When People Think You're a Loon Do Not Prove Them Right
The only pundit on the planet who nearly always "gets" my views and uh, a whole slew of the real "average America's" (as opposed to that weird, fanatical, and not-so-bright one the MSM keeps telling us is "middle America").
At the risk of offending any readers who love to dress up in ugly clothing and engage in circus performances for the cameras, I give you.........
Look, I'm sure they mean well but folks like this and yes, the ever-iconic Sheehan too, have done more to deter "the average American" from joining the anti-Iraq-war crowd than Bush & Co. could have paid anyone to do. It just does not play well in Peoria.
17 comments:
BLARGHWAHAHAAHAHHHHWBLRHGAAA!
Cindy Sheehan is just as annoying and divisiveas those people telling me to call my congressman and senator and tell them to keep funding the Iraq War, like oh-so-teary Vicki Strong:
"We already had one 9/11, we don't need another."
She's not fucking helping either.
Nope she isn't. Problem is Strong doesn't come across as "looney" to the average person so more people will listen to her. Though the tears were pushing the envelope and she probably poisons stray cats as a hobby ;).
Our trouble was/is the failure of most moderates to speak out and the failure of our media to give them air time when they do. Extremism fuels ratings y'know.
Yeah, we really didn't need this ...
The Pink ladies have sort of a Reese Witherspoon/Legally Blond thing going on. A little bling-bedecked dog and the whole thing would have been just right.
I have to go with you on the Sheehan thing too. As they said, "Youu're not helping."
I have to say I found Cindy Sheehan rational and moderate. Sheehan's problem was she couldn't get enough support from so-called 'middle America'. Even Peacechick Mary, one of the most sincere and hard-working bloggers for peace, gave up in the end due to lack of support at the peace rallies. It's sad that women feel they have to dress up and make spectacles of themselves to get their point across, and no, it doesn't play well in Peoria, or for that matter go down well in Decatur. But frankly I don't give a toss about the people of Peoria or Decatur, sitting snug in their well-heeled homes while their countrymen are every day slaughtering Iraqi women and children with impunity at the behest of their crazed "Commander-in-Chief". While middle Americans sit on their arses and do damn all to stop it, I'll continue to applaud the pink pumpkins who are at least trying - a damn sight harder than the rest of us - to stop this madness. They're not helping? The question is, are we doing better?
But frankly I don't give a toss about the people of Peoria or Decatur, sitting snug in their well-heeled homes
That's just it, most of them aren't all that snug or well-heeled. They couldn't afford to to take time off of work to run around Washington acting crazy if they wanted to.
It doesn't matter if we give a toss or not, "we" aren't enough to get the job done, we need Peoria. The impression many people have is exactly that...that the people making all the noise don't understand or give a flip about them or their lives, hence the reluctance to fight on the same side.
The questions we have to ask ourselves:
1. Did what you were doing work?
2. If not, at the least did you win over more people or did you alienate more?
3. If the answer is that you pissed off more than you won, why are you still doing it?
Answer: because it stopped being about the mission and the mission itself became the mission.
Mama - you make some very relevant points, but I believe the real problem here is apathy. It's not about persuading the 30-odd percent who support Bush that they're wrong. That'll never happen. It's about the motivation of the 60-odd percent who say they're against the war. Enough Americans are against this war to stop it very quickly if they banded together to make their voice heard. It happened in the 60's over Vietnam. Then the young came out in force. Today, the young are conspicuous by their absence from protests. Where is the voice of the campuses? America has become apathetic about what its government does. The old Bush-ism "Fight them over there, so as not to have to fight them over here..." is constantly being quoted by Americans on European news channels. It's as though they're saying: "Keep it away from me, and I don't care what happens elsewhere." Couple that with a US senator on the BBC World News who stated this week: "This thing has gone on longer than World War Two....." ( from an anti-war senator, Bernie Sanders, whose views I personally admire) which is anathema to Europeans - for whom WW2 started in 1938-39, not 1942 - and the general world impression is that US citizens don't give a damn as long as they're all right.
