Elusive middle ground, etc.

[sabotabby]

Amanda Marcotte always finds/writes the best stuff. Case in point: Time to hand the podium to the pinkos, which demonstrates in handy chart form what I'm been saying about the American (and now, Canadian) Left for years. Her starting point is this must-read article by Joshua Trevino (Republican think-tanker and founder of RedState.com), which, in the plainest possible language, describes how an idea moves from "unthinkable" to "policy" and demonstrates how one shifts the public discourse from left to right.

It's nothing that hasn't been said before, and it really should be obvious, but I still see liberals—particularly American Democrats—scratching their heads over this stuff. Trevino writes:

The mission of a think tank is to introduce ideas into public discourse and normalize them within the public discourse.

The example he uses is that of privatizing schools (Amanda uses reproductive freedom), and among the most recent related stories, I offer Howard Dean claiming that marriage is "between a man and a woman."

The moral of the story, as Amanda writes?

The speed at which people can be pulled rightward and yet still consider themselves “moderate” says a lot about why people are moderate in the first place. Most people don’t sit around reasoning out why they believe what they do so much as absorb the discourse, realize they have emotional reactions to both sides and split the difference. The abortion debate is a clear-cut example of this–”moderate” pro-choicers, for instance, tend to think that women should be under the state thumb but allowed a few more choices than strict anti-choicers would allow them. The good news is that this means that there’s no real reason to freak out anymore that having people with actual progressive opinions on the left are going to run off voters.

Your homework is to use the Overton Window (see the Trevino link) to describe public opinion shifts on an issue of your choice. Go!

---

Some other neat stuff on the blogosphere lately: Teresa Nielsen Hayden raises the point that militarizing the border can result in keeping people in as easily as it can keep people out.

Then again, with border patrols like this:


President George W. Bush rides in a U.S. Border Patrol dune buggy during a tour
of the Yuma sector near the U.S. Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, Thursday, May 18, 2006.
White House photo by Eric Draper. (Hat tip: jk_fabiani)

...do USians or non-status immigrants actually have anything to worry about?

The spelling leaves something to be desired, but Social Darwinism vs. Some Endangered Tigers is a rollicking good read.

Finally, you've probably seen it before (especially if you read zombie_survival), but the zombie-cockroach story is really gross and cool. The post turns into a debate between reality-based people and IDers, which is then suddenly halted by the appearance of one of the scientists mentioned in the article. Awesome.

EDIT: One more link: Stick it up your ass, fuckin' Starbucks. Just in time for tomorrow's IWW event.

Comments

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Hayden is right: I heard a sociologist on Doug Henwood describing how the current 'crisis' - if that's what it is - was manufactured. Most undocumented migrants that cross into the US are doing so to make money for a particular purpose: they do so and then they leave. Then they may cross back later, and leave again. The border has already been heavily militarized since the mid-80s, and now it's so difficult to cross into the US that those who get here stay here, knowing that if they go home, even for a visit, they'll probably have to pay a coyote thousands of dollars to get back across the border. In effect, the US, by putting up fences and pike-rows, has put a one-way valve on the border crossing: in only. Now we have more undocumented migrants living here permanently than at any time in history: because they can't leave.

[sabotabby]

That makes sense. Much of the hysteria seems to be about non-status immigrants somehow draining Social Security, which is hella hard to do if you're undocumented. A migrant who stays, works for a lower wage, doesn't drain government services because he or she can't access them without getting deported, and increases the profit margin for his or her employer? That's got to be a bonus in a capitalist economy.

So one might logically conclude that all this talk about "militarizing the border" has to do with something besides migrants. Another theory is that it's just the chimpresident trying to distract Americans from something else, but TNH's theory is pretty compelling.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

You're right. That nonsense about Social Security is just as wrong and just as pernicious as the lie that the 'death tax' dispossesses small farmers. Undocumented migrants are legally barred from receiving almost all kinds of public benefits. They can get emergency room care and in some circumstances the kids can go to public school, but that's about it.

Illegal migrants are an almost zero drain on the public coffers: except for all this enforcement, of course.

My theory is that this is an ideological sideshow, and one that happens to be very poorly managed by the right. The complete schizophrenia of the administration's response reveals they don't know whom to pander to: the chambers of commerce, who would love a 'guest-worker' program (tractable foreign employees who can be easily tracked and deported! A stick to beat the unions!) and the 'heartland' xenophobes who are getting scared as Hispanics start to appear in their communities (viz. Gibson's insanely racist KKK-style mud-people rant).

