November 9, 2002
Nothing Left to Lose
Another letter:It has taken me 2 days to wade through my anger and depression over Tuesday's outcome to sit at my computer for a while and begin to face a bit of the reality of this election.... I still feel on the verge of tears for what this means to this country.
The quest to bring down Clinton was the beginning for me. It caused a great deal of stunned disbelief and shock on my part, but the 2000 election was an awakening to start looking for answers. I have to say what I have found on my own over the last 2 years has been a frightening eye opener. To verbalize what I have discovered would lend itself to people expressing that I was a bit off in the head, but I have finally found a site that makes many of the connections People For the American Way (Right Wing Affiliations of Bush Administration Officials) People For the American Way (Right Wing Organizations).
I don't know if anyone will stop and listen, but in my experience butting heads with rabid people accomplishes nothing. Those are the people that are pointless to engage unless you can stay cool, speaking to them in a logical, informative manner that exposes their ignorance to others, and gets those on the fence to think, question and see reality.
For the last 12 years I have been involved in politics at the local level in the school system. Fighting to elect pro-education candidates and pass the school budget. Even in a system that doesn't have party affiliations, it's a hard nut to crack when you're up against people that are organized and have an agenda.
The only way to over come it, is to stay one step ahead of them, and have your own agenda. The Republicans have banded together and have planned what is happening now for decades, while we all ignored the signs. In my opinion the only way to defeat them and stop their agenda is to band together in a cohesive manner with a good plan.
They have spend decades instituting their plan. They began with simple things like the theory if you say it enough times, people will believe it. You know what? They're right, people do believe it when they hear it enough ... and it surely doesn't have to be true.
They know the very best defense is an offense, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and that people love to gossip about negativity. They know people talk outside school when they're waiting to pick up their kids, to their coworkers, their family members, and in the line at the grocery store.
They're so good at it, not only do they have the American people believing it, they even have mainstream media believing they're liberal and have them bending over backwards to try in some fashion to show they aren't, by ignoring moderates and liberals and giving right wing nuts like Ann Coulter air time. They've made the word liberal an insult, made it sound like something people need to wipe off their shoe and do everything they can to avoid being called.
At the same time they've pooled their resources to buy up everything they can lay their hands on to get their message out ... including the AM airwaves that no one bothered with anymore. What better way to ensure elections ... supply the voting machines! Scoop: Republicans Make the US Elections Voting Machines Voting machine companies: Ownership disclosure, "private" vote-counting codes, potential for manipulation
People think conspiracies don't occur, they think people that believe them are nuts, so what better way to hide one? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck ... that is unless it looks like a conspiracy.
They're not so dumb. They split up and form innocuous sounding groups called things like Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council that each concentrate on a certain issue of the right wing agenda. There's a great deal more success in getting things done if you break up into smaller groups, or bring together smaller groups, and each group concentrates on a different issue. And of course you begin small, with one or two states, you begin by seizing on a simple issues, by sounding mainstream in your message, you eventually make it a right wing state, then you begin with children in schools because that's where you can make the real change, by shaping innocent minds. So, you create a situation where you can dictate to textbook manufacturer's what is in the books our children are taught from in school. YellowTimes.org
You inundate the masses with crime on the news, frighten them into believing there is a criminal behind every tree, make them believe they need to have a gun, make them believe that it's all because there is no prayer in school anymore.
Not much different in theory than cults use to entice and seduce people into their lair ... just on a grander scale. All while the masses are busy with their daily lives, ignoring the world around them and being sucked in by the 10 second news byte, that is either too scared in any way to sound liberal, or is right wing trying to sound mainstream. They know their message will grasp any ignorant nut, and eventually the masses will hear it enough to start buying into it and believing it.
It will take a cohesive effort, a pooling of resources, and a good deal of money, but I don't think it's too late because I think they made their move for a complete take over too soon, but if people don't start banding together, planning and organizing to beat them at their own game, it will be too late.
I am not a democrat, or affiliated with any party, but I'm smart enough to know that democrats are the only ones that are already established, are organized enough, and have enough resources to beat them. Starting from scratch to try to organize and overcome this will take too long.
If they're smart, they'll get with the program, realize they have nothing left to lose, and get down to the local level and begin beating them at their own game. There's no point in crying fowl after the fact, there's no point in a defense, they need an offense that will get the repubs running. They need to create sources to get their message out.
There's is a great deal of power in the truth and they should start using it, and exposing the republicans one layer at a time ... not ignoring it ... and it has to be done in a manner that doesn't make them look like they are just as bad, or whining.
It's time to stop sitting like a timid deer caught in the headlights, and it's time to stop slinging sand in the sandbox. It's time to come together, channel the anger in a constructive, cohesive, and productive manner. It's time to put our heads together and create a plan, it's time to expose the bile. It's time to have an offensive agenda. Unless we do that, in my opinion, they will win.
-S
-- By David Cogswell