by Sally Jo Sorensen
The apparent loss of sidekick Jake "McMillian" MacAulay hasn't slowed Bradlee Dean's production of enlightening videos.
The Sons of Liberty/You Can Run skeleton crew of two remaining ministry employees will have to work overtime to promote Dean's new fare, Mask off! The mind of the enemy, within!, that condemns Alinsky as Satanic but shares the rules for radicals nonetheless, Is it Worth it?, in which the Apostle of Annandale tells sports fans that they've traded away their freedom for the love of sports.
Indifferent to all professional sports save wrestling, Bluestem had heard that seat licenses and season tickets at the new Vikes stadium would be expensive, but hadn't realized that an eternal damnation surcharge had been included in the legislation.
As for Alinsky tactics, it's been awhile since Obama was a community organizer, though a January 30, 2009 MPR interview with biographer Sanford Horwitt susses out the influences of the long-dead radical on the 2008 presidential campaign.
Based on the things Dean says in his radio rants, the spiel appear to be based on David Horowitz's 2009 Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution:The Alinsky Model and Alinsky's over-the-shoulder nod to the original rebel was current on conservative blog Sweetness and Light in 2007. We certainly hope no one shares with Dean the commonplace observation that Milton reserved some of his best work for the fallen angel in Paradise Lost.
Bluestem thinks that implementation of the Alinsky method explains a lot about recent politics. Via Wikipedia,we learn that the Wall Street Journal Elizabeth Williamson discussed the Alinsky Card being played by the Tea Party:
Adam Brandon, a spokesman for the conservative non-profit organization Freedom Works, one of several groups involved in organizing Tea Party protests, says the group gives Alinsky's Rules for Radicals to its top leadership members. A shortened guide called Rules for Patriots is distributed to its entire network. In a January 2012 story that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, citing the organization's tactic of sending activists to town-hall meetings, Brandon explained, "his [Alinsky's] tactics when it comes to grass-roots organizing are incredibly effective." Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey also gives copies of Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals to Tea Party leaders.
What causes the Tea Party to act the way it does? Could it be Satan?
Here's Mask off! The mind of the enemy, within!:
And Is it Worth it? in which Dean derides football players as men in tights, NASCAR as cars going around circles 500 times and being gay as a crime against nature. Church Super Bowl parties also earn his scorn:
We suspected the Vikes didn't have a prayer and Bradlee Dean has so set us straight. But even the vigilant Dean is hoodwinked by those Lucifer-following Tea Party Alinsky disciples marching in his second video.
Photo: Saul Alinsky, via Robert M. Price.
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One of the reasons Alinsky hesitated to write Rules for Radicals, despite being constantly pressed to do so, was because he guessed that the elbow-throwing righties were far more likely to study and use his methods than were his fellow lefties. He was fortunate enough to die before he could see his worst fears materialize.
From what I can see, the two key things the right wing has taken from Alinsky are these:
-- His advocacy of using a single issue on which to build a movement that would in time branch out to the issues the organizers secretly really want to work on. (This has been a key feature of the single-issue politics the conservatives used to peel off socially-conservative Catholics from the Democratic Party. See also the comments of conservative single-issue politics expert Ralph Reed about not revealing too much of one's aims publicly: "You’ve got two choices: You can wear cammies and shimmy along on your belly, or you can put on a red coat and stand up for everyone to see.")
-- His "pick the target and personalize it" rule, with is tied with his exhortation to always frame things in black-and-white terms because shades of gray don't get people into the streets or the voting booths. Thus in 2009, when right-wingers, who had already demonized President Obama, wanted to attack the ACA, they started by inventing the term "Obamacare", thus using a form of personalization that featured demonization by association. (Imagine what might have happened to Social Security had it been called "Roosevelt Pensions" or some such.)
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Oct 20, 2013 at 07:08 PM