{"id":1081,"date":"2009-09-24T16:03:45","date_gmt":"2009-09-24T16:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newwf.benfredaconsulting.com\/?p=1081"},"modified":"2022-01-31T22:33:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T22:33:29","slug":"politics-of-calm-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newwf.org\/politics-of-calm-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics of Calm Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"
President Obama is keeping his cool on health care and most other progressive issues despite the fact that forceful words and strong convictions may actually fare better with the American public.<\/p>\n
Three years ago, millions of immigrant protesters rocked the country by voicing their discontent over proposed immigration reform. I wrote a piece on\u00a0openDemocracy<\/a>\u00a0lamenting the fact that progressives in America are so hesitant to take a similarly strong stance against the right on more or less any issue. Progressives tend to espouse ‘safe’ positions in order to appease who they believe to be the ‘majority’ of Americans.<\/p>\n In the 1960s, media scholar Marshall McLuhan made the distinction between\u00a0“hot” and “cool” media<\/a>\u00a0(radio \/ television) arguing that Kennedy was far more suited for television campaigning than Nixon, who was too dour and energetically mismatched with TV. The \u201cmedium is the message\u201d said McLuhan. Not entirely, perhaps. But it does count: both forceful messages, strength and engaged constituency presence\u2014 whether on TV news, or on web videos the next day.<\/p>\n Why was there was no resounding call from progressives when Obama\u00a0addressed the UN today<\/a>\u00a0to remind Americans that the UN must embody diplomacy not belligerence? Of course, we must house the leaders of its member nations \u2014 like them or not.<\/p>\nStill today, after the success of the people’s campaign that brought Obama to the White House, progressives cower away from describing their convictions with the moral weight of their counterparts on the right. On health care, on women’s rights, on immigration, and education, the left wavers in their “message-making”, when actually their only hope to unite people is with a strong voice that describes the real urgency.<\/h4>\n
The point is not that progressives should shout more, but rather that passion as well as words should get beyond the “politics of calm” to a point where they explain their views with a strength that corresponds to the reasons for which they hold them.<\/h3>\n