Quote:
Originally Posted by Huehuecoyotl
You keep saying "they" but the people pivoting to attack people for advocating abolishing ICE are the ones who are either fine with caging children or look at it as some annoying PR problem. You're never going to win those people over because they're looking for any escape route and then will blame you for them taking it.
There are people in between the lap dogs looking for the mental gymnastic talking points, and the people who are already clear about what to do. This is where the right beats us every time.
I am not claiming to have the **** figured out, this is just where I am landing currently. When I used to think--"how did good people let the Holocaust happen in Germany? Surely they couldn't all have been brainwashed?" and it was a mystery to me. Everyone I knew as a kid who heard the story said the same ****ing thing--we would fight it! We would not have watched it unfold!
So here we are. This is no longer "they are saying things that sound like they want to" situation. We have pictures. We have audio. We have no denial. Yet, that, and the environment, and the supreme court, and the travel ban, and Harley Davidson, and restaurants, and bakeries, to media attacks, to you name it has the good people...from liberal people in these threads to politicians unable to combat it.
I'm getting repetitive now, but being repetitive is exactly what needs to ****ing happen. We can learn what is working for these monsters. We can take a look at why they (and by they I mean the right and specifically this admin) are not losing no matter what **** they pull. It is because they are using propaganda. That is the "genius" of Trump, but it is really not ****ing genius. It is well known and well executed every single day by corporations. But for some reason, we all want to swat at it instead of take a god-damned cue from it.
You know people who are upset, know that **** is not right, but are lamenting the fact that they are being forced to think about it. If you made them read all of the threads here, they would ****ing flip out and shut down--not because they are looking for an out, because it is impossible for many people to process this magnitude and convert it into action--not just on this level, on personal levels. People stay in bad relationships, in bad jobs, continue all kinds of bad habits they know are bad because they are overwhelmed with the prospect of change. How do we mobilize the majority of people who are too scared, confused or lazy to engage fully? The people that as kids were sure they would not have stood for the rise of Hitler? How? By making it simple. Actionable.
I am not going to be sold on global communism today no matter how sound it may be if the prerequisite by the advocate is I educate myself by reading three books that are recommended. But I
am going to be sold on stop putting babies in cages because Americans don't do that. Many people are not going to step into the fray when it you have to understand what ICE is compared to border patrol, you have a megaphone repeating on Twitter that no ICE=lawlessness and bands of ms-13 raping you (even if that sounds like an exaggeration to the uninformed, maybe abolishing them now sounds almost as extreme?), but you know what is ****ing easy to understand? A baby crying in a cage for their mother locked in a different cage because they came for help. No. Make them attack THAT and only that.
My best friend is meek. He admits it. I am confrontational. He wants to hide. I want to fight. We need to make it easier for the people who want to hide to fight! They do that with simple lies, we can do it by keeping the truth simple. I am good with labor rights. I am 100% on board with BLM. I agree that democratic socialism is better than what we have, I am 100% against the travel ban, but there are soooooooooo many people who have been successfully confused by those issues already who, given time and effort, would agree with me. But we don't have that time. We need them right now...let's focus on what moves them. I hate to say it to the people who have been out there doing good work for years and dedicating their lives to leftist issues, but move the **** over because you are failing. The right has been successfully attacking and marring those issues for years and you have not gained the traction quick enough to make it work. You may be right, but you are losing. What is right/correct/true is not what matters anymore in this fight. They have said it. We just don't ****ing listen
ever.
For their side? Lock her up. Emails. Racism. Libs melting down. They have their hits. We have got to find ours. No babies in cages. Play the tapes. Make them own it. No nuance. No time. We are against law and order? No. We are against babies in cages and you are doing that. We want open borders? We are against babies in cages, crying in squalor on concrete floors. We want socialism? We are against what amounts to solitary confinement for ****ing infants on the basis of a misdemeanor charge against their parents. Anyone can understand that. It is all we should be talking about. Even the laziest American will get behind a message of us being better than that.
Last edited by Johnny Truant; 07-03-2018 at 02:03 PM.