It’s gotten pretty depressing, this Red Queen’s through-the-looking-class world we’re trapped in. The same tired lies and myths get reinforced over and over again. The governor in South Dakota signs a forced pregnancy bill that was built on the backs of mythical women who get abortions on a lark and “partial-birth” procedures that are actually very rare and performed only when a pregnancy goes terribly wrong and a woman’s life is at risk. Reagan’s “welfare queen” cruises the streets of drowned New Orleans, loading up her stolen Cadillac with plasma tv’s and stolen pain killers. The ports deal with Dubai is somehow Clinton’s fault, and crazed communist college professors are sucking out students’ good wholesome American values through straws, then filling their heads with nasty secular humanist ideas. Every year, Christmas is held to siege again, and Christians are forced to meet in dangerous back alleys and in hidden rooms in decrepit old warehouses.
You hear this crap everywhere. It is part-and-parcel of the regurgitated talking points on talk radio, on cable news and perhaps around the water cooler down the hall where you work. Believe it or not, it wasn’t always this way. The bizarro world we now live in was once the province of nuts written off as John Birchers and conspiracy crazies. They took over by … well … talking about their wacky worldview. Over and over again. They invented modern talk radio to help them accomplish this. They took over our increasingly corporatized press.
This brings us to your mission.
Talk about your beliefs. It’s as hard, and as easy, as that. Not just to the like minded, but when Uncle John starts spouting whatever crap he heard on Hannity that morning on the radio, correct him. Loudly, firmly and often, with as much passion and strong facts and all the conviction you can muster.
People will get mad at you. Relatives will complain that you’re ruining Thanksgiving. Your boss may tell you that the workplace is not the appropriate place. If he does so, demand that Crazy Pete the dittohead one cube over get the same message.
No one is coming to save us. This will be a struggle of years, perhaps generations. You could lose friendships, damage family ties, be looked at a little askance but THIS is how change happens. Not big ad campaigns. Not some magical black knight galloping out of the Illinois legislature (or a doctor skiing out of the Vermont mountains).
If you start hearing about how a pregnant woman should “live” with the consequences of her decision to have sex, confront that person with their own sister, lover, mother or wife. How would HE feel if someone he loved was forced to drive hundreds (thousands) of miles? How would HE feel if that sensible, sensitive female he loves was treated like a recalcitrant child for daring to make a decision about her own body, her own life? The sneers about “sluts” and “”party girls” melt away when there is a beloved’s face superimposed on the charicature.
You have to tell stories. The great angry and resentful American electorate will not help the poor until their stories are told, until the Republican’s distortions are corrected and people learn that the greater majority of the poor work, or try to work, to have a life for themselves. Those immigrants coming over our southern border aren’t monsters … they’re people in search of a dream and an opportunity and all of the things our ancestors came here for. Much of this seems obvious, but busy people think in quick-to-tell stories, the kind of stories that the wacko Minutemen like to tell about brown-skinned men sneaking onto your property with ill intent.
This is your mission. The party will not help you accomplish it, although there will be like-minded people within the party that are pursuing the same lofty goal. THIS is what politics is really about … stories. Myths, allegories and fables … comic books and movies and Jack Bauer torturing suspects willy nilly. You’ve GOT to offer another narrative, another tale, a tale of cooperation and shared risks and a public square where we all recognize that our government is one of the ways we pool resources, one of the ways that people can achieve the “economies of scale” to accomplish important goals that the free market makes no space for. Not everything has a dollar sign attached to it, and some things are too important to have their vitality sucked out in order to maximize profit. Our institutions are in shambles. There in no public health system any longer (the Gulf disaster made that apparent). Our justice system is undermined by a “drug war” run amok. Our governments are awash in lobbyists’ cash, and the demands of usurers drown out the voices of families being borne under by crushing debt. Our public infrastructure crumbles, while special toll lanes are suggested as “solutions” to crowded and declining highways. It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t MAKE SENSE for us to do things this way. It has to change, and change will take time.
None of this will change until we can tell the story WHY it must change. That’s your mission, if you choose to accept it.
Great idea but we have to learn that we can’t talk about any of this on the phone or on the internet.
If passed, DeWine’s legislation would write into law exactly what that new subcommittee would do. It would also give the president the authority to create a list of terror organizations to be monitored.
His bill does not require that the terror groups must be foreign. Nor does it rely on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list, which is often used in government as a reference about which organizations are considered most dangerous.
When asked last week why he didn’t use the State Department’s list, DeWine said he wanted to give the president flexibility, particularly so he did not have to come to Congress to update the organizations that could be monitored.
“You might have a terrorist group come up in six months that would be equally as bad as al-Qaida,” DeWine said.
Or in front of a classroom.
Or on certain “liberal” blogs and message forums.
Aside from that, Madman, this is very solid advice.
take the risk of making people “uncomfortable”–no matter where, no matter who.
Starbucks is a very good place to speak loudly enough to be overheard.
Borders, too. Hell, there you can even send em straight to the ‘stacks’ for ‘evidence’ and backup.
(Oh no? You think I’m bullshitting you? Read THIS. Or THIS. Or THAT.)
Dare to be rude, for god’s sake, the fucking country is at stake.
Tell me why there has been such a suspicious pattern of instigators trying to rally support for common but potentially controversial groups?
It sure doesn’t look like an accident when the new legislation will permit the admin to define, by their own terms, any group they wish to prosecute.
Yup I always spout my mouth off in public. I see someone getting in a car covered with “W” stickers. I say something. Damn straight.
Gotten me close to being hit. Had names tossed my way. The occassional bad dude will get irate… but… hell, they want to rape our rights, our schools – they can hear some dissent.
🙂 Great diary as always MadMan!
there are risks, especially for those who have dependents, for reasons some have already mentioned.
And I can say that it is not enough.
Yes, change takes time, and time is on that growing list of things you do not have.
It would be discourteous for me to advocate violating the Patriot Act, which is a federal law, on a blog that resides on a US server.
However, given the extremity and urgency of the situation, it would be unethical and immoral for me not to advocate violating the Patriot Act.
Do what is necessary to save yourselves from the warlords. I cannot say “save your country,” though I can express hope that you will one day have one.
Excellent diary, Madman.
I would add only one word – Courage. Know what is the worst that can happen and be ready to accept it for the sake of your mission.
and I did take a moment to ponder that living here in Alabama. I accept it!
going upriver into the heart of darkness down there … the horror …
so maybe I have about as good a shot as the rest of these yahoos around here.
Madman, would you consider posting your “Writing the Future in Letters of Fire” article over here?
I will dig it up, maybe tommorrow, if you think it will be helpful.
The original link is here.
Wonderful, thanks. I think it would be a great addition to some of the discussions going on here lately… a different type, but still opening up yet another avenue of thought/planning etc.
I just reread the thread. I used to get such wonderfull threads at LSF. We get traffic now, but no one comments ….
🙁
I’m thinking of a reprise. This initiative by Ickes really bothers me.
Yes, you are exactly correct, this will make the message much more powerful.
On blogs, in public forums, in email, on the telephone, in my home this weekend at the cost of friends – wherever the need arises…the ‘bail the old folks out of jail’ team has been formed. The attorney’s names are located.
Mission accepted…and more diaries and communications to the world to come. And I’m recruiting as I go…