Tag Archives: tactics

A Battle Plan

Twice in the month of April, thousands of people turned out to protest the Trump coup. Here in Red Indiana, thousands gathered on April 5th and again on the 19th, despite cold, rainy weather. They gathered with clever (and not-so-clever) signs, and with determination (some in wheelchairs or with walkers). They came with small children and elderly parents. And they came in surprisingly large numbers.

There are plenty of nay-sayers who dismiss protests of this sort as wasted effort. They’re wrong, for a number of reasons. At the very least, those of us who have participated in these events come away with heightened resolve, recognizing that our concerns and anger are widely shared, that we stand in solidarity with others who are determined to protect what I have called The American Idea.

There are many avenues that citizens can use to resist and hopefully defeat a national turn to autocracy. In a recent Bulwark article, J.V. Last published a “battle plan for dissidents.” That plan was “half mass mobilization and half asymmetric warfare,” in recognition that– during the coming year– such tactics “will matter more than traditional political messaging as it has been practiced here in living memory.”

Last lists eight recommended tactics:

  1. Demonstrate popular power in the provinces through large-scale rallies.
  2. Use these events to organize the resistance into a mass movement that can be called into action.
  3. Direct the mass movement into targeted political strikes: Getting blowout wins in special elections; boycotts of Tesla; etc.
  4. Politicize everything: Attack the authoritarians for every bad thing that happens, anywhere in the world. Flood the zone.
  5. Elevate the corruption/graft in a way that pits the billionaire insiders against the “forgotten man.”
  6. When the moment is right, bring this movement to the Capital for a show of strength.
  7. Use this demonstration as a slingshot to take back legislative power in the 2026 elections.
  8. More importantly, use it to send a message to the institutional actors that people will have their back if they show courage..

While I agree with all eight, it is important to recognize that numbers 1, 2, and 8 are dependent upon the sorts of peaceful mass demonstrations we’re now experiencing. Large turnouts by everyday Americans of the sort we are seeing are a demonstration of power–people who are willing to get off their couches, create signs, gather and march with others are people who will cast ballots in upcoming elections.

The mechanisms used to inform citizens of these upcoming demonstrations will also serve as the initial organizing machinery for further actions–boycotts or strikes, for example. (I will note that those mechanisms need to be greatly expanded; significant numbers of people, many of whom would have been likely to participate, remained totally unaware of April’s protests. As the grass-roots groups sponsoring these events build out their informational webs, that will undoubtedly change.)

But Number 8 is by far the most important of the three identified purposes of these mass protests.

We would not be in the position we’re in if the GOP invertebrates We the People have elected to Congress were doing their jobs. Granted, some of these officials are as bigoted and ignorant as the current administration. Some are “out and proud” White Christian Nationalists rejecting modernity and enthusiastically applauding the destruction of the federal government. (Here in Indiana, that cohort includes Senator Jim Banks.) But a significant number of those elected officials have placed their ability to retain their positions–and escape the ire of the would-be King–over their obligations to the Constitution and fidelity to their oaths of office.

It is that latter group of “institutional actors” that can be moved by mass public demonstrations–by evidence that large numbers of their constituents will “have their backs” if they oppose the ongoing coup, but will vote against them if they continue to cower. (Are you listening, Senator Young?)

There is one other value to these gatherings that the essay failed to note, probably because it is hard to document, and that’s the informational value inherent in such events. In a world where people get their information from wildly disparate sources, significant numbers of Americans remain unaware of the actions of this administration and the very dangerous implications of those actions. When fellow citizens protest in great numbers, some of the uninformed will encounter information they didn’t previously have.

For that matter, protestors angered by specific issues are frequently unaware of the full range of Trump’s bad actions, given their rapidity and number. The speeches and signs at mass events expand participants’ understanding of the threats we face.

Education occurs in many venues. Protests are one of them.

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From the Mouths of Babes….

Okay, so maybe not babes. Actually, graduate students.

Where I teach, at SPEA-IUPUI, students have the option of enrolling in “Directed Studies,” essentially, tutorials in which a professor supervises student research that culminates in a relatively lengthy and (hopefully) analytical paper on a subject that the student wishes to explore.

I recently worked with a student who wanted to understand why lower-income Americans so often vote against their own economic self-interest.

