How do you deal with people who buy into The Fear?

Yes this is exactly the universal response from every Democrat I know in Seattle and the Bay area.

Its a frantic tribal panic writ large. I have no idea how to help them around it. Anyone?

I do know that every time, every single time, in any situation, when I react with anger rather than compassion, I get in trouble. So, my instinct is to respond with the list of policies where Obama has simply normalized what Bush did, but I think, in this case, my instinct is wrong.

Perhaps somebody who's more socially ept than I am?

Perhaps a question: "Why do you think they're so different"? "So, you feel the government is not already fascist, then?" I don't know. I find it hard to resist the temptation to skewer a percieved opponent, and so I am almost the last person from whom to seek advice on this point. Hipparchia was good on this, IIRC.

And +1000 on arrogance. As I kept saying in the primaries, "It's not the bitter, it's the cling to," because the "cling to" denied a class of voters the moral agency that Obama privileged himself with. Although, as your post shows, it's a proven vote-getter for some constituencies. [UPDATE: 04/16/2008.]

Just the other day, I got an email from my BFF and it's all these quotes from Republican Senators about how they want to "fix" Social Security. Now, this guy lives w/me(we email while I'm at work, not in the house together, FYI), has heard me moan and groan about Obama, complains himself about Obama's lack of movement on GLBT equality, but still doesn't get that the danger to SocSec is from Obama's handpicked commission.

of their own enlightment that they experienced supporting Obama and having to acknowledge that they were well aware of how thuggish his entire campaign was. What they don't want to acknowledge is that they behaved towards women and towards working class Americans as Southern Democrats behaved towards African Americans in the early 20th century. It's a nearly impossible mountain to climb because, as a recent study showed, people frequently cling even more fiercely to information that they believe even when it is definitively disproved. What people are doing, when they do that, is clinging to the moral universe that they have constructed for themselves. It's hard to go back to the bottom of the dog pile when you think you're near the top.

Our OFB friends developed a world view where they were the morally enlightened and everyone else was, well, dog shit. Hillary supporters got lumped in with Republicans and to this day you'll see dingbats defending Obama by claiming Hillary would be this far right as well.

I think what we have to do is acknowledge that supporting Obama felt really good. Maybe we need to go back to basic conversational techniques where repeating a point of view allows someone to be certain that they were heard. Once they know they've been heard, they can move on. Maybe. At the very least, it would allow people who joined that camp an acceptable way to begin to acknowledge to themselves that supporting Obama was an emotional choice rather than a logical choice.

D-E-N-I-A-L, "Don't Even Notice I Am Lying."

On vacation I met up with a dear old pal and one of us mentioned politics and as I expressed profound frustration with Obama she looked at me as if I had two heads and turned apologist for him. "BUT the crazy tea partiers, look at them. The Republicans won't let him go far with reform." I really went off on Obama and wet-blanketed the reunion of our tiny group with serious anger. I know my own intensity and desperation probably helped sabotage further discussion at that point since the others firmly changed the subject and did not want to engage which was also troubling. But I intend to follow up with her more gently but firmly long distance.

It threw me since I realized I sounded desperately angry and that someone close who I assumed was sympatico was looking at me like I was an alien from another planet. We have to bond behind Obama, was her message. She has always been so wonderful and intelligent!!! But the Obama blind spot is so strong. I felt like Dennis McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers as more and more people fell asleep and morphed into pod people.

I am stunned that 70% of our blue state New York Cityers want the mosque people to be investigated when they have already been appropriately vetted. WTF????

The only truth coming out is on the alternative media blogs that the oligarchs and Obama et al. and neocons (well, let's say the status quo establishment) would love to shut us all up and are undoubtedly working on pulling our plug and soon enough demonizing all of us as domestic "terrorists". All those employed by homeland security, after all, need something to do. My friend would probably call me paranoid for saying this but this is where the trajectory is traveling, and not slowly!

