Facts and Emotions: Battling A Culture of Lies
We need to answer emotion with counter-emotion. If we don’t trigger an emotional response, our facts won’t matter because they won’t be heard.
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Biden Paused – A Missed Opportunity
Saturday night would have been the time to shift to a wholly-positive campaign. To inspire voters. To call them to “Yes, we can”, “We Dare to Dream”, and “We have before, we will again”.
Is it still murder if the president orders it?
He’s been murdering people week after week, sometimes day after day, now month after month. We’re getting used to it. It’s not a big story anymore. It isn’t the headline. It isn’t the lead story. Oh, sure, at first, some folks were shocked, outraged, demanded an investigation. At first … but not now, not anymore. It’s become normal. Dog bites man. No big deal. Happens all the time. Not news.
Politics Never Stops – That’s Good!
But there’s no need to stop canvassing. Perhaps it’ll be less formal than a campaign might canvass – no mobile app, no careful selection of which doors to knock and which to skip, no glossy door-hangers to leave behind. But canvassing is a formalized version of that most basic political act – talking.
Message-Making: The Biden Speech
The speech is a lesson in the tactics, large and small, that hold a message together and burn your ideas into your audience’s consciousness. Repetition. Litanies. Framing. Promoting your Values, naming the Villain, holding out a Vision.
Promises made, Promises broken
Uncertainty damages business … and people too. Too bad about the student loan forgiveness plan. I remember (in 2012) when the Bush tax cuts of 2003 were scheduled to expire. Republicans raised a hue and cry about the “uncertainty” that this cast upon our economy. Businesses didn’t know how to plan – should they expect…
Legacy – A Duty to Our Children
This cannot be our legacy. Our children deserve better. Future generations must have time to invent, to innovate, and to thrive. We have a duty to uplift our children and our grandchildren. Our legacy to our children must be a fertile world that encourages exploration, shares discoveries, expands each other’s universe, and grows our democracy. We have a duty.
“I meant to do that.”
This chaos, this havoc, this loss of reliability and stability proves the foregone conclusion: that government doesn’t work, cannot work. So chaos, incompetence, corruption, havoc all play into driving this message. So all of this havoc, all of this chaos, all of this pain may be “proving” that government isn’t needed at all. This has all been part of a well-crafted plan, then?
The Death of the Death of Obamacare
It took the Resistance, the nationwide gaggle of Indivisible groups, ADAPT protesters, health care advocates, and the people themselves to bring this reality to the forefront. They marched and shouted, they posted and tweeted, they emailed and called and sang, they carried photos of their friends and family, yes, they disrupted and got arrested – but mostly they told their stories.
Is This Heaven?
But for the 24-hour political newscasters, the Iowa caucus results were a panic moment. And now, 36 hours later, they are still mumbling and grumbling, talking about apps and coding problems and the horror of having to wait.