[Phil] 3 Hard Truths you Absolutely Must Accept to Effect Change.

1) All of the Truth Telling in the world by minds far more brilliant than your own have not been enough to do anything more than slow down the Koch agenda.  Truth does not reverse it.

2) Politics is now a religion for many and discussing politics with those who are infected with it is pointless as discussing interpretations of bible verses.  This is ALL infected; conservatives, libertarians, moderates who give equal credence to both sides, and even progressives or liberals or democrats more concerned about party identity than solving the problem.

3) It will take a trifecta of power sharing, third parties and independent ideological institutions to counter the Koch agenda.  Two out of three is not enough.

Details

1) John Stewart, Colbert, Carlin to name a few of those who have been warning us.  For those in the know, the Koch plan has been in the works for decades.  The thing is, that they have been telling the truth in brilliant ways over and over again in the belief that that alone would be enough to change things.  And it can, for a short period of time.

A great example of this is the attempts to tax or take over the internet.  They have many times attempted to pass ridiculous laws that would take over consumer freedom of the internet.  And they have been beaten back many times.  That is because the Koch agenda as well as the corporate agenda understand what you don't....politics is a forever battle, not just a few phone calls to your congressman.  And if you 'frame' the debate in the right way, you can get people to forget what it was they were fighting for in the first place.   A well placed bribe to the Republican party, and suddenly, Cable companies, one of the most hated groups in America, are ardently defended by legions of followers demanding that the government not enforce Net Neutrality.

Another example is Bill Maher's attempt to set up a fund to fund the opponents of the craziest members of congress.  HUGE amounts of money were spent on the fund's target and they still lost.  It sure looks like Maher's fund is gone, but you know who is still there? The NRA.  The CATO institute.  The Heritage Foundation.  Americans for Progress.

2) There is a study that shows an imagined experience is as real as those actually experienced.  Or in other words, it is emotional truth that affects the vast majority of people.  Now that might be loyalty to your God that motivates you to find reasons to support conservative policies, or anger at the government for "stealing" some of your hard earned money, or anger at the democrats because Clinton signed NAFTA or other things like it.  You need to admit to yourself that no matter how rationally you approach your beliefs, you attach significance to them because of emotional truth, not just because it 'makes sense.'  Conservatives and libertarians love to crow about how 'rational' their beliefs are, but their reason is often based on magical thinking at its best.

The thing about magical thinking is that it involves imposing your own view on top of reality, which means that their faith, which makes life more magical and meaningful for them comes at the price of accepting reality for what it is.  And while this gives liberals a tremendous advantage, as 2014 showed us, this cannot last forever.   This is not to say that liberals and others do not sometimes have irrational or false beliefs, but that the heroes of the party and the party ideology is much less inclined to NEED to lie.



So in practical terms what does this mean?  It means...STOP trying to convince people who disagree with you politically of anything.  I'm not writing this for infected conservatives.  Almost everyone who isn't a conservative knows what the problem with them is?  But Moderates who enable conservatives by pretending their views are just as legitimate are just as indirectly politically religious as conservatives.  Most moderates don't put their emotional truth in things like "the government is evil" but rather "both sides are bad."

The 'both sides are bad' or 'I am above both sides' people are just as wedded to their political religion as conservatives are.  There are some identity democrats that are as well.  Loyalty to the president or the democratic party is a problem.  So what does that mean?  It means that don't waste your time arguing with moderates,  much less conservatives...it means spend your time trying to fix the left.

3) There is a difference between a warrior and a soldier.  Warriors prize their individual skill but soldiers are part of a unit and are a cog in a much larger machine.  In the last days of the old west, native warriors were no less skilled than their Calvary opponents.  But the thing is, picking up a stolen (or purchased) rifle does not grant one sufficient resources to win a war against the government of the United States of America.  The Calvary had logistics, weapons manufacturers, corporations, banks, universities, town councils and many many other institutions helping to make the American war machine work.  You can leap forward in technology in seconds by learning how to pull a trigger.  You cannot create cultural institutions or paradigm shifts over night.  You just can't.

