Did Saul Alinsky Turn the Democrats Into Oligarchs?
The communist community organizer may have hurt the party who embraced him.
In a recent interview on RT, Chris Hedges, host of that networks’ program On Contact talked with D.D. Gutenplan, editor of the Nation, about the rise of populism in this country. It is a movement against both parties and the media whom, they explain, lost themselves to corporate interests.
Focusing on labor issues and organizing during the 20th century, the discussion led to Saul Alinsky and his legacy. Embraced heavily by Democratic party operatives including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Alinsky’s tactics, according to Gutenplan, had a weakness.
If you read Rules for Radicals, you may notice the basic principle of the book is the ends justify the means to bring about change. It is strangely rooted in one of the greatest oxymorons in literature. Alinsky dedicates the book to Lucifer — whom he acknowledges is the symbol if not embodiment of evil — as one to emulate to bring change for a just society. Logically, that makes no sense. In fact, he even teaches how to attack the church in the same way that Lucifer does in popular Catholic teaching. That is a tactic the Democrats continue to use against Catholics and have been for the past twenty years.
D.D. Gutenplan explains to Chris Hedges that more and more people seeking populist movements discovered that Alinsky’s method of organizing, by default, is top down: he organized movement leaders who organized their subordinates. Populism is bottom up.
This country was built as a new form of government against the monarch which by definition maintained all power in the king. It is a government of the people by the people and for the people. It must lean more to populism.
Many people are losing faith in the political dynamics in the media and both parties. The Corona virus is the catalyst to their waking up and questioning the media narrative and their treatment of our leaders.
Did not certain celebrities say that the way to get rid of Mr. Trump, something they want to see, is to crash the economy? Is the solution to the virus real or is it just a tool to get rid of the president? Alinsky would be proud of their efforts, but they are anti-populist and anti-democratic. The minute one group of people acts to undo the results of an election, they change the dynamic from democracy to oligarchy.
Other rich celebrities, who will never want for food and shelter, scream through Twitter that Trump wants to open the economy at the expense of people’s lives. They cannot see the many people in terror for their future; their lives shattered economically due to the shutdown. Sunday, even the New York Times indicated that the preppers (of which I am not) may be right.
The celebrities and even politicians are not in touch with the people because they do not live with them and neither do the corporate journalists. Chris Cuomo broadcast from his home in the Hamptons during his struggle with the corona virus. Many regular people only know that area through reading The Great Gatsby in high school. Coincidentally, the 1974 movie was filmed neighboring the Breakers in Newport Rhode Island, once owned by Anderson Cooper’s ancestors.
Hedges and Gutenplan point out that Trump succeeded by listening to the people whom the Democrats took for granted. It cost them the election.
Ignoring the people Trump embraced may have further sowed the seeds of oligarchy in the party bearing fruit in what is anti-constitutional and anti-populist.
Pollsters, which many in the media use to manipulate their audience, always work to determine which of the two parties will win in the next election if it were held today. That may be a way of keeping the people in the mindset that there is no other option but these two parties. If any time looked to be an opportunity for a third party, it is this one. I mean a serious one, not one focused on legalizing marijuana.
Trump knew employment was to his administration what the economy was to Bill Clinton’s. Hillary instead talked about eliminating jobs to fix the environment. Post election analysis revealed that her plan collapsed when she dismissed the people who embraced Trump as deplorables.
Populist movements may grow stronger post virus and those that ignore them may find themselves blindsided by them more than they were by the virus.
George Friedman in Geopolitical Futures explains one pressure that will increase the rise of populist movements is that the poor cannot afford to live without risk. Others in our society live in that safety that is a luxury and still others embrace risk. Friedman indicates there will be a point where people will stop accepting the top down notion of safety-first required to live through this virus then they will reject the political/medical oligarchy. The seeds of this rejection will begin with those most financially unable to sustain the social distancing and the economic shutdown.
Our political landscape morphed into a freedom that stops when there is risk. The powerful who celebrate Alinsky became those who demand a clean world without risk and who impose this safer world upon others. Many, however, want liberty more than safety and the freedom to risk and sacrifice for the benefit of their lives and those of others. In fact, that attitude is also uniquely American. The American archetypes do not live in safety but risk it all for their goals.
The Democrats freely chose to dance with the devil when they embraced Alinsky. When you dance with the devil, you have to pay the devil his due. They are now unable to benefit from the growing populist agenda and that may make them irrelevant fairly soon.