The basic tactics of the progressive over/under political strategy is to convince the "under" voters that they have no place else to go.
In the days when the left was the protector of the workers, they taught the workers that unless they voted for the left they would lose their jobs, their lives, their dignity to the malefactors of great wealth.
But, when you think about it, it has always been a lie. Ever since the vote started expanding in the mid 19th century, governments across the west have extended benefits to the workers, from wage and hour laws, child labor laws, public schools, and then the entitlement programs of the 20th century.
Crabbed old guys like me say that it would have been much better for the workers to build out their own organizations, from labor unions to mutual-aid societies, rather than take the hand of government, but that is beside the point. The politicians offered goodies, the workers voted for politicians that offered goodies, and here we are.
In other words, it is a lie to say that only the politicians can save the workers. But, by golly, the narrative worked, for about a century.
Since the 1960s the progressives have altered their over/under political strategy. Now they are the protector of minorities, and particularly the blacks. Ever since the Civil Rights Acts, the left in the US has told blacks that unless they voted for Democrats they would soon be back in chains. Because Jim Crow, because the KKK, because white supremacy. Obviously it works, because blacks vote 90 percent for Democrats, and you cannot get humans to vote 90 percent for anything unless you scare the pants off them.
You might say that it is a lie to say that only politicians can save the blacks from the white supremacists.s But by golly, the narrative has worked, for over half a century.
Meanwhile, as Charlie Eastman writes in The American Spectator,
Democrats’ social justice policies (defunding the police, ending cash bail, refusing to prosecute crimes, eliminating standards in academics, “disrupting” traditional family structures, etc.) have created a deadly reality for blacks living in Democrat-run cities — there is no place more dangerous for a black person to live in America today.
And, what is the biggest danger for a black person in a Democrat-run city? Not white supremacists, but other blacks.
Eastman writes that Victor Davis Hanson tags "the entire woke movement is a cover-up of sorts, a means of deflecting attention away from the Democrats’ policy failures", but I think that misses the point.
The point is that every political movement unites its supporters by terrifying them about some malevolent "other." Let's advance the argument by checking Donald Trump's agenda. We were going to Make America Great Again. But first we had to deal with the Deep State, the Chinese, and illegal immigrants. This is not rocket science. Trump supporters are the middle middle class whose jobs are likely to be affected by cheap Chinese imports, low-wage immigrants, and the scorn of the Deep State and its power to wreck the lives of ordinary Americans.
Now, are these "others" real threats to the ordinary American, or are they Trump-invented devils? I'd say that, by and large, they are genuine threats to ordinary Americans. They are certainly not existential threats, but real enough.
Now, whatabout the Democrats? They advanced the notion last year, using the death of George Floyd in police custody, that the police and white supremacists were an existential threat to blacks. Really? I'd say that the real existential threat to blacks is two-bit crooks like George Floyd passing fake $20 bills in convenience stores. I'd say that the real existential threat to blacks is that their murder rate, mostly black-on-black, is about 8 times the white murder rate.
But let us give the Democrats a break. When you have a voter block that votes 90 percent for you, then the only political tactic that keeps them at home is to scare the pants off them.
Notice that Democrats use the same tactics on their other "oppressed peoples" voters.
I've noticed that gay acquaintances are more aggressive around me. Could that possibly be that if the Supreme Court reverses the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage that they feel that it will be all over for gays?
Women are taught to believe that if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade, that it will be all over for women: back to the back-alley abortion.
Environmentalists are taught to believe that the oil and coal companies are catapulting us towards the catastrophe of climate change and the end of human life on this planet.
Do you see how the fact that the overclass established gay marriage and abortion by judicial decision and environmental regulations by executive decisions means that there is really no established cultural consensus on these issues. They were imposed by the ruling class.
Therefore gays and feminists and environmentalists and blacks have to vote Democrat otherwise it's the end of the world.
Interesting isn't it. We are conditioned to accept that to have Democrats running around yelling that the end of the world is coming -- because white supremacy, abortion, climate change -- is perfectly normal and acceptable.
And I get it. The only warrant for government power is existential peril, and if you want political power, for whatever reason, you will pretty soon figure out that you'd better find an existential peril, or get out of the political power business.
But what we need is a politician with the native instinct and cunning to blow up the Democrats' race narrative, preferably right in their faces. What is needed is something like Marx's "nursery tale" comment in the Communist Manifesto. Something like this:
It is high time that the middle classes should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of White Supremacy with the boring truth, that the middle class just wants to wive and thrive and survive.
And that everything that the left puts out is a lie, including "and" and "the."
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