Terrifying Hispanic voters in southwestern swing states is just retarded: I'm optimistic that this will be a bonus for the Democrats. That is if they don't pander it away to try to win Ohio.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the by - they're a slight net plus to the Social Security system, because some of them get pay deducted and paid into the system, just because that's how it works - withholding is such a ubiquitous system. Of course, they can never ever draw it out again.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I buy the overall theory that the militarization is to prevent US out-migration, like the Berlin Wall. It's just not possible. The US has something like twelve thousand kilometers of almost completely indefensible land border, not to mention about the same amount of unmonitored access to the sea. The problem is that in the New World Order, while you can get out of a country (except for the Palestinians), you can't legally get in and stay anywhere.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

To put it another way, the borders are already closed to the generally law-abiding bourgeoisie, and have been for some time.

[sabotabby]

I'm afraid that the Democrats are too dumb to make this work to their advantage.

But I wonder if the next step will be to militarize the Canada-U.S. border. I don't think a Berlin Wall scenario is necessarily feasible either, but I've been proven wrong before. I suspect that our Dear Leader will go along with anything yours suggests—more than Fox, even—but it would have disastrous economic consequences. Still, I'm no longer convinced that the Bushies do everything solely out of economic self-interest.

[jhfurnish.livejournal.com]

You have to remember that the Democrats are not interested in helping people. They're a bunch of fucking two-faced bastards, infinitely more two-faced than the Republicans, who at least admit they're greedy bastards (if not in so many words), who are interested in building power base so they can do... the same thing the Republicans do - court lobbyists and the Rich. Forget the Democrats. They're not even THINKING of trying to work it to their advantage.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

In *ALL* circumstances the kids can go to public school.

It's the law that schools may not ask for immigration status upon enrollment. They may only for residency (a phone bill and lease are enough to prove that) and immunizations (free at the health department).

I am an ESOL teacher.

http://www.glc.k12.ga.us/pandp/esol/fedlaw.htm

Supreme Court
1982 -- Plyler v. Doe

The Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from denying a free public education to undocumented immigrant children regardless of their immigrant status.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Ok, all. I stand corrected.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Oh, and they also can receive free and reduced meals, breakfast, free field trips, stuff like that. Small potatoes in the grand scheme of economic impact though.

[sabotabby]

That's better than up here, where this sort of thing goes on.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. And the fact that they get this is not well known at all. It just kinda is. The law is from the era where we actually cared about human welfare and were largely against the death penalty and such. I'd like it to stay that way. :)

(reads link)

Actually that could happen here, I wouldn't be surprised if it did. I KNOW the status of nearly all my students. I'm not supposed to, but I do. Parents confide in me, or I just know the trends and such. Under HR 4437 if it had gone into effect as written, I'd be jail fodder. But this would be a worthy cause to go to prison for.

Immigration is my single biggest matter of pride in my country. Take that away, there's nothing much left.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

As for the 'Overton Window,' almost exactly the same thing is explained in some detail in Aristotle's Rhetoric. It's not a new observation, and one that makes the Democrats' allergy to the left all the more puzzling.

[sabotabby]

I thought it seemed a bit obvious to be a recent invention.

I'm not sure whether the Democrats are allergic to the left because they essentially serve the same economic interests as the Republicans, or because they've really taken this whole "middle ground" thing too far.

[jhfurnish.livejournal.com]

You're right on both counts: the fact that they're in truth simply competing with the Republicans for power base and dollars _makes_ them allergic to the True Left.

[sabotabby]

It's bad strategy, though. Regardless of who they're actually catering to, they have appearances to keep up. Right-wing types won't vote for them regardless of how right they swing, because Democrat=Communist is hardwired into their wee brains.

[apperception.livejournal.com]

I got about 45 seconds through the "Starbucks" thing and had to turn it off because I couldn't suppress my laughter well enough. My co-workers were wondering why I had tears coming down my face. I'll have to finish looking at it later.

[sabotabby]

It only gets better. He's the rantiest, crustiest, most curmudgeonly old dude I have seen in ages and I want to be his friend.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the article yet (and I will), but I see a problem with this approach right off the bat: Namely, that the corporate media still decides what think tanks get quoted and they blatantly favor right wing ones.

[sabotabby]

Not surprising, but popular discourse can be influenced in ways other than the corporate media.