I guess we need to renew our info and spirit with the choir (I thank VL for all those cartoons on this phenomenon) but also engage more with our IRL networks about our sense of truth. Many people are not willing to face down the horror of Obama's kabuki, say anything, but sell out the people governance. The politics of IMAGE. After all, Oprah gave her seal of approval and that nice Axelrod seems so down to earth and honest. The media is insidious in presenting the Repub. framing of Obama as "liberal" and implying there is a serious difference in the legacy parties. The myth of the endless wars ending ... yeah, let's call them 50,000 advisers not combat troops and pretend everything is hunky dory and improved. And the oligarch gated community doesn't have to die for the avaricious and illegal military programs. BTW, our Congress and admin are part of that gated community. Bribed to the gills. Sold out so thoroughly.

I don't know what to say on these occasions with people I trusted to recognize human decency or not in leadership .... I need some answers and hope, myself.

It's scary to realize how fucked up things are and that there is nobody on your side in elected government (at least at the federal and most state levels). Local answers are great, but local answers aren't going to stop global warming or end the depression or provide everyone with healthcare. It may help you get through it or improve it at the margins (which isn't nothing), but it ain't going to stop or change any of it.

Something is deeply broken in this country. People know it. People FEAR it - they fear for themselves and their children. And they don't know what to do about it.

The problem is the FEAR combined with the lack of HOPE makes people feel helpless, thus leading to more FEAR.

I agree with Paul, a meaningful challenge to Obama would do a helluva lot. However, I don't think it needs to come from the "left" so much as from the "people" as in people v. the oligarchy. Now, that is the "left", but I think the challenge will invigorate more than the left and, to be really empowering, needs to break out of the left v. right dynamic that Versailles is using to kill everybody.

all the creative,well read,traveled and highly educated New Yorkers:How do you explain Giuliani,Schumer,Bloomberg etc...ad infinitum? Please give us outlanders a break.

hands off my Medicare." Caused a great deal of consternation among Congressional Democrats to be so hassled. But the MCMers loved it.

Lefty bloggers and some pundits commented that these Tea Partiers ought to realize "their" Medicare was a federal government program. How else do they think it was managed?

I'm sure Tea Partiers will also scream that the politicians should keep their hands off "their Social Security.'

What I'm waiting for is some of them to realize most of their Tea Party fave candidates want to get rid of Medicare and Social Security.

I'm not sure how to reason with people like that.

I have found that I can sometimes reason better with conservatives, but that's only because they love that a liberal is not an Obama fan. Get the underlying issues? Not so much.

One woman's teenage son did get it when I brought up the problem with Bush invading Iraq bcz of WMD and then found there were none there.... His mother just rationalized and went on to how scary and bad Saddam was.

I have found with the more moderate and rational that eventually, once it becomes commonly reported in the MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) that, say, electricity prices in CA had been gamed by Big Businesses, they would, sometimes, remember that I had told them that's what the econ blogs were saying was going on. So I got some cred. But it would take MCM recognition of the next issue before my views, even with citations, were belieived. And it has to be more than "merely" Paul Krugman!

So, I really don't know how to overcome The Fear thing. Reasoning and facts are not enough by themselves.

there's no elevator speech or train/bus stop speech IMHO. I've found that the most effective approach to negating the Fear Factor (for the tea partiers and recovering O-fans) involves all three things: (1) building social capital (you have cultivated a relationship beyond the domain of political discussions; for example, gardening with neighbors); (2) being willing to listen (not trying to be didactic here, just noting that context is important and the change in one's perspective over time--an O-fan becoming, a reluctant O-fan is movement though it isn't the operative goal); (3) and (I think most important) remembering to zoom out from Obama, to the D legacy party in its entirety, to the mutually-reinforcing legacy party system.

To zoom out, it is imperative that one talk about policy. How will the health insurance bailout operate (it will drive up prices, further institutionalize a market for junk insurance, and make extinct employer-based coverage b/c of the upward pressure on prices fueled by government subsidization)? [Not the nomenclature (socialist, moderate, technocratic, etc.)] How does this legislation relate to the idea of banksters dispossessing people of their homes and to chronic disemployment? How did the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, passed overwhelmingly by both legacy parties catalyze the heist of 2008? The answers to these questions should signal that both legacy parties are equally culpable in terms of policy outcomes. The various segments therein just played their roles (a la Dennis Kucinich). Anyway, these are policy questions that deter from the Obama-centric worldview of politics which both legacy parties cultivate (mutually-reinforcing by virtue of appealing to complementary cultural niche markets).

