The Democratic victories in yesterday's elections coupled with the recent birth of the Occupy movement seem to be evidence of a different political climate than we had even two or three months ago. It appears that we are out of the doldrums, a bit of a wind in the mainsail. I am tempted to meld all the different events into a pattern, disregarding the nature of the separate events. I want to say things like, "changed perceptions got people up off the couch," "now Democrats have a new reality," as if there were clear relationships between cause and effect. But it's not that easy. If my car stopped on the freeway because it "ran out of gas", contingent causes might be that my gas gage was broken and I was too cheap to repair it. But aside from the complexities of cause and effect and the invention of new realities, why do Democrats seem to have things going their way? 

In trying to understand this new climate and kicking the tires of google looking for the underpinnings of such words as perception I ran across the term, "Perception Management." In fact it is a term of the DOD, an actual strategy--based to a large degree on dis-information to our enemies. Domestically, I think we have been living under Perception Management by the top 1% for quite some time. How else could we have been deprived of our common sense about wealth distribution, foreign wars, Wall St. chicanery, and bigotry for such an extended period? Perhaps as long as thirty years. Recent events suggest our perceptions have changed. The reason may be related to a recently discovered (this morning) principle which states, "As governmental extremism increases, the degree of difficulty in managing perceptions increases."

In recent history the 1% have been able to elect politicians who then created the legislation, the wars and the deficits which have brought our country and our economy to a near standstill. Aside from a war based on dis-information to our own populace, the most egregious outcome of 1% control has been the banking crisis---resulting in a near Depression. The evidence of successful Perception Management by the top 1% is the lack of push back by voters. In effect, people voted against their own economic interests--that is, they voted to maintain the continued wealth accumulation of, and control by, the top 1%. at their own expense. The proof is that they kept getting poorer while the top 1% were getting richer---exponentially so.  The consciousness of the 99% who so voted and whether they innately believed that the fruits of the political pie were not a zero sum game, I don't claim to know. But they did it. And then something changed.

In my estimation the most fundamental thing that changed, in the aftermath of which were such things as yesterday's election results and the Occupy movement, was the 2010 election of extremist Republicans who took over many state legislatures and the House of Representatives. There began a scorched earth policy including religious oppression, voter rights oppression, trade union oppression, not to mention oppression of the American people in the hostage taking strategy of the Republicans' debt ceiling negotiators. Extremist Republicans moved too quickly and too radically to implement the agendas of the 1%. They trampled upon the sense of fairness and common sense that is the essential core of the American people. 

Extremism wakes people up and gets them up off the couch. Their common sense comes into focus and they quickly see the reality of the situation. They have a kind of flight or fight response. And, put in plain language, their bullshit antennae go up. When people get this riled up you can't manage their perceptions because their own perceptions become dominant.

The Republican-enabled policies of the top 1% in the aftermath of the 2010 elections failed to recognize the basics of Perception Management, that extremism and easy perception management are inverse---at least in a functioning democracy.  In the vernacular, the 1% blew their own cover. They are now a recognizable entity whereas before they were amorphous. As a definable target they themselves have now become prisoners, imprisoned by the strengthened perception by the 99% of their own power.

In tossing around metaphors for how the 1% are now the prisoners, I perused such words as stalag and gulag. It gave me the idea for a new movie, Stalag 1%. And in what will never become a familiar movie quote and in a gross mixture of genres, the Commandant looks at the inmates standing in the hot sun at Stalag 1% and says, "What he have here ... is a failure ... in Perception Management."