Day after day I come to the blogs to read up on whats going on in the world of politics and science. And day after day, I see certain things repeated over and over, largely to no effect.
So, in the spirit of radical functionalism, I propose that we get some things out of the way. We've been beating our heads against some dead horses for a long time and all we have to show for it is a kind of liquified bloody-horse-gut grease permanently worked into our hair.
So, this is my list of things that just aren't working. Please add your own below.
- The Republicans are hypocrites. We know it. They know it. Their voters know it. The right wing extremists will spend all day talking your ear off about how Clinton was a tyrant who wanted to take your civil liberties (2nd Ammendment ones and 1st ammendment religion ones, of course), but just shrug their shoulders when someone mentions the death of habeus corpus or signing statements. We can point out the hypocracy until the Universe reaches a uniform temperature in trillions of years and it won't make a bit of difference.
- Non-violent day-marching doesn't do anything constructive, its just something we do to make ourselves feel good about ourselves. When was the last time you heard a Republican say, "Well gosh, I was going to vote to allow torture but now that moveon managed to mobilize a few tens of thousands of people I've seen the light!" Even a lot of the democrats wouldn't start opposing the war until they felt like it was safe to do so without being totally skewered by the punditocracy. If you want to take action to change things, marching does jack and squat except give people a false sense of accomplishment. That energy is better spent on civil disobedience. If you're not arrested, you're not even close to making a difference. If you're marching in a free speech zone... heh, thats just sad.
- Claiming the other guy isn't reality based doesn't do anything. The people who care about such things already know the other guy is full of crap. The people who don't care about such things do not care about such things. Its far more effective to find fantasy based things that they violate. Kind of a "who cares if my guy will raise taxes, your guy spends his nights trading oral sex for meth with his favorite gay prostitute." Again, notice we don't point out the hypocracy, we just point out that their guy is a bad person.
- One thing to note, is that for the 28 percenters the rules are different depending on what team jersey you wear. If you're a red elephant, see above, but if you're not on their team then all the things they don't care about in their candidate become horrible character flaws.
There are only three ways to get a message through to most of these jacktards. The other side likes to use the 3 G's (Guns, Gays, and God). Well, with a minor change, we can use them too. Guns, Gold, and God are how you talk to these people. Threaten their life, threaten their wealth, or threaten their eternal soul. All they understand is authority and coersion. If you're not hitting them over the head, costing them money, or calling down the fire of hell on them, you're not going to get through their thick skulls.