Naomi Klein Gets It

Coming from a business background, Naomi Klein has a better understanding than most about what Bush & Co are about. She is not just angry but also extremely eloquent. Oh, and good looking... Hmmn, sounds like a political career ahead?

AlterNet has a great interview. For example:

The Democrats didn't fully understand that the success of Karl Rove's party is really a success in branding. Identity branding is something that the corporate world has understood for some time now. They're not selling a product; they're selling a desired identity, an aspirational identity of the people who consume their product...

So what the Republican Party has done is that it has co-branded with other powerful brands — like country music, and NASCAR, and church going, and this larger proud-to-be-a-redneck identity. Policy is pretty low on the agenda, in terms of why people identify as Republicans. They identify with these packets of attributes.

This means a couple of things. One, it means people are not swayed by policy debates. But more importantly, when George Bush's policies are attacked, rather than being dissuaded from being Republicans, Republicans feel attacked personally — because it's your politics. Republicanism has merged with their identity. That has happened because of the successful application of the principles of identity branding.

Explains a lot of the crap on the blogosphere, doesn't it?

What I like about Klein is her passionate idealism. It's trendy to scoff at idealism as tantamount to utopianism and therefore unrealistic, but this world needs a very heavy dose of idealism these days.

Klein's anger is also pretty good. For example:

I believe that Kerry's campaign was utterly morally bankrupt and I blame the Kerry campaign for the total impunity that the Bush administration is now enjoying.

Read the full interview here.