"New Koch"

"A new, data-filled study by the Harvard scholars Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez reports that the Kochs have established centralized command of a “nationally-federated, full-service, ideologically focused” machine that “operates on the scale of a national U.S. political party.” The Koch network, they conclude, acts like a “force field,” pulling Republican candidates and office-holders further to the right. Last week, the Times reported that funds from the Koch network are fuelling both ongoing rebellions against government control of Western land and the legal challenge to labor unions that is before the Supreme Court...

As the Kochs prepare to launch the most ambitious political effort of their lives, they appear to be undergoing the best image overhaul that their money can buy... He points to a series of public-policy initiatives that they launched recently, all of which counter their plutocratic image by showcasing a concern for the poor. In the past year, Koch Industries has become one of the leading backers of a bipartisan coalition for criminal-justice reform, supporting legislation that aims at reducing prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom are poor people of color...

Brooks told the audience that a single statistic explained why conservatives had lost. In polls, he said, only a third of respondents agreed that Republicans “cared about people like” them. And fewer than half of Americans believed that Republicans cared about the poor. Conservatives had an empathy problem. This was important, Brooks explained, because Americans almost universally believed that “fairness matters.” He went on, “I know it makes you sick to think of that word, ‘fairness.’ ” But Americans, he said, overwhelmingly believed that “it’s right to help the vulnerable.”

In the view of the American public, Brooks said, the Democrats were “the fairness guys.” He added, “They’re the ‘helping-the-poor guys.’ Who are we? We’re the ‘money guys’!”...

Fink had a solution. “This is going to sound a little strange,” he acknowledged. “So you’ll have to bear with me.” The Koch network, he said, needed to present its free-market ideology as an apolitical and altruistic reform movement to enhance the quality of life—as “a movement for well-being.” The network should make the case that free markets forged a path to happiness, whereas big government led to tyranny, Fascism, and even Nazism. Arguing that an increase in the minimum wage would cause higher unemployment, Fink told his audience that unemployment in Germany during the nineteen-twenties had led to the rise “of the Third Reich.”"

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/new-koch

I'm realizing something right now about how I ear the "big government = tyranny" argument: I am approaching it like I know what that means even though I have never read any libertarian materials. It's like when someone who has never engaged with feminism declares that feminism is anti-men. It's like when someone has never read the words of Occupy or BLM activists assumes that there is no strategy in the movement. I've let myself rest in a lot of smug superiority because I have created a boorish construct of libertarian motivations in my head and assumed it to be accurate

There is something important, for me at least, in understanding the Kochs' world view and their motivations - the Kochs and the members of their organization are devoting tremendous financial resources and time to these goals and visions. It's important to wonder about this; it's important to recognize one's "bogeyman" and humanize them and keep them in perspective. It's not real that people are evil or somehow unable to unerstand/perceive things that "we, the good people" can. It's hard  to walk through the world following a consistent goal if you don't feel driven by something big and important or if you are constantly fighting confusion or guilt.

So I should be seeking to answer a lot more questions when I encounter people whose politics I disagree with - What is their truth, what are the experiences and knowledge which led them to these truths? What can I learn from them; what can I comunicate to people with this perspective whose actions I perceive as harmful, who might benefit from information and perspectives that I have?

FB: "or more than two decades, Seitel has been a spokesman for the Rockefeller family, and he believes that the Kochs are following a template established by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the tycoon for whom modern corporate P.R. was invented. In 1914, Rockefeller hired the publicity expert Ivy Lee to salvage his image after the Ludlow Massacre, in which security guards and National Guardsmen attacked miners on strike at a Rockefeller-owned mine, killing more than a dozen people, including some of the miners’ wives and children. Rockefeller, taking Lee’s advice, visited the miners’ tent camp and expressed a personal interest in his workers’ well-being. “It was all about humanizing him,” Seitel noted. “It’s much harder to loathe someone if he is open, available, and approachable.”""