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Better call Saul [1]

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Date: 2025-02-10

In our current circumstances, I have been thinking more and more about Saul Alinsky; in particular his magnum opus, “Rules for Radicals.” If you’ve never read this book, I highly recommend it. Since I first read it decades ago, it has influenced how I think about both global and local political issues. You can find it free online for reading or downloading. If you don’t think you have time for that, there are also summaries of the book online to read.

In recent years, Alinsky has been charactertured as an extreme socialist or communist. The right used this characterture to smear both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for their past interest or association with him or his work.

But Alinsky’s true value was his insights about how to organize the powerless against the powerful. These insights are not based in either right or left politics. William Buckley, for example, is said to have written that Alinsky was “very close to being an organizational genius.” One summary said that the Tea Party movement was influenced by his work.

So why have I been thinking about Alinsky now? It’s because a lot of what I see as the reaction to Trump/Musk seems very unimaginative and “same old, same old.” I don’t think Saul would be very impressed.

In no particular order, here are a few Alinsky principles or insights and a couple of ideas about how they might be applied now:

1. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Whenever possible go outside the experience of your enemy.” – Most of what I see right now seems to come from a fairly conventional protest playbook. Can’t we do better than another protest march? For example, what might we do to make current or future Tesla owners embarrassed to own one?

2. “In war, the end justifies almost any means. The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluation of means.” – We are in a raw fight for power that will determine the future of our country. Can we all agree that “when they go low, we go high” needs to be replaced by “when they go low, we go even lower . . . and harder?” For example, I saw a criticism a few days ago of the effort to delay the special election for Elise Stefanik’s seat to extend the period in which House Republicans have a smaller majority. I have no doubt what Saul would think of this.

3. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” – Trump, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are all insecure men constantly seeking ways to boost their egos. We need to a better job of mocking them. Here’s one thought: Trump will be the oldest president in history. Why don’t we starting calling him grandpa or the old man or old fart, and generally characterize him as the angry senior yelling at the kids to get off his lawn? Would all the young, performative bros still identify with him then?

4. Alinsky also said, I think, that power was based on people and/or money. It seems to me that we’ve mostly been focusing on the former and not the latter. Keep in mind that one of Trump’s original sources of appeal was his pledge to deal with the billionaires. This is one issue where I think we can make common cause with MAGA, but may not be popular with the conventional Democratic leadership who think that pleasing rich donors is an important consideration in their development of tactics. I think, for example, that Harris failing to highlight plans for taxing billionaires was a mistake, although I’m sure that downplaying that issue was popular with her Silicon Valley supporters. We need to look for inspiration to those like AOC. We’re not going to get it from Chuck Schumer.

Anyway, these are just a few thoughts based on Alinsky’s insights. I highly recommend that you read or re-read “Rules for Radicals,” or articles about his thinking, and draw your own conclusions. I believe it will help you think differently about our current crisis and what to do about it.

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