In Which The Author Finally Shows That He Isn't Uber Super Crazy Stupid Liberal Anymore, Or Somethin

[canadianceilidh]

So, here's the latest installment of my political essays for me to work out these things in a coherent form in my head, written mainly because I just drank a Monster and my heart is racing like a pedophile in a preschool

Comments

[leeflower]

On the whole, I think your points are valid. Liberals have a problem with thinking that people will listen when they shout "vote for us because it's morally right." Well, no one gives a fuck about morally right. They want to know what's in it for them. Maybe I'm a bad person for assuming that the average individual is going to favor himself over the good of the greater community, but impirical evidence indicates that it's not a baseless assumption.

Further, one of the tell-tale signs of insanity is that crazy people will do the same thing repeatedly and expect it to produce a different outcome (no matter how many times you press the button, the broken elevator still won't come). Well, liberals need to figure that one out. They needed to figure it out years ago. If your message isn't getting out, *change your @#$%ing message.* Shouting it louder isn't going to make people care any more (and Dear God, neither is sending a million people to Washington to shout it in some stupid ass protest. Get out of my city, you dirty hippies! You screw up traffic!).

There's an article from an Earlham grad called "The Death of Environmentalism" that apparantly made quite a stir within the environmental lobby, because he was saying just that: protecting the planet might be an end unto itself for environmentalists, but if they want other people to sign on, they need to stop arguing that the environment is more important than concerns that are far more immediate to the average person. You're never going to convince a factory worker that saving the spotted leapord is more important than saving factory jobs in America. It's just not going to happen. You just might be able to convince them that the chemicals their employer is dropping into the water are likely to make their children sick, and that they should support tougher regulations to prevent it.

I don't know if you're familiar with "Don't Just Vote," but they sound like your kind of people. Their message was that encouraging people to vote just for the sake of voting is stupid, and that indeed if someone is too lazy to educate themselves about the issues and where the candidates stand on them, they shouldn't vote. The idea of a 'literacy test' to vote has been caught up with nasty racial connotations, so I always get in trouble for admitting that I have absolutely no problem with the concept. I really believe people shouldn't be allowed to vote unless they can list off the two major candidate's positions on the major issues of that election in a way that indicates they actually looked it up instead of just flipping on Fox News. Now, I also believe that we should be doing a better job of educating the general population so that they could actually pass such a test, but I'm seriously a little sick of hearing people say "I voted for Kerry because Bush has big ears." That's idiotic.

(...continued...)

[leeflower]

I think a distinction needs to be made between lobbies and PACs, though. Granted it's grain of salt time, because I'm sitting at the FCNL reception desk as I type this, but there is a difference. PACs endorse candidates. They raise money to give to parties, candidates, causes, etc. Dirty lobbyists do that too, and have no qualms about bribing people to get what they want. But a vast majority of what groups like FCNL do isn't that. For one, they're legally forbidden to endorse candidates or make donations to same.

FCNL has an agenda. They're a quaker organization. They believe that war is wrong. They believe that the nation has a responsibility to help its poor. They believe that descrimination on the basis of cultural bindings is bad. But what they do with that agenda isn't strong-arm politicians into doing what they want (they couldn't, anyway. They don't have that kind of clout). Most of what they do is provide information to both elected officials and their constituents. I have to go on a lit-drop today about the nuclear deal with India. We're not going into offices and telling congressmen that we'll say horrid things about them if they support this deal, or trying to convince them that nuclear weapons are evil. We're saying "you might want to have your peope check over the language of this bill, because under these terms, India won't have to abide by the Nuclear Non-proliforation Treaty. All the other nuclear powers in the world, US included, have to submit to inspection of their nuclear facilities. Bush is ok with letting India say 'fuck your inspectors.' You ah... might want to consider doing something about that." We're doing it because Representatives don't have huge offices and wads of cash to spend on assistants that stay on top of everything. It's very possible that most of them don't know the details of this deal, and haven't asked because they don't have time. We tell them, they check it, and they can do with that information what they will. We're fairly certain it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that ammendments might be in order to fix this whole 'no one gets to check on them' thing, so we don't have to try to convince them that listening to us is more important than listening to their constituents. They already know their constituents come first-- we don't have money to throw at them.

PACs are another kettle of fish, though. Yaaaay soft-money donations and free vacations to the bahamas! They're what make Washington go 'round!

This comment got really damn long. Sorry.