Reply #155: Very Poor Tactics, Ma'am

[The Magistrate]

The essence of success in these things is to make a solid tag and move on briskly. Repeated reply to the same comment leaves a very poor impression: it looks sloppy, it looks disorganized; it looks like repeated attacks of 'stair-case wit', that most laughable of afflictions in debate.

Your statement was "Complex is not gonna happen with the average American. They can't even think past the next TV show." If you think an 'average American' encountering that statement would not take it as the statement of someone who felt him or herself superior to 'average Americans', and contemptuous of 'average Americans', it is hard to see what you could bring to the task of political agitation to move 'average Americans' towards a direction you desire. It does not even matter if there is plenty of grounds for believing the statement to be true: it feeds into a common attack line the right uses to shield the money elite from the anger of 'average Americans' by substituting an image of a 'liberal left elite' of contemptuous snobs as the object for their anger. The right's success in doing this is a major element of our political life, and we on the left do ourselves serious disservice if we do not look honestly at the contribution to their success in it we make ourselves.

"Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage."