Rules For Our Election Merry-Go-Round 2022

I noticed something different about You Tube last night. The political ads are back. They're brief, repetitive. and best described as ten second lies. Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda for the National Socialist Party during the Hitler years, would be proud. In Georgia we're facing several contentious campaigns over the next seven months. I don't look forward to it because the nation's collective anger and unrest translates easily into more confrontational election tactics. For a long time leftist democrats had the edge because they had a modern day playbook for such contests. It wasn't until the last decade of the last century that conservatives took serious notice. Today the playbook, Rules For Radicals, is required reading for any candidate at any government and corporate executive level. 

Around 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a guidebook advising those in power on how to keep it. Four and a half centuries later, Saul Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals advising those out of power on how to take it from those in charge. It's all about keeping and holding power. We have a struggle for that power coming in November. You'll have to read Machiavelli for yourself. It can be a challenge. On the other hand, Alinsky's book is nicely structured, very readable as a playbook, and an aid to the critical thinking you'll need to navigate the battlefield.

If you read this blog frequently you've likely encountered similar posts but regardless of how many times you read the rules a quick refresher can only make you better prepared. Many of the tactics have been a feature of American elections for well over a century. It took the experience and mind of Alinsky, long recognized as the founding father of community organizing, to best articulated them in his 1971 book. As a Chicago native trained at the University of Chicago and a veteran organizer and political activist in the city's neighborhoods he was well prepared for the task.

My copy purchased in 1971 during my revolutionary days

Here are the twelve rules or tactics we'll see at work every day until the election and beyond. My condensation of supporting information from the book is in brackets.



1. Power is not only what you have, it's what the enemy thinks you have. [Power is derived from two main sources - money and people.]

2. Never go outside the expertise of your people. [It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.]

3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. [Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.]

4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. [You can kill them with this because nobody can possibly obey all of their own rules.]

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. [There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating.]

6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long become a drag. [Don't become old news. Even radical activists get bored.]

8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up. [Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, recover, regroup or re-strategize.]

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. [Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.]

10. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. [Violence from the other side can become a positive because the public sympathizes with the underdog.]

11. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. [Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.]

12. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions, people hurt faster than institutions.]




Any way you look at these words there is rough play, play for keeps. We've read and heard them daily and watched their consequences unfold on our national stage especially since 2016. Time and experience have taught me well and today I see it as an unsettling and potentially dangerous book now that it has become mainstream. I trust readers will benefit from this information as we face what may well be one of the most significant national elections in our time.