How to Swiftboat


To "Swiftboat" somebody has a particular meaning now in politics, as an offensive strategy. Basically, the person is compared to an archetypal being and found lacking by the light of selective evidence proving his or her human weakness. So, no timid person can ever redeem himself by showing courage under fire nor can anybody think out loud. As Rove taught, everything is scripted, nobody is allowed in who isn't a member, and the words have been professionally produced and are on the prompter.

Nobody can survive being held to some particular statement culled out of a lifetime. Who would read an author and define him or her by the portion or part of a work, rather than the overall artistic merit? Well, we actually evolved from the former to the latter, from judging the whole work in terms of a single offending (read: sexual) part, toward evaluating a piece of work on its overall artistic merit.

This practice of Swiftboating depends on de-evolving backward to 1950. when "McCartyism" was termed. We were having the McCarthy hearings, and McCarthyism, like any totalitarian state police operation, began indicting people not on their overall work or reputation, but on the basis of something they said or somebody they associated with. McCarthyism is interchangeable with Swiftboating, as communism is interchangeable with terrorism. The person is sublimated to the ideology and is guilty by association, or simply by accusation. It is always antithetical to individual liberties being defended by the state.

The McCarthy hearings demonstrated that somebody who knows how to use these devices of control, and manages to get in a position of power, can round up the intellectuals and artists and make them sorry for being such smarties and looking down their noses at fat mean people who, in the absence of a chance to do things over, might as well embrace their need for control. It is the most basic sadistic impulse, this need for control. It traces back, in men, to the projection of sexual identity onto the child before he is through the initial period of oneness with his mother. This develops an overpowering fear of dependency, or helplessness, which is unconsciously longed for and thus enjoyed vicariously in others.

With Obama, the Swiftboating is the old guilt by association tactic of the McCarthy hearings, but it is also trying to define him as an elitist. This can only work with people who see who he is now: a mixed race American who has moved to the top on the strength of his character and intellect. It cannot work on anyone who has taken the trouble to see where he started out. While Hillary Clinton and John McCain were in protective custody in privileged Republican households, Obama was with a single mother, sometimes living in the poverty of Indonesia. In fact, in his childhood Obama was exposed to a very basic kind of living among the Indonesian people.

Here is an excerpt from, "Dreams from My Father:"

"Don't you think he's a little young?

Lolo shrugged and looked down at me. "The boy should know where his dinner is coming from. What do you think, Barry?" I looked at my mother, then turned back to face the man holding the chicken. Lolo nodded again, and I watched the man set the bird down, pinning it gently under one knee and pulling its neck out across a narrow gutter. For a moment he bird stuggled, beating its wings hard against the ground, a few feathers dancing up with the wind. Then it grew completely still. The man pulled the blade across the bird's neck in a single smooth motion. Blood shot out in a long crimson ribbon. The man stood up, holding the bird far away from his body, and suddenly tossed it high into the air. It landed with a thud, then struggled to its feet, its head lolling grotesquely against its side, its legs pumping wildly in a wide, wobbly circle. I watched as the circle grew smaller, the blood trickling down to a gurgle, until finally the bird collapsed, lifeless on the grass.

Lolo rubbed his hand across my head and told me and my mother to go wash up before dinner. The three of us ate quietly under a dim yellow bulb -- chicken stew and rice, and then a dessert of red, hairy-skinnd fruit so sweet at the center that only a stomach ache could make me stop. Later, lying alone beneath a mosquito net canopy and remembered the last twitch of life that I'd witnessed a few hours before. I could barely believe my good fortune.

This isn't an elite, privileged childhood. It is exposure to poverty and prejudice and people under political control by dictators, which gave him an early education on how the world works when you aren't sheltered from it. So to Swiftboat Obama, this is neutralized by spreading the false impression, among those who don't take the time to find out the truth, that he is from some upper crust family, or had special advantages in life. The truth is that he got where he is by his own efforts, and not by family connections. He didn't have any family connections.

The defense against Swiftboating is to first know it will be coming. If you put up a war hero for your candidate, know that he is going to be attacked for lacking integrity and honor to neutralize this strength. If you put up somebody who is good looking, know he or she is going to be attacked as a narcissist. If you put up somebody who has worked really hard to have a grasp of history, politics and literature, know he or she will be attacked as an elitist snob. This information needs to be put up front in the context of exposing the Swiftboating mechanism.

It's like in a sports analysis. "What do you expect their offense is going to be in this contest?"

"Well, Ted, as always they'll attack our candidate's strengths. He's articulate, a really good writer, and has experienced racism, poverty, and the trauma of the third world poor. I expect they'll try to paint him as some kind of sheltered rich guy."

"But that's what defines his opponents isn't it?"

"Exactly. They will portray themselves as lower middle class gun toting whisky swilling populists. It's all in the game."

"How do you plan to defend against this? Will you have your candidate kill a chicken on live television?"

"We're in talks with Martha Stewart, Ted ..."

Posted: Sun - May 4, 2008 at 03:06 PM