservative bloggers, pundits, and the media that employ them, is that their target audience will disregard their own ability - and need - to investigate any and all topics that are presented to them in favor of absorbing and regurgitating what they are told.

The very real epidemic of ignorance within the conservative movement, from my perspective, has been and will continually be their ultimate downfall.