Sirotablog
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. David writes about political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties.
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July 17, 2008 9:21 PM
The Real Center vs. the Fake Center
WACO, TEXAS - I'm filing this weekly column dispatch at a rest stop outside of Waco, Texas on my way to the Netroots Nation conference. On the drive from Dallas, I've been listening to talk radio and obsessing over the concept of "the center."
I'll admit it - I'm more than a bit obsessed with the ongoing attempts by today's propagandists (read: politicians and Washington pundits) to distort where the mythic "center" is. Whoever controls the definition of the center, controls a huge amount of political power because they control the very parameters of what policies are - and are not - acceptable for serious consideration.
Back in 2005, I wrote this article for the Nation on how forces inside the Democratic Party exist almost exclusively to make Democratic politicians believe the "center" is far to the right of the American public. Now this week, I wrote this new newspaper column looking at the debate surrounding Barack Obama's recent policy shifts.
For the last few weeks, every reporter, politician and pundit in Washington have been saying Obama's endorsement of warrantless wiretapping and shifting statements on NAFTA and Iraq are moves to the center.* But, as my column shows, the empirical public opinion data show that those are moves away from the center of American public opinion.
This is the invisible propaganda system I'm talking about - the one that tries to impose the skewed center of elite opinion in Washington, D.C. on the rest of the country - even though the center of opinion in the rest of the country is far different from that Washington "center." And if you think this distortion is inadvertent, then I've got some real estate to sell you. As the column shows, there's a very clear reason why those in D.C. want to distort the center.
You can read the full column at the San Francsico Chronicle, Denver Post, Ft. Collins Coloradoan, In These Times, TruthDig, Credo Action or Creators Syndicate's website.
The column relies on grassroots support, so if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.
* Obama has said he has not shifted position on NAFTA and Iraq - and that he's been entirely consistent. Whether that's true or not is not important in the context of looking at how the media and politicians try to skew the terms of our political debate. The point here is that the Establishment portrays positions supporting warrantless wiretapping, NAFTA and staying in Iraq as "centrism" when the empirical data shows such positions are on the extreme fringe of American public opinion.
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About David Sirota
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover. He lives in Denver, Colorado. His daily blog can be found at CREDO Action. He contributes regularly to the Denver Post's Web site, is a senior editor at In These Times magazine and is working on his second book. He has been profiled in Newsweek and the Rocky Mountain News and is widely known for his reporting on political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties. Sirota serves as co-chair of the Progressive States Network, a 501(c)3 organization that supports state legislators and that is a partner of CREDO.
You can subscribe to Sirota's e-mail newsletter by going to davidsirota.com and signing up in the lefthand corner. To find out more about Sirota, download his official biography or see his recent media appearances. You can e-mail him at sirota@credoaction.com.
The views expressed on this blog are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Working Assets (publisher of CREDO Action) or the institutions Sirota works for.
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Discussion
A couple of problems here.
First, the "Left/Right" paradigm is actually, in and of itself, fallacious and inaccurate, and thus is virtually unusable for any practical exercise of political analysis in this era. It is however, an extremely effective tool for managing and manipulating the political environment, primarily for the benefit of a few and to the detriment of the health of our democracy, and the vitality of the middle class.
It is essentially now a mechanism for reinforcing tribalism. The success of right wing radio was that it created a sense of identity for its listeners. They were all suddenly on Team Conservative. And we've got to hate our cross-town rival, Team Lib'ral (ptuie, ptuie!!)!!!. Thus, Team Conservative recruited members, and used them to support an agenda designed to cut their own throats.
If I can call you a Lib'ral, I've just painted you as a Crip to our Bloods, and you're a target if you come to my neighborhood, and we might just decide to come to yours and hunt you down.
Team Conservative is having a series of identity crises right now, though. Evangelicals are having a tough time ignoring the teachings of Christ so they can exclusively hate on gays. True Conservatives are mortified that Team Conservative just spent them into the greatest debt in the history of... well... humanity. Plus they just tripped, fell, got up, brushed themselves off, and discovered they somehow ended up with John "Agents of Intolerance"-"Mr. Immigrator" McCain as their flag-bearer. Yikes, are these guys in trouble.