The paper he turned in gave evidence of considerable research, and it made a number of very good points. He gave me permission to share a couple of his more intriguing conclusions.

For example, he looked closely at Paul Ryan’s 2012 proposed budget, and the analysis of that budget by the Congressional Budget office. As widely reported, the plan proposed massive savings to be generated by “adjusting” Medicaid and turning Medicare into a “voucher” system. It also dramatically reduced corporate and individual tax rates, while purportedly “growing overall revenue…What was not included, however, was the way Mr. Ryan intended to grow this revenue.”

These specifics would seem to be particularly important, since the plan made very clear that tax receipts would plummet and defense spending would increase. As my student recognized, however,  actually identifying specifics–in this case, specifying the programs that would be cut and the extent of those cuts–would spell political doom.

“This is an example of calculated policy ambiguity. When presented to less educated voters or those who do not possess the means or time to fact-check its claims, it appears as a viable way to aid our country in the face of mounting debt. However, when examined closely it reveals a strategy of political gamesmanship and a budget plan that would hurt most those its simplified talking points are aimed to attract.”

A second tactic pinpointed in the paper revolved around the deliberate use of religion to divert focus from bread-and-butter issues–the use of hot-button “wedge issues” to obscure the economic harms likely to flow from other, less emotionally-freighted policies and positions. The paper cited research showing that religiosity is more important than income, sex, age or ethnicity in predicting support for conservative causes.

So. Bright shiny objects (Stop the “homosexual agenda”!! Birth control means sex without consequences!! War on Christmas!!) plus “calculated economic ambiguity.”

Sounds about Right.

Red and Blue, Ends and Means

I have posted previously about ends and means, about the fact that the American constitution is a prescription for process. The central premise of our system is a respect for individuals’ right to have different life goals, different ends–what the Greeks called telos. When citizens are expected to differ on fundamental questions of purpose and belief, what is needed is a set of rules governing their common lives, a process making peaceful and respectful coexistence possible.

The Constitution is thus a structure enabling a  “live and let live” philosophy.

This emphasis on process, on means, has been widely acknowledged by political scientists. In the political theory literature, there has been a lively debate on the question whether this emphasis is sufficient to produce “thick” bonds between citizens, but that debate has rested on a shared recognition of the American approach as procedural.  We are, as the saying goes, a nation of laws.

In that context, Rick Perlstein makes a point about today’s political parties that is well worth pondering.

We Americans love to cite the “political spectrum” as the best way to classify ideologies. The metaphor is incorrect: it implies symmetry. But left and right today are not opposites. They are different species. It has to do with core principles. To put it abstractly, the right always has in mind a prescriptive vision of its ideal future world—a normative vision. Unlike the left (at least since Karl Marx neglected to include an actual description of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” within the 2,500 pages of Das Kapital), conservatives have always known what the world would look like after their revolution: hearth, home, church, a businessman’s republic. The dominant strain of the American left, on the other hand, certainly since the decline of the socialist left, fetishizes fairness, openness, and diversity. (Liberals have no problem with home, hearth, and church in themselves; they just see them as one viable life-style option among many.) If the stakes for liberals are fair procedures, the stakes for conservatives are last things: either humanity trends toward Grace, or it hurtles toward Armageddon…

For liberals, generally speaking, honoring procedures—means—is the core of what being “principled” means. For conservatives, fighting for the right outcome—ends—even at the expense of procedural nicety, is what being “principled” means. ..

as the late New Right founding father Paul Weyrich once put it, “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Which was pretty damned brazen, considering he was co-founder of an organization called the Moral Majority.

Now, of course, for over a decade now, the brazenness is institutionalized within the very vitals of one of our two political parties. You just elect yourself a Republican attorney general, and he does his level best to squeeze as many minority voters from the roles as he can force the law to allow. And a conservative state legislature, so they can gerrymander the hell out of their state, such that, as a Texas Republican congressional aid close to Tom Delay wrote in a 2003 email, “This has a real national impact that should assure that Republicans keep the House no matter the national mood.” Or you lose the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election but win in the electoral college—then declare a mandate to privatize Social Security, like George Bush did.

Which only makes sense, if you’re trying to save civilization from hurtling toward Armageddon. That’s how conservatives think. To quote one Christian right leader, “We ought to see clearly that the end does justify the means…If the method I am using to accomplishes the goal I am aiming at, it is for that reason a good method.

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