Reply #38: Yeah - we really need to help our fellow Americans connect the dots. It's not enough

[calimary]

just to (correctly and reasonably) abhor bush. He's just the top of a very large pimple - you know those big, huge, throbbing red ones that take days to come to a head, and then slowly you see, taking shape, a small white spot in the middle at the peak. The head appears. But the rest of the pustule deeper down below the surface is even more vile. He's just the most obvious one - the one you can most easily see. Everything else that has propped him up and created a climate in this country that slanted CONservative and stayed there is just as poisonous, if not grossly moreso.

We have to help other people connect the dots so they see it's not enough just to think bush is the only one at fault. We won't get at the root of the problem - which will push up another head before too terribly long. Like a weed. Remove the flowering top and then get complacent because you think you solved the problem. You didn't. The weed is still there in its entirety, and will soon present you with another flowering head.

We can help by staying active, fired up, and informed, as is possible by reading around this board. News stories and comment on and analysis of them is all over the place and helps clarify and expand your own thoughts and sophistication. You then become better at presenting arguments at - say - family dinners or while standing in the checkout line or visiting the coffee room at work and running into one of "those" coworkers. When you present more effective and more ready arguments, you might just crack somebody's closed mind open just a tad and let in a tiny waft of fresh air. And sometimes when you present an argument, even if you don't save someone's soul, it's quite likely you'll feel at least a small bit impressed with your accomplishment, your eloquence, and your courage! It takes guts to speak up and defend a rock-solid position especially when it happens to be the correct and truthful one. So encouraged, you might feel up to trying it again next time, or maybe doing something else beyond that (or in addition to?)...

Like writing a letter to the editor
or a comment to Jack Cafferty or somebody on air
or calling a talk show, friendly or of the enemy camp
or calling your Congressperson or Senator
or signing a petition
or post on some blog
or sending snail mail to make your feelings known - with feeling (Paul Begala once said 100 paper letters can change the course of a news program.)
Reacting in some way. Weighing in. Making yourself heard and your opinions known.

We have to do it ourselves especially since our mass media is not terribly inclined toward digging down to the professionally and deliberatly buried truth. We have to lead. We have to help our friends and our principles - and our very Constitution, it seems. It takes a damned long time though - but the bad guys started manipulating and perverting public opinion after tasting a very bitter defeat with Barry Goldwater in 1964 - and vowing never to go through that again. They rebuilt themselves and their own infrastructure in order to take over the country and the government and the policy center and slant the general mindset in the wrong direction. The fruits of that are now ripening everywhere - from the reckless deregulated economy that let the pirates and the pillagers run amok to the dumbing down of America with education system failure to an out-of-control rogue foreign policy that's made us an international pariah and left us much less safe and secure. While the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class gets nothing but vanishing cream.

"That's what you get when you vote republi-CON." Or be a little more respectful and say "that's what you get when you vote republican" or "...when you vote conservative." Anything bad that happens in the news that can reasonably be linked to that simple statement should be. Guilt by association. They do it to us and clean our clocks. Time to return the favor and restore our country to the good path and the correct direction. AWAY from the conservative dead-end and TOWARD or INTO the liberal side.