A friend sent along the following entirely reasonable proposal for
getting through to the red state voters:
--
Hi Ed,
Regarding your post about Thomas Frank's very good NYT piece, I
would say if gay marriage and legal abortion are the cutting edge issues
that dominate middle-America's sense of values, Democrats are indeed in
deep trouble. But rather I believe as a starting point the democrats
need to mobilize populist family value issues that will appeal to small
town American home-owners: 1) the sense of entitlement from wealth that
shows no mercy or charity to income earners in need throughout America;
2) corruption within American big business that robs people of their
hard-earned retirement pensions; 3) corporate destruction of small-town
America's communities and businesses; 4) corporate job outsourcing that
forgets what they owe to the communities that gave them their start; 5)
determining where it is that wealthy Republican donors live and spend
their money; 6) peoples' health benefits mortgaged to multinational drug
companies' profit margins; 7) social security trust fund privatized for
the sake of the biggest companies' capital gains and the wealthiest
people's stock portfolios while putting peoples' fixed retirement income
in danger; 8) the sons and daughters of middle America, among those
first recruited to fight an unjustified war in Iraq for goals that
redound most clearly for America's wealthiest.
--
However, there is more of a problem out there than simply reasoning with
people. I see 3 categories at least to whom appeals must be made. Some
at least are well aware of the above and voted Democratic. Others are
naively uninformed. But large numbers -- both think tank types and
members of the various anti-intellectual and jealously anti-outsiders
religious 'cults' -- are murderously on course now. They are greedy and
want to keep whatever they can steal from others -- they have long been
doing so. And they are real haters who have no compunctions about
killing -- don't kill humans more often because of the threat of
punishment, but get a real kick out of killing animals, gays, Muslims
and any other enemies that they can get authorized as targets -- and
letting our babies die. They are psychopaths -- the 'Nazis' of the
human race -- ready to kill and torture with any excuse -- Abu Graib,
Guant�namo, Falluja, and even women and juveniles on our death rows.
Bush as governor did both of the last. He is their role model -- now in
charge with the authority to kill at large. It took a major war to stop
Hitler. Ed Kent
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
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