Democracy Now's Interview with Kevin Phillips

The Emperor is Naked  By Don Kyhote

There is much to be mined in fairy tales. Fairy tales are about things that never happened but are always with us. A truth we are reluctant to acknowledge can be insinuated into the mind by the account of an event that never happened. Hans Christian Anderson’s The Emperor’s New Clothes tells just a story. His emperor is a fiction, unnamed and unplaced in time, but he is also all of us at all times—and no fiction.

The swindlers who fleeced the Emperor in Anderson’s tale created a neat logical trap. The exorbitantly priced and nonexistent clothes they tailored had the wonderful quality, they said, of being invisible to anyone who was “hopelessly stupid or unfit for his office.” Given the Emperor’s acceptance of this criterion of reality, his loyal subjects were psycho-logically bound to see the invisible.

The virtual taboo against discussing the basic assumptions of our current national-istic thinking seems to me to indicate that we have become psychologically bound to clothes that only those defining themselves as patriots can see. If you can’t see the glorious vestments you are “unpatriotic and unfit to be one of us.”

“You are either one of us or one of them—one of the good or one of the evil.” Such pristine clarity from such a simple-minded delusion.

Every generation brings new swindlers (many of them, curiously, self-deceived) and more new clothes for credulous emperors. At any point in time a sizable wardrobe of such clothes is being paraded in the marketplace of ideas. There are far too few children, too few iconoclasts (to use another image), to keep up with the busy loom of the weavers of invisible cloth.

In Anderson’s story the child’s outcry leads to a rapid erosion of faith among the spectators: truth strips the Emperor naked. Unhappily, in real life, majority opinion frequently overwhelms perception.

Some of the experiments carried out by social psychologist Solomon Asch show us just how difficult the communication task is that we have before us. Asch asked a small group of college men to identify the longest of several lines drawn on paper. Unbeknownst to one of them, all the others had been instructed to agree on a preposterously wrong answer. Choices were announced in open meeting. As the responses forced the “odd man out” to become aware of his position, he not infrequently gave way to the majority and expressed his agreement with them. It does not take an Inquisition or a national disaster to make heresy painful. (“Heresy” comes from a Greek word meaning, “to choose for oneself.”) Out of the 123 men subjected to this ordeal, 37 percent conformed. I suspect the results would be even more shocking today if Asch were to repeat his experiment after decades of a mass media managing conformity.

We don’t need Asch’s experiments to tell us that all too often in real life Anderson’s child would be forced to yield to “adult” opinion.

A cowed opposition in the U.S. and worldwide is not a sign of solidarity, it is a dangerous sign of grave concern that we are becoming psychologically bound to conforming to the powerful no matter how preposterous its position. Watching the Congress respond to one hollow platitude and cliché after another from Mr. Bush was an eerie reminder of those German politicians (both supporters and terrified opponents) rising to the vitriol of Adolph Hitler a half a century ago.

It is one thing to rally around our flag and country and the ideals for which they stand and quite another to give a blank check to a nakedly bankrupt administration. Those in charge of our country are disconnected from the needs of the American people and isolate us from the community of nations. They have removed us from being a rational participant in a global discourse of sane moral reasoning.

Representative Barbara Lee showed the courage of Thoreau’s “majority of one” in the face of nearly unanimous error by crying out for reason. There are many naked emperors parading the streets of public communications, and we need a few people who have the confidence of Anderson’s child in their own senses and judgment.

Now more than ever this country needs a loyal opposition—to unite behind what needs to be done and stand against what should not be done. It is our duty, as patriotic Americans, to be heretics pointing out the naked emperors of our time. It is our right, nay our responsibility, as long as we pretend to be living in a free, democratic society, to vigorously and openly challenge what is being portrayed to be, “in the national interests.” To deny that right threatens the very strength of our system—its commitment to unfettered thought and expression.

The right to dissent is the strength of our country not its weakness. Weakness is in the position that can’t defend itself against sane rational discourse. Mandating a patriotism that requires unity behind naked emperors is not a mark of confident and secure leadership. It is a sign of the fear of exposure that no amount of invisible cloth can hide.

Don Kyote, an educator, supporter of those who speak truth to power, and environmental activist, has been confronting the status quo for his entire professional caree

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Dana's Quick Writing Course

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn

I've been writing for over 40 years, professionally for 30. If you're interested in doing the same, here's a simple four-step process that will make your writing all it can be.

Writing is easy to learn, easy to do. But it's the work of a lifetime. I'm still learning, and will be until I die. So get started now.

Write. Don't think, write. Write everything about what you want to say. Don't worry about grammar, or spelling. Just think about everything you want to say and say it. This is sometimes called "writing down the bones." It's simple, it's pure, it's exhausting, it's exhilirating. And when you're done you may have an unholy mess. Don't worry about it.

Find the story. After you finish your draft, and after you take some time away from it (an hour, a day, or even several days, depending on how long it is) go through what you have and find the story there. Look for the beginning, middle, and end.

• If you're writing non-fiction, find your lead. Move your key point to the front. If this is a news story, you then take the next most important point, and the next, and the next, in order. (The inverted pyramid lets an editor chop from the bottom.)
   
• If this is a magazine story, your lead is a sales pitch for what follows. You next want to tell the story in a coherent order, and finish with a revelation, a present for ther reader who finishes it, sometimes called a tag ending or rim shot.
   
• If this is fiction, find a key moment of high tension and start there. Then tell the back story, and lead your reader toward the climax.
   

Again, after a rest, read it out loud. This is where you find your tone. Give voice to your story and you'll give your story a voice. If you sound stilted, or stuck-up, or lost, that's a problem you need to fix. Work with your draft until you can read it as a story, until you feel it's ready for an audience.

Finally, polish. Now is when you worry about grammar, and spelling, about subject-verb agreement. Now is when you think about whether you want to violate some grammatical rules in the name of character, or story-telling, or a Tom Wolfe homage. Now is where you make everything sing. Now is where you might print out a copy and work from that, then print out a final copy.

It took me 40 years to work out the obvious. Don't waste that much time. Learn to write now. Write clearly, simply, and learn to enjoy writing. This is the path to leadership in whatever field you've chosen. This is how you give your life meaning.

Good luck.

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