Scapegoating and Sacrifices: GOP giving up Agema -- what will MI Dems do to win?

To scapegoat someone or something – that is, to put blame on one in order to mask the guilt of others – certainly has become a pejorative and, as such, suggests a simplistic process.

But scapegoating is ancient and complex, a matter implied in the name itself. The word derives from the habit of spiking, literally, a “goat’s” head as a symbol, a demonstration of a group’s “sacrifice” to the God’s (or later, to God) to procure some favor. As many scholars have taught us, including the controversial but always interesting Rene Girard, selection of the “goat” as sacrificial animal itself is even more complex than we first must think.

The goat was chosen because it was a domesticated animal – like a chicken – kept closer to the home and family than other animals.

Indeed, kids on a farm have to learn quickly that those animals are not pets.

Think Jodie Foster as a child, suddenly introduced to the ranch in The Silence of the Lambs.

The sacrificial thing has to be close enough to the group in form and affection for it to seem a real sacrifice. Historically, for example, people don’t sacrifice rats.

Before people sacrificed domestic animals they sacrificed other people – but not just any old person of little value (vagrants, criminals, etc.). For sacrificial victims to be true sacrificial victims they had to appear to be close enough to the group to suggest a real loss – but yet somehow, too, apart from the group.

Children were useful. They were part of the community – yet not part of the community. Virgins, at times, were seen as ideal. Young females who had not yet fully become participants in their community.

So scapegoating really is no simple matter. In the case of Michigan Republicans, for example, Betsy Devos has chosen wisely to sacrifice Dave Agema for the 2014 elections and Terry Lynn Land and Nolan Finley and others are following suit in the tribal process. Agema is certainly close to the anger that fueled a 2010 victory, but his willingness to continue to express openly and violently the homophobia and Islamaphobia that underlies much of the Republican movement makes him a perfect choice.

This sacrifice at least tries to purchase votes and positive energy.

Question: what sacrifices are the Michigan Democrats willing to make to win?

Their one winning issue – preserving public education – has been twisted by a party President who actually backs the education reform strategies of Governor Snyder and Republicans. It is time, I think, in this difficult era, to do a bit of scapegoating and sacrificing of President Obama and Arne Duncan.

Lame ducks make fine sacrifices.

People in Michigan overwhelmingly support good, local public education.  They don’t want their schools destroyed for good. They don’t want TFA. They don’t want vouchers  and are now, having seen the effects of schools of choice, are skeptical of “choice.”  They don’t particularly care for charters. And they don’t want the Broads running their schoolboards. They believe other schools have problems, but like their own.

But the voters don’t yet grasp their schools are on the chopping block for President Obama and Gov. Snyder in part because Democrats are telling them a familiar story: this is all about about funding. Voters  won’t get excited about what the Democrats are seeming to create: just another Republican v. Democrat debate on how much to spend on public education.

The argument is now about whether public education should exist and Democrats need to make that clear to energize their base and even take a few swing voters. The voters are available in plenty even in Republican strongholds like Oakland County, as evidenced by Ryan Fishman’s – candidate for the 13 District Senate seat – switch from the Republican party to the Democratic party.

But Michigan Democrats will have to sacrifice something to win: 1) the reliance on old formulas Democrats spend v. Republican stinginess and 2) an evangelical like faith in all things President Obama.

If you watched the state of the union it is now clear the latter is more than willing to scapegoat public education and even higher education to satisfy Bill Gates and others.

Be, then, the party that will sacrifice to save public education in toto – Agema will look like what he is in comparison: a puny little rat, about to be eradicated.