Don't Need No Giraffe

At the risk of frightening away some righties, I'm going to admit, just for today, to being a lefty, and talk about lefty political strategy.

I want to talk about a subject we lefties (speaking about myself, not Real Change) feel a little uncomfortable talking about. For us, talking about this subject is like priests talking about sobriety, or social conservatives talking about chastity, because it deals with a value we cherish far more in theory than practice. I am speaking of solidarity.

Solidarity was invented as solidarité by French lefties gearing up for the French Revolution. Being a colossal dramatic mess that got everyone's attention, the French Revolution branded revolutions. So whenever anyone talked about revolutions, up until that even messier one in 1917, some form of French was needed. Had the 1917 revolution been the brand we'd be talking splochennost.

When lefties imagine social, political, or economic reform, they usually think of the word "revolution" as the Marseillaise marches through their synapses, even when they aren't thinking of armed revolution. It has become a metaphor for change itself. That's the power of a good brand.

Solidarity can be an organizing goal. If you want a revolution, you want it to succeed. So you want all the allies you can get. So you organize across classes, ethnic groups, occupations, and religions, to get the broadest possible base of support. Ideally the base should be 100%, so there won't be any resistance to the revolution at all. This never happens, because Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin always wreck it.

I'm personally all for cross-class solidarity, so long as I don't have to use salad forks, or eat snails. Where it starts getting trickier is where we are talking about solidarity in opposition, AKA the unified front.

The way the unified front works, we all have to march together in the same direction to the same beat and shout the same slogans in unison, or we're being obstructionists, or even counter-revolutionary. We have to speak the same speeches, and use the same talking points.

The idea that good working solidarity requires a unified front has gained support among lefties in recent years owing to the remarkable success that the Bush administration has had employing it. Bush got us into an amazingly unnecessary and illegal war, just by having his chorus of ninnies repeat "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" over and over again.

But just because someone else has succeeded in building a house out of discarded toilet bowls, doesn't mean you "need" to build your house out of discarded toilet bowls. Just because the Ponzi scheme works for Ponzi, doesn't mean it works for you. Just because Michael Jackson got himself a giraffe by being pale, doesn't mean you "need" to be pale, or that you "need" yourself a giraffe. The unified front is not, strategically, the best front, although it may be the best front the Bush administration can manage. For the rest of us, though, working with what we have, we need multiple voices.

In fact, speaking in unison, in one voice, defeats the whole purpose of having solidarity. If you all say the same thing together it sounds like one speaker blessed with an amplifier. Who, with a brain, listening to the Bush administration, doesn't hear it as just one person with many mouths? The only question is, which person is it? Cheney?

What we need, as a mass movement, is to appear as a mass movement, by speaking with all our voices.

Questions for Further Discussion

1. Name three French things about revolution other than solidarité. The word "revolución" may be one of them, I don't know.

2. Research topic: Find an article by Michelle Malkin, and try to justify it in public. Let us know how that went.

3. The author was planning to mention madrigals and Renaissance polyphony. Pretending to be one or both of your parents, write that paragraph for him.

Heads Up, incoming

As an American I can’t help but be thrilled, as I am sure you are, by Lance Armstrong’s incredible win, for the seventh straight time, of some French contest or game or something, in their Frenchy country. But, I wonder, is that news I can use? Or not?

What the heck is news we can use, anyway? This is supposed to be a community newspaper. But what is community news, anyway? Is it just news that happens around here, in the local community? Is it news that makes our community feel good, like the Lance thing? Or is it news that tells us something that we can really use, such as an announcement of “heads up, incoming?”

I say it’s the “heads up, incoming” thing. Let’s take an example. About two weeks ago some terrorists set off three bombs in London, a city in another one of those unpatriotic countries where they don’t recite our Pledge of Allegiance. In fact it’s just above France on the map. Anyway, a week later, on account of those bombings, you had New York police randomly searching the bags of subway users.

Now, I don’t know much about geography. I don’t know the price of tea in China, now that their currency is no longer pegged to the dollar. I don’t know how much wool they mine in Australia, or whether or not they use modern synthetics instead. I’m a good American, so I prefer to mind my own business. But I can look at page 5 of my Funk & Wagnall’s Hammond World Atlas, as I’m doing right now, and I can tell you that Seattle is only an inch from New York, while New York is a whole inch and a half, about, from London!

What that tells us is this: the effects of three London bombings were able to travel, uh, three-fifths of the way here in just one week. So: Heads up! Incoming! You’re only two London bombs away from random searches of your own! Run and hide!

Let’s take a related example. Since the bombings the London police have taken to wearing all black, going around like ninjas, carrying guns, and shooting foreign looking guys who run away from guys that look like ninjas with guns. I would like to say it can’t happen here, but, HOLY-MOLY, our cops ALREADY carry guns, so ANYTHING could push them over the edge! Heads up! Incoming!

If you don’t believe me you should watch your local TV news, like Channel Nine and a Half News at Nine and a Half or whatever. Some guy named Greg or Steve will be talking to some woman named Nancy, say, and he’ll say, “So, Nancy, say, is there something the viewers here in Seattle can do to avoid being shot by men who look like ninjas with guns?” And Nancy, who plays the smart one, will say, “Yes there is, Greg or Steve. Experts around the world all agree that if you are confronted by men who look like ninjas and if they appear to have guns, you should NOT look foreign to them, and whatever you do, do NOT run away.” “That’s good to know, Nancy!” “It sure is, Greg or Steve!”

In fact the House of Representatives, a legislative body that often meets 3000 or so miles from here, has just decided it wants to renew the PATRIOT Act for another ten years. That could help pay for those cool all-black ensembles for our local police, not to mention more guns. I’m betting this is important to my homeless or formerly-homeless, mostly foreign looking, poor to middling-poor, already kicked-down & beaten-around community.

And for those of you who don’t look foreign, I want you to look around you at the foreign-looking people and say, out loud, so loud they can hear you, “There but for the Grace of God go I,” because I’m an incorrigible trouble-maker.