Into the parallel mirror

I have been promising to start a newsletter focused on Bay Area meta-politics, and so here it begins.

My goal in starting this chain of essays is to expose and highlight the propaganda tactics and strategies at work in Bay Area politics in 2024. We are witnessing a big shift as tech billionaires make a push to buy local power, create polarization and moral panic, and push the traditionally liberal/progressive Bay Area toward Republican-style policies.

As a journalist and writer, I analyze the underlying tactics and strategies of political messages and campaigns. I spent most of my career in politics, working as a top communications strategist for people like Jerry Brown, Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris and Antonio Villaraigosa. When I write about politics, I do it as someone with "an insider's knowledge but an outsider's mind." (To steal a phrase from Brown.)

I also maintain a close collaboration with Dr. George Lakoff, the famed UC Berkeley cognitive scientist and linguist who wrote "Don't Think of An Elephant." For decades, I've studied political messaging, persuasion, framing, etc. My long education is rooted in both theory and practice.

If you don't care about politics or live in the Bay, you may not find this interesting (at first...). And if you do live in the Bay, please understand: I won't be providing highly-detailed coverage of the latest Board of Supervisors or city council meetings. Others already do that.

Parallel Mirror will focus on the following:

• Propaganda tactics (as they emerge during this election year)
• Moral framing (the moral structures underlying political messages)
• Meta Narrative (the story behind the story, and how what's happening here is part of a much bigger national/international story)
• Political deconstruction (analyzing the strategies and tactics (or lack thereof) at play in our politics).

If you don't know what these things are, I'll teach as we go along. And I'll try to keep it as simple as possible. Just like in politics.

Over the past year, I've done some writing for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New Republic. But there are some observations that don't quite fit an op-ed or magazine format. And they're perfect for a newsletter.

One more thing, before we get to the heart of the matter: I have spent much of the past year searching through newspaper archives for various research projects. Reading through old newspapers has impressed upon me the lasting importance of journalistic acts. So much of the focus on the newspaper industry today is on getting clicks to survive, or blowing up on social media, in order to drive revenue. Been there, done that.

Even more important than meeting the daily metrics, however, is to create a clear record of history as it unfolds. Someone has to bear witness and write it down, and the value of that goes far beyond the generation of pennies.

So, I'm not looking for huge readership or massive clicks. This is the simply the "journal" part of my journalism, a record created for the simple sake of memory. Why? Because the Bay Area has been home for most of my adult life and I care deeply about what happens here.