All In Me Head

Calling New Years’ resolutions “traditional” used to be like calling breathing “common.”  But a look at surveys in recent years surprised me:

• Fewer of us are making resolutions:  In the years leading up to December 2005, three out of every eight people quit making even one New Years resolution, and as few as 45% of us still make them.
• As our society turns increasingly inward, fewer of us are making resolutions serving anyone but OURSELVES.

I’m not going to worry about why, at least not here.  The reasons are probably as varied as the people making — or not making — resolutions.

What I am worried about is me.  More precisely, as I sat down this last week too look at the last year, I’ve realized that most of my OWN resolutions in the last decade or so (what I’ve got journaled) are about me — not about anyone else.

In the last ten years or so, I tried to keep things simple.  (When you test in the top 1% for ADHD, you pretty much have to.)  Over the past half-decade or so, a simple system emerged — This year I’ll:

• give up one bad physical thing (smoking, excess alcohol, reduce the number of books and old magazines in my library.  [hey, 1,600+ books are a pain to schlep on moving day, and two different libraries get to use 800 of them now.  We won't even TOUCH the number of magazines ... ])
• correct one bad mental habit (bitter sarcasm, irritability, impatience)
• add something positive (oddly enough, “take writing habit public” was on this year’s list)
• achieve one financial goal (large CASH purchase or new investment.)

Granted, I’m much more acceptable to those around me because I’ve been diligent about my resolutions.   (My wife’s even willing to be seen in public with me now.:-P)    But they’re all selfish.  Nowhere in the last decade have my resolutions helped anyone but me.  So this year, I’m going to try to head that direction — and hopefully help my fellow progressives.

How?

I intend to reclaim some words from the conservatives.  The list below is culled from sticky notes stuck around my desk during the campaigns of 2008.  [Note to self:  Physical improvement for 2009: reduce number of books, copies of Economist and Wired, and the piles of sticky notes on your desk...] I’ve already cut the list down to improve its focus, but I’ve left it open to some change, depending upon what I hear from you, my readers.

Every word or concept on that list is one  progressives have allowed conservatives to “own” over the past few decades.  Conservatives use them against us like weapons — because we let them do so.  They may only understand the words insofar as they’ve been programmed to understand them.  Their understanding(s) may be 180° away from reality.  But as long as we don’t fight them for CONTROL of those words, they’ll keep bludgeoning us with them.

At the moment, I’m not going to try to do anything really fancy.  I’m slow that way — I look for perfect moments.  But over time, I’ll look for the emotional power of the words, summarize that power, then try to find a way to flip it (pun probably intended) back at those who are throwing it around carelessly.  It’s a bit like grabbing your opponent’s sword during a battle — by the pointy bit.  Sure, it’s dangerous.  But if you know how (s)he swings, and you’ve got your gloves on, the chances of losing your fingers drops to near zero.  And fingers are over-rated, compared to your LIFE.  (Just as Rahm.)

Words I want to try to reclaim:

1. Agenda. Why are conservatives allowed to have an agenda — hand-created for them by $4 billion think-tanks over a decade — when progressives are not?  What’s the emotional power of the word “agenda” — why do we cringe when a conservative uses the phrase “GLBT agenda” or “feminist agenda”?  And what would happen if we identified some of THEIR agendae, and started regularly using phrases like “the billionaire agenda” or “the warmonger agenda?”
2. Obamabot. Similar to ‘agenda’ but with different, possibly more lethal possibilities.   Conservatives — far more than progressives — follow orders to a fault.   Progressives don’t need to listen to a “programmer” four or more hours a day.  So (with the help of my progressive friends) I want to find a “sticky” conservative equivalent to Obama-bot.
3. Censorship. Our Constitution only prohibits the GOVERNMENT from telling people to SDASTFU.  The rest of us can do as we bloody well please.  This isn’t just a word to reclaim — but I (and others) will need to help the righties with the definition first — preferably in the course of the actions we take.
4. Life.  I found that redefining this word for my conservative colleagues was very helpful in the 2008 Presidential campaign in combating the Anti-Choice crowd.  But I think it’ll be just as useful in the coming HEALTH CARE fight.  I hope to harness the emotional energy behind the conservative insistence on being “pro-life” to the simple message that pro-universal healthcare is the ONLY POSSIBLE CONSISTENT pro-life stance.
5. Responsibility/accountability.  I started outlining this in my 3-part December post on Karl Rove.  This may be more a case-by-case “call-out” campaign, but we’ll see.  One recent misuse of the term (one-sided) is the ‘birther’ insistence that Barack be “accountable” to the people by meeting some fictionalized requirement or other.
6. Politically correct. Not even sure where to start on this one, but I’ve seen it so many times in the last six months that it’s starting to make my veins stand out each time I do.  Same goes for its cousin affirmative action.  Conservatives have taken two concepts so laden with positive energy and (typically) trashed them, turned them to insults.  Enough.
7. The environment. James Carville likes to remind us that the right loves to label everything as (a) sin.  It’s about time we call out their trashing of the environment (whether through trashing regulations or driving around with their tires deflated out of spite) as a “sin”.  Let’s start using their own language on THEM.
8. Seven is always a good number, but I’ll add one more:  TERROR.  They’ve held sway on terror.  They’ve defined it, beaten us near to death with it, for eight long years.  I resolve that in 2009 I will begin to make them pay for that.  As I blog, as I comment, as I speak publicly (rare as that is) I will define the word terror as suits progressives.  “The use of FEAR to achieve political ends” sounds about right.  And I resolve to USE that definition to describe THEIR actions — certainly those in the past eight and more years — but also their actions going forward.

There are so many more.  Legitimacy (of an entity, e.g., not paying taxes or not responding to judicial order because some convenient in-house definition is unmet), national security, ethics, values (family and otherwise), patriotism, intellectual(ism), etc that I could try to handle as well.  But the issues I’ve listed above are issues that are meaningful to me personally.

Which brings me to one last, related resolution:  inspire others to not just help you with this fight, but to broaden it.  I’ll start on that one early with this question:  what OTHER words / concepts can we “take” from the conservatives?  What other words do they use emotionally (I’m not always the best ‘canary’ on the emotional thing) that we need to either blunt, or take back?

Happy 2009 everybody!  May this truly, despite conditions, be THE BEST YEAR OF OUR LIVES!

YES.  WE.  CAN.

Tags: accountability, affirmative action, agenda, censorship, conservatives, legitimacy, life, new year, Obama-bot, politically correct, progressives, Rahm, resolution, terror, terrorism, warmonger

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