The recent battle over the US governmental budget and the narrow avoidance of a shutdown of the Federal government is a sign of the turning of the tide, the complete abandonment of genial negotiation and discussion and the birth of an age of strong arm demands.

In my communication courses at the university, I teach a unit on negotiation and we look at what are called Red negotiators who work on a win-lose basis and often use dirty tricks and deceptive or extremely aggressive tactics to win versus Blue negotiators who see the world as a possible win-win scenario who seek opportunities for positive constructive compromise but who can often get bullied into a losing position.

The Tea Party slaves GOP negotiators in the budget fracas are most definately Red negotiators . . . folks whose tactics on a playground would be seen as bullying but whose presence in Congress is being hailed as proactive by others who may have perhaps missed some rather key points of this or that.

Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post has a spot-on analysis of how the GOP managed to use incredibly unreasonable demands to to influence the negotiations into territory in which the Democrats gave up so much territory that the Republicans were basically at a point of negotiating just how much of a gain they were getting, winning from the get-go. See Robinson’s essay at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-budget-wars-the-gop-demands-the-impossible/2011/04/11/AF31kPMD_story.html.

What is troubling here is that President Obama has now placed himself and his allies in Congress in a position that all future negotiations will be handled from a position of absolute weakness. Rather than getting the word out – the truth, not just nonsensical party posturing – on what the GOP cuts will mean to the average person, they gave away all real power and influence. They missed their opportunities for influence right and left and are now in a position of crippling every major social program that does the working class or poor any good and we’re about to enter into a new phase where perhaps we will see not only new programs threatened but the possible death of so many more, institutions that are fundamental to the peace of the nation.

The US is about to slash the budget in a time when the economy is in a tenuous position when jobs bills and public works projects would do a lot toward healing that economy. The health and education slashing that is likely to now happen at the insistence of the GOP and the abdication of the Democrats will further create a gap between rich and poor. An excellent editorial recently in the New York Times noted that one reason so many folks noted for increased unrest in the Middle East and revolution there was the number of uneducated folks of a certain age and their dissatisfaction with unemployment and lack of health care . . . similar conditions for which already exist in the United States, conditions which are about to be increased quite a bit with the budget slashing about to occur. What’s really disturbing is that it seems the GOP budget program not only slashes programs for the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the disenfranchised but does so while simultaneously increasing tax cuts for the wealthy which will only increase the gap between rich and poor further, to that of the levels of nations which Americans routinely belittle for their unrest and social inequality:

The road map for debt reduction and entitlement reform that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the GOP’s designated philosopher, has put on the table is a radical proposal. It would cut taxes for the wealthy, worsen the struggles of the beleaguered middle class and alter Medicare and Medicaid to the point where they would be unrecognizable. Ryan seeks not just to reduce the nation’s long-term indebtedness but to change the essence of the relationship between citizens and their government.

What is particularly interesting is that folks who by all rights be opposing these moves are happily (some might say mindlessly) supporting them. Why? Well for that, one needs to look at the social and political issues of influence that created a conservative environment in what should naturally be progressive states . . . for instance see Thomas Frank‘s What’s the Matter with Kansas? (How Conservatives won the Heart of America) for an an excellent exploration of this very phenomenon (the documentary can be purchased here).

Of course, there are those who regularly read my blog who will disagree with this political opinion . . . you are certainly welcome to your own views on the subject and are more than very free to express them on your own blogs.

All the best,
Brian