My thanks to whomever recovered this bit of LBJ wisdom which can help us understand a key element of how a pussy-grabber is so close to becoming Putin’s pussy-grabbing puppet.
But we must keep in mind that what LBJ understood is only a part of the problem.
Historian Mark Mazower provides perhaps more significant insight:
“The political class has a very impoverished historical memory and as a result it has a very limited imagination. It is by and large made up of people who do not see themselves in politics in order to effect sweeping change and so they tend to operate very incrementally and very technocratically. They’re very suspicious of vision and as a result what fills their brains is party calculation – which of course always occupies politicians but in the past coexisted with bigger things.”
The Democratic Party elite clearly have a “very impoverished historical memory” and their “very limited imagination” was a key factor in the pussy-grabber’s ability to offer them up lies that feed their fears and their hunger for a scapegoat for their feeling of being not just disrespected but disavowed and abandoned.
The Democratic Party elite failed to heed the warning of Demosthenes:
“Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.”
The elite wished that working class America was Okay with their vision of America and it didn’t listen when a Socialist from Vermont told them otherwise. They didn’t listen when working class America began turning away and cheering a demagogue who was willing to pander to their fears and their insecurities.
Instead they were willing to accept Trump’s lies.
Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, in a TED Talk explains that lying is a cooperative act. You have to be willing, for whatever reason to accept the lie you are being told.
Why do so many Americans accept the lies of Putin’s pussy-grapping puppet? She cites an exceptional con-man Henry Oberlander. She notes that “British authorities” believe Oberlander was such a good con-man that he could have undermined the entire banking system of the Western world. (Maybe he wasn’t that good, but had he been able to undermine only two-thirds or a half of the banking community that made him a very dangerous man and a very good liar.) She cites Oberlander’s primary rule:
Everyone is willing to give you something in return for whatever it is they are hungry for.
Trump gave the working-class (Yes, it is comprised of mostly white “middle-aged” males — but not completely, for as we all should know by now, Trump voters came from every demographic group. ) what they were most hungry for: The promise of a restoration of their “lost power” if they would vote for him.
As Progressives move forward (I’m not confident that Democrats and their elite are prepared to move Forward.) we need to revise LBJ’s observation to:
If you can convince those who believe they have lost their power and influence that you can restore what they have lost (make them great again), they will accept your lies and vote for you.
The Truth will set us free, but only if we can find ways to show the fearful and alienated that the TRUTH is their liberator.
We Progressives must find ways to prove that ALL WORKING CLASS Americans have the same needs and will benefit from cooperation and WORKING TOGETHER.
I believe we Progressives need to stop “fighting” for our values and goals and simply WORK HARDER TOGETHER. We can fight our enemies (at home and abroad) but we must WORK TOGETHER FOR ALL AMERICANS.