The story of America cannot be told in terms of what we are or what we have been. The American story is that we are a people in motion – we are going someplace. Someplace better than where we are or where we were. It’s not about where we are, it’s about the journey we are on.
It’s not about what we are, it’s about what we are trying to become.
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.
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.
Were they walling people in? Or out? Both, it seems. As much as they tried to keep people in, they also tried very hard to keep western influences out. Jeans, rock’n’roll, Coca-cola, all the symbols of decadence that Americans thrust at them. The Berlin Wall sent a message. Like a giant billboard, it shouted out to us. We heard fear. We heard weakness.
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.
If the impeachment managers hope to win this persuasion argument, they must speak to how Republican senators can stay in power – or recover their lost power – or protect themselves from the loss of power. They need to demonstrate that the actions of the defendant threaten the ruling authority of these Republican senators.
In the wake of the most recent mass shooting – this time, in a Florida school – many commentators are noting, sadly, that tragedies like this have become the “new normal.” I disagree – tragedies like this have become “all too common“, but I reject the notion that this is “normal“, whether new or old….
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.
In 1776, they signed their names to a revolutionary document, pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honour” to defend the radical idea that “all men are created equal “ – that they equally enjoy the natural rights of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” – that governments are needed to protect those…
But guns have long signaled something different in rural places than in urban ones. Just as significant, guns now signify something radically different than they did a few decades ago. In short, guns have become highly politicized, both a cause and a symbol of our nation’s accelerating polarization
