(xposted, edited)
The other day, I was happy to see this good response by Barbara Ehrenreich, of the Nickle and Dimed fame, now under attack by Dobson et al who has labelled her as a “homewrecker”.
Barbara doesn’t miss a beat. She niftily pinpoints what was projected onto her and blasts back, countering that the real homewreckers are corporations whose policies don’t provide adequate wages, requiring workers to work long hours and/or work two jobs or more.
What she does works well. My hope: let there be tons more responses like Barbara’s out there.
My second point: this attack on her is a good illustration of a key attack strategy the corporate-Republican tribe uses, namely projection.
But first, to clarify, I’m referring to projection as the psychological defense mechanism, as defined below.
From wikipedia:
it is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one “projects” one’s own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, feelings–basically parts of oneself–onto someone else (usually another person, but psychological projection onto animals and inanimate objects also occurs). The principle of projection is well-established in psychology.
As used by the corporo-Republican tribe, this has morphed into a deliberately nasty switch-and-bait process to screw with your mind. Not surprising. I think projection is just one of many mindbending ruses common in families unable to cope with secrets such as untreated alcoholism. In many ways, I’m struck by how much the Republican tribe is like a such a family but here I’m getting off the topic.
Back to projection: I know you all know it, and we all could dig up truckloads of egregious examples. But here’s a few recent ones rolling around in the media:
o O’Reilly uses projection like candy, scroll down to the paragraph on cowardshere on Mediamatters. O’Reilly accuses others of being cowards for not wanting to appear on his show yet he refuses to allow David Brock, who’s requested an appearance, to be on his show. Okay, so who’s the real coward?
o Here, Limbaugh questions the patriotism of the left, from Mediamatters.
o Gingrich projecting onto the Dems what the Repubs do (that would be: putting politics first).
o An older example: O’Reilly’s coward list from Mediamatters. Geej, what is with O’Reilly and cowards? He must really suspect he’s the real coward.
o New example: the attacks on Cindy Sheehan (as pointed out by dkos commenter), identifying her as anti-patriotic.
o New example: the general projection that Democrats are weak on national security.
o New: came across this post by tristero at digby’s on projection. The example: BushCo accusing others of rewriting history, a classic projection. Who really rewrote history? It was BushCo, as tristero points out, who is ‘rewriting the WMD search out of history’.
Why does projection work? To be sure, a lot more can be said on this but it works well when we’ve become a nation of nice passive sheep, untrained in the ability to critically analyze and think, unlike all of you who are the larger blogging community.
I know the bloggers who rock are the ones who routinely identify the process, the larger picture of what’s going on, not just the content. (Two whom I consider exceptional, however, are Digby and paperwight).
But more to the point of why projection works: one singular problem has been our lack of response when the target, that’ll be our side, is attacked.
Barbara provides a great example of how to counter projection, something I’d like to see more from our leaders. She does it by identifying it (tho not specifically as projection) and then fighting back with the truth. As you read her piece, you’ll see she supplies the proper soundbite and reframe (that the real homewreckers are the corporations) to counter the projection. Very effective. More of this please, from our leaders and from us.