Hope this makes some sense! For sure, my success rate isn't 100% but in the past three or four months particularly, a lot of my friends and family and acquaintances have begun to use the term "legacy parties," have become open to or have fully committed to never voting for a D or R legacy party candidate again, and have become more policy-oriented when talking about politics. But it took time, which admittedly, is a luxury with regard to collapse (see here and here).

It shuts down the connection with other kinds of people.

We are all affected by what is happening. We need to see what connects, rather than what separates us. Maybe, right now, fear is the only thing some groups of people have in common. Well, then, maybe that is a place to start.

I don't like to see people in the two parties vilifying each other. I think that is about 'divide and conquer'. I don't find in my own life that I can define people as 'good' or 'bad', caring or selfish, etc., based on their political party affiliation.

The people hurt by Obama's policies grow in number by the day. The common enemy is the oligarchs.

I spoke with a Republican friend last night, who has lost his home, and when he said 'Obama is a socialist who wants to redistribute wealth', I asked him who benefited from the HAMP program - the banks, not the homeowners! Look at the results, not the words. I guess this is in line with 'Follow the money'. Who benefits?

Maybe we need to take the emphasis off of Obama and onto Congress and onto the mainstream media. Obama didn't do it by himself.

and stress creates narcissism among the people which does not contribute to empathy, sadly, without a leader who can catalyze with a sense of hope (one you can actually believe in, and strength and courage to buck the status quo) and we don't seem to have that. We need a philosophy and belief in cooperation, partnership, altruism.

obama keeps talking the peace prize talk and walking the war criminal walk. And the Good German passive Americans are letting him get away with murder ...literally. We are a moral dead zone.

btw, neither clinton was or is my answer to the paradigm shift.

Not in the blank-check, pacifying hope-n-change way, but encouraging them to rethink their acceptance of a politics built on "lesser evils" and "pragmatism," encouraging them to look under the rock at the cynicism and easy manipulation that we endorse when we accept a politics based on boogeyman/woman fear and boundless "compromise."

For more, please see these posts:
http://www.correntewire.com/toward_healt...
http://vastleft.blogspot.com/2009/12/mor...

Maybe buy a few copies of Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting With Jesus", and try to get your friends to read it - before they disappear right up the ass of their own arrogance. Their fear is of the unknown - the thing people fear most, maybe the only thing people really fear. Joe will replace - or at least reduce - their fear with knowledge.

BTW, here is Barack Obama, speaking to the masters of "American" finance capitalism at the headquarters of NASDAQ, Wall Street, New York City, September 17, 2007:

“I believe all of you are as open and willing to listen as anyone else in America. I believe you care about this country and the future we are leaving to the next generation. I believe your work to be a part of building a stronger, more vibrant, and more just America. I think the problem is that no one has asked you to play a part in the project of American renewal.”

As Paul Street said - Who's zooming who?

Oh wait, Paul lives in Iowa. He couldn't possibly know something the New York "creative class" (barf) doesn't know. Iowans are uncreative country hicks only good for growing food to feed New Yorkers. I forgot.

“Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?” -Agnes Sligh Turnbell 1888-1982 American novelist

good call on keeping eyes on the policies, tarheel.

these wonderful comments, i have to say i agree with Paul L: it's Hope/Fear, not fear. i think that is really the biggest part of it. asking people to give up something they really want and need is to ask a great deal, and humans need hope. my cousin just killed himself, because he lost it. think about that for a minute when you wonder why it is people refuse to see the truth about Obama(tm). he's one of the most brilliant political/media creations ever in american history. the man himself is rather boring, arrogant and unimaginative. but TPTB convinced millions, billions even, that he was the brand of Hope. that's Power, mang.

as a queer atheist, i am reminded of how difficult it is or can be for some to come out of the closet. have you all ever talked a friend or colleague out of one of those? it's damn hard, sometimes. some people really, really cling to that last shred of "but if i just do X, all these problems will go away" even though they've proven, to themselves even, X isn't cutting it. meh, i just had one of those grad school moments. our discourse is all so tremendously Straussian. who are of course, closet cases.

but seriously, talking people into accepting our current political reality is as hard and unsung a task as talking people into accepting atheism or homosexuality. you're just not going to do it, most of the time. as was discussed over at Cole's place recently: if you do confront people's assumptions, do it for the audience. that is, you probably won't convince your friend or co worker. but you *may* give a stranger food for thought. if there's any point in trying to cut thru the propaganda, left or right, it's in being a voice of the indie media in public, where your actions' potential benefits are multiplied.

