[This is derived from a public email exchange, and it is my hope that this will contribute a valuable perspective to Blog Action Day 2009. The name of the doctor in this post has been changed. ]
“According to the Swedish Nobel Prize winner for economics Gunner
Myrdal, it is possible for a social project to prevail if it is
purposefully and tirelessly pursued by a impassioned following of just
five percent. These will then bring an additional twenty five percent
of the society in tow. That is sufficient, because the majority of
people is habitually indifferent-but, in principle, they are ready to
go along with movements and the forces behind them if these can offer
the general public a persuasive prospect.”
Dr. John Smith responds:
“For the last 20 years, The NRA has enjoyed extremely disproportionate public policy clout because of its impassioned and unyielding members. Despite a small membership they have won virtually every legislative battle they have waged because they care more than anyone else, and give more money than anyone else (per capita and most of them are not wealthy.)
They have reached such pre-eminent status that even most of the reliable “liberal” politicians are inexplicably afraid to publicly denounce them or even vote against them. They are the most successful lobbying force of all time (except perhaps the health insurance industry, the banks, the military indutrial complex, the…) We should spend more time trying to analyze the reasons for their success.”
My reply:
Nothing focuses a person like a firearm, and there is hardly anything more sacred to Americans than the Constitution. This issue is heavy on the more basal, physical/power/dominance end of the spectrum than matters that require more imagination, like the effect of climate change on future generations, or a basic loyalty to the natural systems that created our very bodies.
The NRA wields the power of this nearly primal reaction in an equally simple way. They wait for a politician to step out of line, then they unleash that reactionary passion on them. The lobbying arm of the NRA has had been perfecting this approach for over 30 years. We could certainly do the same with dirty energy protectionists, although, that would require something more tangible, like a list of facts that politicians must acknowledge as true, or something as visible and defensible as an amendment to the Constitution.
I can hear the argument against this approach now — that stifling debate is antithetical to the skepticism that is a cornerstone of scientific thought. My reaction to that argument would be that the stakes are too high, the potential consequences too devastating, and with the available empirical observations, too likely to warrant the time consuming debate that will delay action.
Active change is much, much harder than defense. Especially when you have the nation’s foremost legal document and guns on your side.
We have ideas, and analogies are arguably the most powerful form of conveying an idea. The best analogy I can come up with is the Russian roulette game. Thanks to the efforts of environmentalists, scientists and activists over the last three decades, most lawmakers now agree that the climate is changing, and that humans are causing it. If a person believes this but still votes or behaves in a way that will worsen that situation, they must certainly be gambling that they are wrong. In this case, the gun doesn’t just have one bullet, it has five out of six, and it is pointed at a child’s head. Tim [DeChristopher's] “sick child’s parents seek 100 doctors’ opinion and decides to listen to the 3 doctors who are paid by the coffin industry” analogy is probably the best one I have heard.
If there were some way to make the threat stick, to make the audacity of promoting or perpetuating dirty energy really hit home, to reveal it as an aggressive and dangerous act, we could win this thing.
Sounds like something a passionate 5 percent could do.
That is, connect those dots.
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