This column will appear in the Kent-Ravenna Record Courier on Sunday April 24, 2005

How many electrical engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?

None. They simply redefine darkness as the industry standard.

A whole cottage industry has grown up in the mainstream media and cyberspace dispensing dire tales about ‘social engineering’ being used by ‘judicial activists’, and claiming that ‘leftist intellectuals’ are seeking to engineer public opinion into ‘moral relativism’ by destroying the sacred (Judeo-Christian) moral standards that should rightfully determine of public policy.

In telecommunications jargon ‘social engineering’ is defined narrowly as the techniques used by hackers and telemarketers to trick people into revealing their passwords, bank account numbers or other confidential information. But most of us use ‘social engineering’ to describe efforts to engineer public opinion by manipulating words and information.

The arts of advertising and rhetoric have long been used to engineer human thought and public opinion, to sell products or ideas, influence votes, gain partisans or to sway beliefs of otherwise uninformed, uninterested or uncommitted persons.

The extreme of social engineering we call propaganda, and deplore its use of aggressive (placing a message everywhere and repeating it over and over, fortissimo) or insidious (designing messages to evoke fear and doubt) techniques to engineer public opinion.

Bush Republicans seem to consider social engineering of high moral value when it generates profit for their wealthy contributors or power for their religious believers, and crass propaganda when used on behalf of unwealthy or powerless people, or those with unorthodox beliefs. Democrats tend to think of social engineering as morally reprehensible, and then fall all over themselves trying to emulate Republican success with it.

But it’s not the Left that’s engineering social, political and religious thought these days. A glance at any op-ed page will show that the Left isn’t organized enough to engineer anything, and hasn’t been since they let the Republicans out-engineer them in resolving the presidential election in 2000. Liberals can’t agree about abortion, preemptive war, energy, the environment, taxes or what they stand for, and while arguing about whether it’s dark enough to change lightbulbs and what wattage they can afford, have scarcely noticed that the engineers of the Right have been quietly changing the standards for how much light citizens need and who should pay the light bill.

The Right started its campaign of changing standards instead of lightbulbs some 25 years ago with Reaganomics. Remember phrases like ‘trickle-down effect’ and ‘supply side economics’ that framed the myth that revenues increase when taxes are cut? Anti-tax propaganda, rhetoric, and urban legends have been proliferating ever since until there is hardly any discussion about the moral dimensions of taxation.

And remember when (1992) Newt Gingrich recommended that the words `sick, pathetic, traitor, ideological, cheat, steal, insecure, bizarre' and `radical.' be used in reference to all Democrats or liberals, regardless of their record. Today the Right’s lexicon defining liberals is larger and more barbed, and the words are used preemptively and often, to plant doubt and fear and put liberals on the defensive.

Anxious about a recount? No problem -- just redefine the standards for vote counting. Worried about the use of torture? Simple – rewrite the "industry standards" to justify its use.

Questions about flickering ethics in the closet of Tom DeLay? Don’t touch the lightbulb – just change the ethical standards so nobody can look in his closet.

Concerned about the spiritual enlightenment of women? Join the Pope in marketing the ‘right to life’ of the unborn, and the moral darkness of abortion, contraception and condoms. After all, those things keeps women from dying to Eternal Light.

Problem getting the Senate to change lightbulbs in the judiciary? Easy – change the rules to prevent extended explorations of the qualifications of judges. But here perhaps we should be cautious. Is it possible the hype over the "nuclear option" (which suggests blowing up the deliberative processes of the Senate) is more designed to spotlight new heroes or martyrs for future media extravaganzas than it is to seat certain judges?

Partisan think-tanks and political news organizations work tirelessly to frame the assumptions, choose the lexicon and light the stage for public discussion and debate on major issues. From Bush’s first inauguration discussions about attacking Iraq were framed to be about the success or failure of the enterprise, not about its legitimacy or even its costs. This war has been relentlessly illumined as necessary for our safety and security, and highlighted as justification for dismantling civil rights and the use of torture.

One of the biggest shifts in public perception has been accomplished by redefining the estate tax as a ‘death tax’. The repeal of this tax will mean that working people – the 99% of taxpayers who spend their days, skills, energy and health keeping the lights on and everyone fed and supplied – will pay taxes on their earnings and send their children to war, so that a wealthy 1% can lie on sunny beaches and send their children to private schools – and still profit from missile defense systems and weapons to kill, and make money supplying (or not supplying) our troops fighting and dying in a trumped-up war.

Reminds me of another engineer joke: Chemical engineers design bombs, civil engineers design targets.

How long do we let the engineers of the Right make darkness light; how long do we let the wealthy make weapons, and ordinary people make targets?

Caroline Arnold (csarnold@neo.rr.com) served 12 years on the staff of Senator John Glenn and is now active with the Portage Democratic Coalition and Kent Environmental Council.

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