But metaphorically speaking, that is what liberals are trying to do against the Koch brothers.

Belief that people will just do the right thing if they know the truth won't make them do it.   Moral indignation against the tactics of the Koch brothers won't stop them from using them.  Nostalgia for the old days when the news really was the liberal media won't make them suddenly stop being 'he said, she said' shills.  The Republican Noise machine has been a known factor for some time.   But what has knowledge done?  Well, some very impressive counter forces have sprung up like MoveOn.org, or Daily Kos have sprung up to counter the message.  Asymmetric warfare is possible since sometimes there is only having a counter message not controlled by the Kochs is enough.

But the problem is that by and large many of these organizations are loyal to the democratic party and progressivism, but loyal to the democrats first, and progressive second.  These organizations are not the equivalent to the Heritage Foundation or other ideological organizations, primarily because they do not provide consistent bribe money to politicians each cycle but spend it ad hoc.  Furthermore, they are easily co-opted by the Party Apparatus who justifiably say, "You Must Vote For Us or Doom!"

Third parties are needed to have a viable replacement in case the democrats implode.  Purely progressive think tanks and funded advocacy organizations that are in this for the long haul need to operate independent of democrats.  And at the same time, pressure needs to be brought to bear in the democratic party to demand certain kinds of behavior in the democratic leadership.  There are ways to do this, and I will attempt to explain them in the next day or two, but the short version is that progressives need to hold their votes contingent, especially in off year and down ticket elections, contingent in getting a certain number of cabinet and committee positions in the executive and legislative branches.

[Phil] Evolution Doesn't Care if You Believe In It

Really.  It doesn't. From the perspective of evolution, all that matters is...don't die until you reproduce.  If you reproduce lots, great.  If you reproduce, you're still in the game. 

It doesn't matter if you're strong or smart or fast or rich or poor.  From the great game that is evolution in the chain of life from the amobea to whatever levitating martian looking things our descendants will be a billion years for now.

So when I read crap like this about the "reddening" of America, where they say essentially, "poll numbers show you're not as swell as you think you are Republicans...be good or BAD things will happen to you!"

BULLSHIT!

When it comes to power, if the election is actually free, if no one is burning a cross on your front lawn or making you do calculus to vote, its whether or not you vote and who you vote for.

That's it.  So by staying home and not voting, you can say you are against the system, or are standing for your principals or whatever you want, but ultimately, the fact is, you're voting for the Republicans unless you're voting for the democrats.  And is that a crappy crappy system? Absolutely.  But that's the way our crappy system is designed.

Are you working to change it, or are you waiting for superman to come down and fix it?

After the last election, I'm done with the democrats. They're total cowards, and the last week utterly proves it.  All the democrats are fighting amongst themselves in the senate right now about whether they should be nice to the Republicans and be 'bipartisian' or whether or not they should fight them tooth and nail.  

These are the REPUBLICANS.  HELLO MCFLY?! ANYONE IN THERE!?

Even moderate republicans still vote with Republicans because Abortion. Because Taxes.  ALL Republicans that vote Republican are still responsible for the behavior of the Republican party no matter how much they say they don't like The Crazy.

You know how many closet conservatives there are? LOTS.

But it doesn't help that the democrats had a pathetic weak milktoast strategy.

Think 2016 is a given/lock in? So did Al Gore.  So did Kerry.  THEY LOST.  Big Time.

America doesn't CARE about the Crazy.  Get. Over. It.  Until Democrats STOP trying to play nice, until Democrats STOP BEING COWARDS.  So you can tell me that the dog ate the voters homework or we should be nice to stupid people, or that you should set a positive example...Obama set a positive example...look at what the monsters are doing to him.

You can be positive and fight.  But you have to FIGHT or you will die.  And I, for one, am more interested in working with minor parties like the greens who can take over when the democrats eventually implode, because they WILL implode unless they get a spine.  If we get a REAL leader who is willing to fight, like Warren who is in charge, then fine. 

I'm not holding my breath.