...this is so fascinating. i'm trying to figure out if the people who started this meme ("I just had a conversation with X, and i'm frustrated;" look for it, it's everywhere in the blogosphere right now) are very evil or only sort of evil. now back to the comments.

To zoom out, it is imperative that one talk about policy.

i'm resisting a long diatribe about the Socratic method right now...

policy. fact. demonstrable reality. stuff that's right there in front of everybody's eyes. i have great success with moderate republicans and libertarians with this one. "how much money do you have, right now?" "how have you specifically benefitted from the US occupation of Iraq?" "where do you 'think' you read that quote?" etc. shuts em down every time. works with liberal moderates, too. "how do you think replacing discussion and reading with memorization for testing is 'better education?'" "why are we in afghanistan and why did obama say we should stay there back in 2007?" "why can't obama end DADT with an executive order as CiC?" my personal favorite: "if you were preznit, and you wanted to pressure the senate to do your will, what would you do?" people start talking, and then quickly shut up when they realize how many things they can come up with that the administration and dem party could be doing, but aren't. thar be Dragons, analytically speaking.

Good conversation, full of good ideas. Here are some other thoughts

The last couple of weeks, I've been seriously tweeting, building a following and my tweeting activity. In the process, I've come across a number of people who are simply tweeting D-party talking points. The chief among these is a variety of versions of the fear card. The formula is "if you don't like X, then just vote R or, at least not for the Ds, and you'll get a lot more of it."

I've engaged a number of the tweeters. Most ignore me, but in two cases I've had reasonably extensive exchanges, and in one case, I've had an exchange w/Karoli who blogs at Crooks and Liars and who is very much in back of working hard to beat the Rs, and keep Ds in. In my discussion with her, I kept getting the fear card played. I replied by pointing out that Ds weren't behaving very well in relation to the specific fear she was pointing to.

Finally, I asked her and another interlocutor also, whether, if I listened to them this time, and voted for the Ds, and they continued to support the corps and perform poorly, they would come back in 2012 and play the fear card on me again?

They didn't answer the question, of course, because the implication is a never-ending loop where I think the Ds are guilty of poor performance, but I can never present the consequences of their actions to them because D supporters are playing the fear card. Of course, carrying this to its logical conclusion is the end of Democracy, because I can never hold the Ds accountable at the ballot box, if I always listen to them and comply with the fear card.

So, then when I saw there was no answer, I asked them what the Ds would have to do to get them to ignore the fear card and vote against the Ds? Again, I got no answer, and it was becoming obvious that their support of the Ds was a matter of quasi-religious belief.

So then I asked, whether, assuming the Ds acted in the same way during the next 2 years as in the past 18 months, and therefore I still felt the same way in 2 yrs as I do now, I would do less damage to the Ds if I voted against them now or in 2012? Again they ignored the thrust of this question, because, of course, it's less damaging to punish them now, and possibly have a situation in 2012, where they field better candidates, then it is to support them now and be successful, only to have to vote against them in 2012 when the Presidency is on the line? Of course, by 2012, I hope we can have an alternative to both Ds and Rs on the ballot so we can get get rid of the corporatists. However, that's neither here nor there, since again, no one answered my question.

Anyway, at the end of all this discussion, it came out that Karoli and I had a really fundamental disagreement which reflects on the fear card and who is using it. You see, I think Obama has performed terribly poorly, and she thinks he's done a pretty good job. So, given our disagreement, she was arguing dishonestly.

That is, in playing the fear card against progressives who want to stay home or vote against the Dems because they are displeased with the Ds performance, Karoli doesn't try to persuade them that O has done a good job, and that's why they ought to vote for the Ds. Instead, she tries to play the fear card, because, as someone famous once said: "fear is the mind-killer."

Worth a post! I like "the fear card."