( – promoted by buhdydharma )
I’d been away for a while. Offline and watching television and listening to Hillary and Barack. Bleech. And, oh my good god, Bill Clinton has become a political hack. Dennis seems to have disappeared. But it’s hard to miss the American economy’s free-fall.
Tell me something. If I was waiting for the bear and you all were waiting for the bear, how is it that candidates (except John Edwards), Congress, and MSM blowhards seemed to have little concern about this clear and looming economic middle class disaster? Katrina-like in its scope, isn’t it? Well, it’s been my story now for the past 18 months: Democrats are complicit in the rape of the American middle class. Face it. And we citizens are the ones who need to deal with it.
I have a suggestion. Read or reread “Common Sense.” That’s what I’m doing. Because we need to get ourselves in a mind set, build a frame work, for going forward.
We have a heritage here. A history. It is clear. What we need to win is not a seat for a Democrat in the White House, but an awakening of Americans and their stake in America.
from Aaron Russo’s Restore the Republic website
We have, I believe, one essential thing still in our favor: the facade is still attached. The age of American Fascism is not yet fully realized. We haven’t had overt signs… like troops in the street or martial (not Marshall) law. If those things were to happen, the game changes and makes our work exponentially harder.
So here’s my suggestion for what a place like Docudharma could choose to do…
1. Compile bulleted list of ALL Bush and BushCO lies and somehow, have it scroll every day like the Out of Iraq Caucus blog roll. Each item in the list will link to credible news sources (& change links of major lies to different sources every week or two).
2. Research and write FP essays each week on specific aspects of these lies and how they undermine the middle class. These need to be written in a way that people see the threat as personal… as robbing their kids of a future… ignite the MADD in mothers about corrupted manufacturing processes that put toxic toys in the mouths of their babes.
3. Orchestrate the essays and REPEAT THEM regularly. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every week. But let’s rotate stories like this: essay A, B, C first week all week. Then next week, new essay D, B, & C. Then E, A comes back, & C. Then F, A, B. Something like that so the message gets pounded. So it doesn’t get lost. So when it gets read, people know where to come back once they initially digested it. Then make them easy to find on the Dharmazine. I think repetition and making it personal are key elements.
I’d love to see a story from some of our economic folks about the impact on a privatized social security system in this free-fall.
I wonder if drational or xrepub would help in putting together essays on military outsourcing. perhaps teacher ken could write on the NCLB plot to make public education fail in order to outsource it… and lukery might help us by providing an overview of the impact of outsourcing intelligence…
CEO pay increased some 30% since 9/11. Why? How does that compare to what most Americans have lost in pay and benefits over these last seven years. Can we make the case that reduction/loss of benefits correlates with the dramatic uptick in CEO pay?
Can we make the case that fraud and profits driving decisions are the real reasons our health care system doesn’t work for so many of us?
Or how theocrats on school boards have corrupted education in pursuit of limiting what kids learn/read/discuss.
4. But all of this has to, right up front, be clear about what regular Americans are losing in these deals. And what their kids are losing. Clear. Present. Concrete. Simple language. Short as possible and no complicated quotes longer than the essay.
And maybe hardest of all is assuring people there are things we can do to push back. Perhaps we can have a proactive group here that can look into ways that work in undermining BushCo. What others have done and are doing.
In conclusion, the way to turn this around is to shake the “defense of territory and young” in Americans. We have to move this from fighting against BushCo to fighting for our lives and our country AND the legacy left to our children. This really needs to be about fighting for something… a movement evolving out of love for our kids and their future.
We need a few good conductors to get us and keep us organized. I volunteer to edit, help with research, and take assignments for essays. But gotta find some good city editors to run the crew.
Whaddya all think?
Here’s a link to the full text of Common Sense.
And just to entice you…
…a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT,
our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
For the fate of Charles the First hath only made kings more subtle – not more just.
This one could read “For the fate of Nixon hath only made presidents more subtle – not more just.”
One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ASS FOR A LION
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our families, our heritage, our kids’ futures… our country. America.
…I think Marshall Law is what my friend Marshall imposes after the guests have too many beers…
I admire your love of America PF8. I feel more refugee than revolutionary these days though.
Russo’s site is…interesting….
Good graphic though!
to be a stand for life…….
and we must stand from where we are…..
here…..
and our stand must be one of love and resolve……
for we will need courage and strength to stand against what is coming…..
and I stand with all of you…..
and I know how to persevere…..
I think it’s always personal, beginning with and stemming from a sense of freedom inside each individual mind, on a feeling level more than on an intellectual level. I have a feeling that OPOL’s essay and the discussion in the comments to it yesterday helped to spark some more of that sense in more than one person here.
At some point that has to be translated to the intellectual and action levels and it’s nice to see you starting that here.
There are so many good ideas and people around this place it’s astounding sometimes. Let’s hope they come out in some comments here today.
In my years in marketing, sales, business coaching and management consulting we used to regularly hold “brainstorming sessions” – meetings where everyone was encouraged to throw out as many ideas as they could onto the table without making any value judgement of them first, for the first hour or so of the sessions.
During this stage NO idea was to be considered useless or dumb, so that no one had any reason to be reluctant or embarrassed to toss out an idea. The whole point was to get as many ideas out there on the table as possible.
The only thing anyone was allowed to feel embarrased about was not contributing at least one idea – no matter how good or bad they might feel their own idea was.
The idea being that we’d end up with a great big pile of ideas in the middle of the table that we’d then go through one by one as a group, evaluate them, pick them apart, turn them over, look underneath at the bottom sides of them, and keep the ones that looked like they showed real promise.
It works! So let’s get to it…………….
Who wants to go first?
Great ideas PF8… Chilly here… it must be tea time. Given me lots to think about.
… I think if we tried to hand out Tom’s pamphlet today no one would read it except folks who already think like we do. So there’s a challenge right there, imo.
And it’s not that the folks who wouldn’t read it would be opposed to what Tom said. The challenge is just to get their attention. I think there’s a giant obstacle to getting folks’ attention nowadays and that obstacle would have to be dealt with.
I love the idea of merging our efforts to a greater message and I think there’s a lot of “greater messages” we could agree on and contribute to.
As far as your ideas on writing style and making it personal, I haven’t been able to visualize it for lack of a real model. After all, it’s your idea and no one else’s. For my part (and others may have different perceptions and not feel this way) I’d need to see an example of this kind of writing – whether your own or using the work done on this site in an editorial sense to fashion a real model of what you’re talking about. I think that would be helpful and may well get you enough volunteers to grow that kind of project.
I think to get attention things have to be brighter and shinier than the distractions being thrown at us every day in our society. So that would mean big visuals and graphics and short writing, I agree on that. OPOL, Tigana, Robyn and quite a few more Dharmaniacs already have done this to great effect.
Finally, I think to bridge the gap between the blogosphere and the reaaaaal wooooorld, it would be quite cool to be able to print out a hard copy of this like a souped up version of Tom’s pamphlets, something to catch the eye — nowadays printing costs can be extremely cheap if you know what yer doing and think about how cool it would be for us to distribute these “pamphlets” free at libraries and bookstores and supermarkets, etc. (Well of course this is pure pipe dreaming, but so what.)
Perhaps it’s time to fight distraction with an equal and far more shiny distraction.
that other blogs can join and install on their sites – something like OOIBC – and make Docudharma the Central Site. It’s additional admin work – but it’s also a way to bring in new essayists, crossposters and commenters – while at the same time building a cohesive larger community with DD at the center.
http://hq-intranet04.usfcs.doc…
And then I sent them this.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/pa…
yes I did.