{"id":50075,"date":"2011-12-07T12:33:37","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T17:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=50075"},"modified":"2011-12-07T15:32:24","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T20:32:24","slug":"frightened-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/frightened-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Frightened People"},"content":{"rendered":"

It sounds strange to say, but when people like Frank Luntz get nervous, I get calm. For people who don’t know Frank Luntz, he’s a character right out of the pages of Orwell.\u00a0His specialty — testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate — has helped conservatives use words that trigger emotions, not thought, to stir public opinion and produce votes.<\/p>\n

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Along with Karl Rove and his predecessor Lee Atwater, another Orwellian character, Luntz has been critical to the success of conservative politics in America. He is the ventriloquist behind most of the dummies: famous for coining the phrase “death tax” to vilify proposed inheritance taxes on the wealthy; the softer term “climate change” replacing the more alarming “global warming” and transforming the already baggage-laden “oil drilling” into the safer, more vague “energy exploration.”\u00a0Luntz’s clients include the Republican Party, the Tories in the UK and Australia’s conservatives.<\/p>\n

So here’s the deal. Luntz is\u00a0scared.\u00a0<\/em>Last week, in a speech before the Republican Governors Association, Luntz said bluntly that he’s not just scared of the Occupy Movement, but that he’s “frightened to death” of it, because the movement is \u201chaving an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.\u201d He urged the governors to stay on message:<\/a><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Mention Capitalism.<\/strong>\u00a0Luntz said that his polling research found that \u201cThe public … still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we\u2019re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we\u2019ve got a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Empathize With The 99 Percent Protesters.<\/strong>\u00a0Luntz instructed attendees to tell protesters that they \u201cget it.\u201d \u201cFirst off, here are three words for you all: \u2018I get it.\u2019 … \u2018I get that you\u2019re… I get that you\u2019ve seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Say Bonus.<\/strong>\u00a0Luntz told Republicans to re-frame the concept of the bonus payment \u2014 which bailed-out Wall Street doles out to its employees during holidays \u2014 as \u201cpay for performance\u201d instead.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Mention The Middle Class Because Americans Don\u2019t Trust Republicans To Defend It.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThey cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers,\u201d Luntz instructed the audience. \u201cWe can say we defend the \u2018middle class\u2019 and the public will say, I\u2019m not sure about that. But say defending \u2018hardworking taxpayers\u2019 and Republicans have the advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Don\u2019t Talk About Taxing The Rich.<\/strong>\u00a0Luntz reminded Republicans that Americans actually do want to tax the rich, so he recommended they instead say that the government \u201ctakes from the rich.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Luntz represents what we’ve come to know as the divisive politics promulgated as religion these last 20 years — mostly for the advantage of the 1%. To watch Luntz — who once told panelists on Bill Maher’s show that Democrats and progressives should bow before their Republican overlords and not “be so strident” — admit to being frightened by a “bunch of dirty hippies” is more than amazing. It’s fucking hilarious.<\/p>\n

So is the current plight of another frightened person, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Walker is currently facing a recall effort whose petition drive has generated close to half of the half-million signatures needed to get it on the ballot, all in the first two weeks of the recall campaign. Walker, it seems, has had enough of public outcry over his administration and effective immediately is charging the people of Wisconsin a fee for protesting.<\/a>\u00a0I’m sensing that governor Walker just does not want to face those mean, scary nurses, teachers and firefighters express their displeasure at the way he’s shafting them out of their right to exercise free speech and to organize and petition for the sake of their livelihood, and in the meanwhile, disregarding the Constitution while doing it.<\/p>\n

Today, I found myself wanting to take apart and reconstruct what Chris Rock once said in reference to the Tea Party Movement, that \u201cKids always act up the most before they go to sleep. And when I see the Tea Party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism\u2019s almost over. Because this is the last \u2014 this is the act up before the sleep. They\u2019re going crazy. They\u2019re insane. You want to get rid of them \u2014 and the next thing you know, they\u2019re f\u2014-ing knocked out. And that\u2019s what\u2019s going on in the country right now.\u201d <\/em>But\u00a0this time it’s different. This is not last year’s afternoon Tea Party. The Occupy Movement is not to be compared with the Tea Party. This is the morning of a long battle ahead. No one is ranting because they are tired and want to go to sleep. People are tired of the crap handed out as government because they’re wide awake.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter how old the kids of the Occupy Movement are — they are the adults. The impact of the Occupy Movement has so moved the national dialogue — a dialogue once the purview of people like Luntz — that the Los Angeles city council voted unanimously to support a constitutional amendment<\/a> that would overturn Citizen’s United. That’s the SCOTUS ruling granting personhood to corporations, and that money is not the same as free speech.\u00a0There’s a new bill proposed by Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida called “The\u00a0OCCUPIED (The Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy<\/em>) Amendment”<\/strong>, or H.J. Resolution 90, which specifically will amend the ruling of Citizen’s United, so that corporations will not be considered people and thus would not have free speech rights protected by the Constitution, and will prevent corporations from spending unlimited corporate dollars in our elections. A petition is being circulated in the blogosphere to support this new amendment. Check it out.<\/a><\/p>\n

These small moves will not take down overnight what’s taken years to build. Washington and politics in general needs to be cleared of lobbysists and special interest like the Augean stables needed a river to clean out gargantuan piles of mythic horse shit. But it’s a start.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure where we’re going, how hard or how crazy it’s going to get in the next few years as Uranus dances with Pluto. I know we’re all going to be involved in the fight from some corner, to counter those afraid of where we’re going yet still so in love with where they’ve been. I know there’s even some of us here who may not know what to do or say quite yet, or how to get involved, or whether to be involved at all. But we’re all on the same river raft, looking at white waters ahead. Yes, it is a nervous passage. Yet I just keep remembering the faces of those kids, bearing up against pepper spray, rubber bullets and policemen in riot gear these past few months. There is no fear in their faces. There is no fear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It sounds strange to say, but when people like Frank Luntz get nervous, I get calm. For people who don’t know Frank Luntz, he’s a character right out of the pages of Orwell.\u00a0His specialty — testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50075"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}