There are just so many fucking good reasons that certain things needs to happen, universal health care one of them, an end in Iraq another -- yet, no matter the brilliance of the salvos fired, they don't. Even when perfectly sound and reasonable reasons are elaborated -- it's just, thanks, but no thanks. And I'm not even blaming leaders for being obstinate, though they're obviously bastards. There is a HUGE amount of the US public that is so entrenched in a facts-be-damned mindset that I have no idea how to even comprehend it, or approach it.
And I don't buy any more that the facts just need to get out to people, then everything will take care of itself. We have the goddamned Internet, for one, in use by leftists for about 12 years now. A lot of people have camcorders, or at least webcams, cellphones, cellphone cameras, mobile communications devices that activists even 15 years ago would have creamed their pants for. And YouTube. Blogs proliferate. Every right-wing talking point is more than answered in kind, brilliant wits trounce all over them, any time a reactionary point is made. We can burn CDs, make DVDs, and we're at least 15 years past the age of the desktop publishing revolution (remember when that was a big capability for computers to have - make your own newsletters! And now we're way beyond that).
Distro of ideas still isn't ideal, but we're not in the days before Gutenberg's printing press press, either. What the fuck. Extremely complex multimedia presentations can be made, we have meetup.com type stuff, email newsletters, and an impressive amount of popular and unpopular musicians are at least liberal, at worst, downright explicitly anti-capitalist and anarchist at best.
And still -- the one thing still lacking is serious workshop organizing -- hitting the fuckers where it will hurt them the most. Everything is happening but that. But talking about unions to many people is often like talking about universal healthcare. Yeah, you can relay the facts all you want, but at the end of the day, I can probably find something on some blog to contradict you, the person thinks, so in the meantime, thanks, but no thanks.
-B.
Doug Henwood wrote
"STRONG FAMILIES: Sit back and chuckle as Obama -- who emerged as Planned Parenthood's favorite '08er -- gets pummeled by everyone from Mitt Romney to Al Cardenas to Sean Hannity for backing legislation in Illinois which would have started elements of sex education in kindergarten."