All they have left is a whole bunch of mega-phones blaring their tribal propaganda across the nation. And that might just be enough...
Second, there is one specific and clear reason why the Beltway Conventional Wisdom is not "centrist":
In Washington, the "conventional ideology" is Corporatism.
And Corporatism does not exist on the right/left paradigm. It transcends it.
Since Corporatism is seen as "normal" and "rational" and "moderate" in DC, the pundits and pols view anything that acts oppositional as extremism. To communicate that anxiety to the voting public, they resort to the only tool they've got that works, the tribalistic right/left paradigm.
Thus, Joe Lieberman is a "moderate", instead of a liar and a traitor. And Obama is "dismaying the Lib'rals" by "tacking to the center", when he is actually just reinforcing that he is the same go-along-to-get-along corporatist his Senate votes already exposed him for.
"More Aldous Huxley than George Orwell, these are the methods of modern propaganda, with the celebration of Obama's "centrism" the latest doublespeak. In this brave new world, language is sculpted to skew the "center," intimidating the majority from demanding concrete change for fear of looking like lunatics. It is a slickly packaged process of marginalization and demoralization - one with an underlying goal: keeping the real lunatics running the asylum."
OK, I don't fear looking like a lib'ral. I am a liberal and damn proud of it. So what do we do when Obama is our candidate, and he tacks to the center? Your analysis, David, may be cogent as all get out, but what do we do as he proves himself to be the pragmatist who will do what he must to win the election? What is your toches afn tish (Yiddish) judgment?
Yehuda
Hi David,
I liked your post regarding the "Center" that, in a fever of flattery, cribbed a lot of it and lobbed it at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Here it is, shamelessly.. (so sue me)
I believe the "center" is some distance from where you inkslingers would have us look. Is this conscious deception and PR misdirection, perhaps that the fourth estate press, insulated by their six figure incomes, are blindly groping for the outline of the mythical "center" beast? Are your writers rewarded for hiding the salami by defining the 'Center' as if it's somewhere else, populated by shiny happy people? I have looked at the map, and I see a different location of the Center, and I call out the Chronicle for continued complicity in double dealing the facts. Let's take a look. Empirical data proves "the center of the electorate" is exactly the opposite of where your headline writers are pointing:
As David Serota points out,
Polls by Quinnipiac University and the Mellman Group found majorities support warrant requirements for wiretaps and oppose immunity for companies that released private consumer information without such warrants.
Surveys by Fortune magazine, CNN and the Wall Street Journal report that most Americans oppose NAFTA-style trade policies.
For years, major polls have consistently shown Americans want a firm timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. As just one of many examples, five separate USA Today surveys since 2007 have shown majorities want the president to "set a timetable for removing troops from Iraq and to stick to that timetable regardless of what is going on in Iraq."
So, the undebatable evidence tells us precisely where the center of public opinion is. Yet when a presidential candidate moves away from the center, we are told he is moving toward it. What gives?
Part of the up-is-down distortion reflects perspective -- or lack thereof. .
Whenever I talk to friends and neighbors, we all feel like our desire for privacy, disgust with NAFTA and opposition to the Iraq war are mainstream majority positions -- and they are. But then comes the indignity of the elitist blow hard opinionators telling us that the majority of the American citizens are wrong. This despite the polls, and the evidence of our own experience. It's like information waterboarding, day after day, year after year.
We're looking at the "Raw Deal" up close and personal, we know what happened, what's happening, and who did us dirty.
Day after day, smiling anchormen, blow-dried correspondents and silver-tongued congressmen tell us not to believe our own lying eyes. Phil Gramm tells us that we are a nation of whiners, when in fact, we got bottom dealt and hosed down HARD. We good consumers have earned the right to "Gripe and Whine" as Gramm dubbed us. If we are not the country club, lobbyist remoras, should we wear "WHINER" shirts?
---So, if you are going to report on the "Center" you should make sure you can hit the broad side of a barn first. Too many of us remember your drumming for war on Iraq, and we see your headlines on our trips to the supermarket, the gas station, and the unemployment lines. Is there any mystery why circulation is down?
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