#113: Political Leveraging

January 17, 2014

Political “left” political “right,” where does this distinction come from? Why not political “up” and political “down,” or “in” and “out.”? In point of fact, the distinction does have a known origin, an origin in which our current day rot began, the French Revolution. Apparently, within the ancien regime, the monarchical government preceding the revolution, there existed a kind of parliament called the estates general in which the two inevitable classes of citizen, commoners and nobles, each had representation. As it happens, the nobles sat on the right in this assembly, while the commoners sat on the left. Hence, political “left” and political “right.”  

This seems by far too arbitrary a way of designating the sides. By their methods let them be known, say I, and recommend that instead of the “Left” we refer to the “Levt.” Why? you say.  

The hallmark of the left (we’ll use that word for the moment) is the ubiquitous strategy of “leverage.” We know what leverage is in physics because we learned, while schools still taught actual accumulated knowledge, that Archimedes allegedly said (in Greek) “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum, and I will move the earth” (or something very much like that). So we know that leverage is a way of increasing power. Similarly, financiers often speak of “leveraging” (perhaps “levering” might be more correct), which involves using some relatively smaller assets to acquire the purchasing power of much larger assets. What has not been discussed is political “leveraging.” And it is political “leveraging” that Rahm Emmanuel was talking about when he reportedly said “you never let a serious crisis go to waste.”   

Political leveraging involves finding an issue, however small, capable of generating emotions like anger or fear in a very large crowd and making it the pretext for unwanted and undesirable gigantic changes, changes wanted by the state for purposes other than those of the issues by which they are sold. Bait and switch. You go to the doctor with a rash and you leave after a life-threatening liposuction procedure that leaves you penniless and on welfare, and still fat. The “global warming” and “climate change” issue is a prime example of the method in action. NSA snooping is another. Nationalized healthcare is a third. In each case, the prompting problem is one which is not a crisis and which could be managed by means far less intrusive than the ones proposed, introduced, and implemented.  

Do we not want cleaner air? Do we not want cleaner water? Of course we do, what’s not to want? But do we want them at the cost of bankrupting our country and creating generalized unemployment and another Great Depression? Aside from the die-hard members of America’s Fifth Column, generally not. The trick in political leveraging is to apply the art and technology of amplification to a minor irritant so as to justify the implementation of giant policies and machineries of state.  

Do we not want to be safer on airplanes? Do we not want to be safer in malls? Are we not afraid of a nuclear Armageddon (why is it always a “Holocaust,” why not an “Armageddon”?). Of course we are, who wouldn’t be? But, at the same time, do we wish to live under Lenin’s Cheka, Stalin’s NKVD, or Hitler’s Gestapo? Generally not, except for those of course who would expect to be the interrogators in the brave new world.  And don’t we all like the idea of everyone, no matter how poor, having access to the very best health care? Of course, we do, we’re really very nice people. But do we want this at the cost of generalized economic downturn, unemployment, and turning into East Berlin? Again, generally not.  

It’s all about leveraging. Leveraging is amplifying, taking something small and making it the instrument of something large. In this way, political leveraging is not unlike magnifying with a lens or transforming the miniscule pathways on a vinyl disc into an audible rendition of a symphony. The political writers, speech givers, apparatchiks and other hacks are the lens and the electronics which amplify the relatively small triggering problem to enrage or terrify a population into accepting policies and practices which are not in their interest.  

Sometimes, the prompting problem is not only small, but very local so if effective leveraging is to occur, the local nature of the problem must be obscured. So, for example, problems peculiar to some minorities are often leveraged so as to force into place policies and actions applying and affecting everyone. We hear, for example, that there are severe problems with literacy and numeracy (is there really such a word?). We’re given these facts by the media as if they apply uniformly, but most people know that they really don’t. And when we’re told about crimes, we’re frequently not told the ethnic origin of the perpetrator unless, of course, he’s a white, middle aged male. In cases of these kinds, the leveraging strategy demands that the specific local nature of the problem be concealed, camouflaged, obscured and, if that does not work, the ones pointing out the limited nature of the problem must be intimidated into silence by calling them the dreaded word, “racist.”

The moral of all this is that the proper response to leveraging is not outright rejection. The appropriate response is a measured one which takes into account legitimate concern over the initial problem. When we encounter single-issue people who seem to have just descended from another planet, it is understandable that we might wish to address them with a certain heat: We’re 17 trillion dollars in debt, the Iranians are in position to start WW III, and you’re worried that the pickle-dwarfed toilet plunger may become extinct? Are you NUTS? But this is not the appropriate response, for the point is not that the toilet plunger is unimportant, but just that he is not as important as the problems which threaten to make us extinct.  

So what shall we call those who leverage politically? Shall we call them Levists? Levtists? Levertists? Ah, what the hell, we know who they are, they’re the Lefties.