So, we're 23% of the country now, the people against Bush. I seem to recall we were a majority during the last election, (has that been edited out of the history books yet?) but we are told that Bush is 'popular,' and that if the election is an agenda on 'national security' Bush will win, and if it's about the economy, Democrats have a slim chance. If the economy stays bad. NPR told me last night, that our job as democrats is now to sit quietly until the election, hoping things stay bad.
To which I say, F*** that.
We have a chance, but it has little to do with the economy and everything to do with our style and resolve.
Remember, Clinton was popular, too. That didn't stop the Republicans from crippling him with a lunatic witch hunt. The leftover animosity from that witchhunt spilled onto Gore, and rendered the last presidential election close enough for them to steal.
It's time to ask ourselves how they did that.
Well, first off, the right sticks together. They stick by their Guy, and they don't let a little thing like consistency stand in the way of their support. Hey, remember 'the rule of law?' How it wasn't the blowjob, it was the _lying_ about the blowjob, that was the real crime?
We now have an administration that when confronted with evidence of its continuous non-stop 24/7 lie, snorts, and says, as Colin Powel did when asked about his fabrication before the security council, "So?"
So?
So two can play at this Outrage game. We don't even have to lie, or focus on utter triviality. All we have to do is tell the truth, loudly and impolitely, which is of course, much, much harder for us, than it was for the Right to tell bald-faced lies.
Because we don't like being negative.
Falwell sold videotapes accusing Clinton of murder, not rhetorical murder, but actual MURDER, filled with easily penetrated lies. When confronted with the evidence of the tape's falsehood, Falwel shrugged, "So?"
So.
We, on the other hand, don't want to talk too loudly about the AWOL thing, (well, Clinton didn't really serve either, and we didn't mind that) the lying about the WMD thing, (hey, Saddam was bad, right?) lying to the security council thing, (the security council doesn't work so lying to it must be OK) lying about Harken thing, (it was a long time ago...heck, it was only a few hundred grand...) or the FERC / Enron thing (Hey, Jeffords defected and a few weeks later California had its power back) or the 'unborn child' Bush aborted, back when that was still against the law in Texas.
Oh, you didn't know about the abortion?
Larry Flynt, bless his soul, had the dirt on this one, with the doctor and the friend that drove the girl to get her illegal abortion willing to go on record. But the girl herself, perhaps fearing for her life, wouldn't talk.
This was up on the CNN website in an interview with Flynt, for all of a few hours. Before the Ministry of Truth scrubbed it out.
http://www.utulsa.edu/collegian/article.asp?article=442
Now, if we were them, we could have had our own version of Drudge flogging this story all over hell and back, the media, would have reported our reporting, (without endorsing it, see, this is how they got everyone talking about the semen stained dress before there was any hard evidence.) and, eventually, when paid enough money by one of our millionaires, the girl would agree to tell the whole sordid story on prime time television.
Instead, we let it drop.
And we let them win.
Let me repeat this. We let them win. Don't blame Big Media alone. News flash--rich people support rich candidates that look out for rich people--this isn't news, this is business as usual.
Our message is essentially populist, theirs essentially elitist. So how do they win?
'Character' advertising, and smear jobs, at the last second, is what makes the elections close enough for them to steal.
The only reason the character ads work, though, is because we don't want to sink to their level. We assuage our conscience that if it takes this kind of street-fighting to win, then maybe winning isn't that important. Or we pretend that we can win without getting personal.
Hey, maybe Nader will personally register a bazillion people who have never voted, buy them all tofutti frozen desserts, and convince them to vote for a farcical third party candidate.
Then we'll win!
Maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt and magically count all the votes thrown away by faulty voting machines in minority neighborhoods, too, but maybe we should be making some more realistic plans as well.
Ninety percent of the voting African American community is with us. They wait for hours at some polls, sacrifice pay they can't afford to live without, brave police harassment, and vote using equipment that discards larger percentages of their vote than the equipment in the lily-white suburbs.
We, my people, owe it to them to fight harder. It's time for the intellectuals, the liberals, the comfortable, to get up off their fat asses and fight like their freedom depended on it.
Bush is amassing a gigantic war chest. He won't have to spend any money on the primaries, so all of this cash will be available for Big Media Lies in the week before the election. Ask yourself, if they can get away with lying about going to war with Iraq, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands and thousands of people, what are they going to feel free to say in these last second ads?
I'll tell you. Anything. Willie Horton is the smallest teaspoon of poison compared to the can of whup-ass they will open on us, the lies they will heap on our candidates. Think what they did to McCain, in their own party, a genuine war hero, as opposed to a draft-dodging mentally challenged born again coke head. The called McCain pro-cancer, and derided him in the south for having a brown-skinned child.