Americans are digging a big hole for themselves, so far as the rest of the world is concerned, and the apathy of those who don't support the war but aren't prepared to do anything to protest it, will rebound when there is another 9/11. Americans will then wonder, "Where has the sympathy of 9/11/2001 gone?" Even then, they probably won't realize it was themselves who frittered it away.
Sorry to go on, but I see the face of Europe, as well as America, and it saddens me how the people of both continents are drifting rapidly apart.
Truth there, apathy is a huge problem and I agree we'd never win over the 30% people so it's pointless to even attempt it.
I'm not sure how to gain broader support but I have the horrible sinking feeling that if we can't figure it out ASAP the clusterfuck in Iraq will look like small potatoes. We've succeeded in upping Russian & Chinese paranoia, destabilized Pakistan & to some extent Turkey, destroyed our economy to an extent most people have not even begun to comprehend, and are an inch away from open conflict with Iran and may very well lose Afghanistan and those are just a few of the highlights.
I don't mind at all when someone cares to expand on their view, it makes for better understanding than the standard sound bite ;).
Kudos, to RJ Adams.
Americans are too distracted to seek out the real news and the media is aware of that and panders to them with fake news. Masses in the rest of the world, who have a stake in OUR politics, know more about our politics than Peoria, U.S.A. So I say bravo to any one who rocks the boat. BRAVO to anyone who disrupts business-as-usual. BRAVO! to anyone who upsets the CARNIVAL in Congress with the mere suggestion that witnesses be sworn in for ChrissakesGodAlmighty, even if they're wearing a freaking uniform with freaking ribbons hanging from them. And BRAVO to Cindy Sheehan wearing pink, too! When the people in Peoria USA get tired of all this stuff messing up their teevee screens maybe they'll want to make it go away, even if they don't understand what's going on in Iraq. Maybe they'll hear 'surge' and start to think 'splurge', and just want to tell Bush to that America should stop doing stuff overseas that they, in Peoria USA, don't understand.
Like Scott Ritter said last March:
It is sadly misguided to believe that surging an additional 20,000 U.S. troops into Baghdad and western Iraq will even come close to redressing the issues raised in this article. And if you concur that the reality of Iraq is far too complicated to be understood by the average American, yet alone cured by the dispatch of additional troops, then we have a collective responsibility to ask what the hell we are doing in that country to begin with. If this doesn’t represent a clarion call for bringing our men and women home, nothing does.
Wake up sleeping dogs.
I go with RJ on this one. As for the crazies, we had them in the 1960s too. They were the ones throwing blood on returning GIs when serious activists were befriending them and bring them into the movement. Ending that war took a long time. Ending this one is too, and finding the balance between stirring up the base and keeping them enthused and moderating the more extreme elements can be difficult. I disagree with their tactics, but I commend their commitment.
not your mama, I certainly agree with you and John Stewart and the great point tomcat just made. To be effective and bring about change we must "involve" the larger population, not alienate them.
I say we work through the back door by passing a constitutional amendment that says the US has to operate with a balanced budget. If people had to pay for this war instead of putting it off on the next generation, I think they might speak up. And who would be politically stupid enough to object to sound fiscal policy.
That would be more effective.
Here in Minnesota, one candidate's ads featured returned servicemen talking about how noble the war was. His opponent showed little kids in fatigues training to go to a war that is never going to end. Both were very effective.
Yeah, I caught a little bit of the "Gold Star Families" rally on C-Span this morning...similar hoo-rah, hoo-rah show. Some woman tearing up a flyer and squawking "that's all that's left of the moonbats" and a guy who's son died telling us why more peoples' kids dying will give it all "meaning".
At this stage of the game those are really the only types enlisting so I have much less vested interest in it. I'm not going to get overwrought over people who knowingly choose this course of action at this point in time. Or as my DH calls it "voluntary self-removal from the gene pool".
I agree completely with the point that you make in this post. Completely!
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