And so I tell you, remember the cigar.
All I have to do is say it. Cigar. You know what cigar I'm talking about, you know where it went, you know who put it there. You probably wake up in the middle of the night smelling that cigar, because Big Media inserted that goddamned image so deep into your consciousness you can actually see it etched into the spiral tracery of your DNA. Jay and Dave and Bill Bennet and Mellon Scaife and every white-trash moron in the country howled about that cigar nonstop for months.
What with the peace and prosperity, there wasn't much else on the news.
I want you to light that (metaphorical) cigar now, in your mind, and picture GW Bush. See him smirking there? Now again metaphorically, (please look the word up, secret service before storming our house again) I want you to press the smoldering tip of that cigar against his political body somewhere very, very painful.
I'll leave the location on his body up to you.
Don't flinch. Imagine the (metaphorical) stench of burning flesh while you do it, and crack a big G. Gordon Liddy style smile.
Because that is what it's going to take to win. Our candidates may not be able to attack Bush directly on the 'successful' war. The Iraqis and Afghanis got anarchy instead of democracy, but nobody gives a sh*t about a bunch of foreigners in this country, and anyone who whines about them is a bleeding heart. Our mis-targeted retaliations have killed 2-3 times as many innocents 'by accident' as their evil terrorist attacks killed on purpose. But remember, no one cares about that.
Yet.
Bandage your hearts. Get out the mud. Sling it at Bush, every chance you get, in public, in arguments that are heard by the confused middle. It doesn't matter if the undecided agree with you--what you are doing, by vocally castigating Bush, is creating a new spectrum of opinion, in which just voting against Bush, (and not calling for his imprisonment) can be seen as being _moderate._ Americans know that all answers are 'in the middle'. That is why media consolidation has been such a disaster--Big Media has been able to manufacture consent, as Chomsky puts it, by creating a political dialog in this country that ranges from A-B.
Let's give them C. Hell, let's go to D.
We should all stop the whining about how our candidate of choice should get tougher on Bush, and do it ourselves. Let the candidates be strategic.
Let us be Outraged. Out loud. In public. Where it makes a difference.
Eventually, you can get most Bush supporters to concede, that the man is stupid, vindictive, lazy, and that his past is checkered with major lapses of judgment and morality. They will concede all this, while insisting that he is a wonderful president. Get them to concede these things in front of the Reagan democrats, in front of the undecided.
Hardcore liberals and naïve's will say that my program is 'part of the problem, not the solution,' that our negativity will blow back on us and hurt our position. To this I say, watch Fox news for one week. Tell me if their negativity is hurting them, and answer honestly.
Americans like fighters, people with passion and conviction who aren't afraid to play to win. Bending the rules, bending the truth--this is all seen as conviction to the average American, unless there is someone standing nearby screaming at the top of their lungs that Lying is Wrong. To the average liberal/intellectual/debate society style analyst, this bending of rules means they have lost the argument.
The republicans have been loosing the arguments, on merit, and wining voters while losing since Reagan mastered the art of manipulating Big Media.
We don't have to bend any truths to win. We do have to change our style, though, and that is going to be a lot more difficult than forging documents and presenting them to the UN security council.
We must destroy the character of GW Bush, reveal him for what he is, shatter the myth of the man as sold to the American people by Big Media, so that no amount of thirty-second spots will sway the confused and uninformed in those last days of the election.
Every person in the sane, awake 23% must begin now, to have unpleasant and confrontational conversations with the people in their lives that support Bush, or are wavering. We must prepare them to resist the last minute brainwashing.
Because the Truth is not on television.
We are the truth. The only truth left standing. Our speech means victory.
And our silence equals death.
E. O'Connell
PS: We still have impeachment shirts and stickers available on the site. We've broken even on them more or less, and will be investing in new batches of anti-bush messages with broader appeal. Impeachment designs will remain available, but the focus is shifting towards more generic 'slash dubya' branded stuff.
Think of the sign of the fish in the days of Rome, and you'll understand what I want to have happen with the 'slash dubya.'
Our 'slash dubya' pin, 10 for 20 dollars, is our biggest seller at this point. The pins are easy to wear, and they let people know that not everyone is in love with Bush. They grant permission to everyone in a ten foot radius to not love the president. You'll be surprised by the positive reactions, and the lack of reprisals, you get while wearing the pin.
The truth may not be on television, but you can still wear your heart on you sleeve. Buy my stuff, make your own, or buy someone else's, be visible, and keep up the fight.
Copyright 2003, E. O'Connell. Permission to forward, unedited, including PS content, explicitly granted.