Reply #98: sepia_steel and sportndandy makes some really good points...

[Peace Patriot]

...in regard to convincing "neocons" or "faith-based" Bushites with reasoning and facts. They've taken a priori positions in their own minds for their own reasons, and will not be moved. An attack on their views is seen as an attack on THEM.

And I think sportndandy is correct that a "liberal" mind is more flexible, more open to facts and argument, and is not so kneejerk defensive and scared of free thought.

But I don't think we should be concerned with "neocons" and "faith-based" Bushites right now. I'm convinced that they are in the minority, and in a fair and just political system, would have a voice but not a very big one. Their views have been elevated artificially--as a convenient, exploitable population, by the major greedbags, powermongers, mass murderers and thieves who are running our country.

I am much more concerned about Kerry voters--the majority--the people whose orderly revolution at the polls this November was stolen right out from under them, leaving them demoralized, depressed, exhausted, some even suicidal, and near hopeless that their sensible views of how the country should be run, on generally progressive lines, are not shared by many others (even though the evidence of their own eyes and ears tells them that 70% to 90% of their friends, family and co-workers DO share those views--and all voted against Bush!).

Our first job is to spread the word of what happened in the election for THEIR sakes--so they know they are not alone.

Our second job is to deal with those in denial.

And in all cases--the "neocons," the "faith-based" Bushites, the Kerry voters who already feel in their guts that the election was stolen, and just need the facts, and the Kerry voters who can't or won't face the facts (and this includes most of the Democratic Party leadership)--all of these people are HURTING deep down from SOMETHING.

People who can't think--or who remain deliberately ignorant of relevant facts, and don't seek them out--are traumatized people.

For some Kerry voters, just learning the facts will help them immensely. For others, our job is harder.

Also, I think we're dealing with the common trauma of 9/11. I think it shook people up at the deepest level of their being--but the responses to that shakeup are quite varied. Some latched onto Bush, projecting their own desperate need for steadiness onto that silly weed. Others soon began to perceive something quite radical--that our government was in collusion in some way.

Actually, it reminds me of the Kennedy assassination--which shook some people loose from their moorings, and freed them for unprecedented progressive activism in the next decade, but it made others very conservative and "head in the sand." Those people eventually elected Nixon as a "comforting" figure (har!)--Middle America's president, who would "return" the country to "normalcy."

For Democrats, ADD to 9/11, and anthrax, and Paul Wellstone, and the Iraq war, and John Ashcroft, and Dick Cheney, and all the other shocks of BushConland, the shock of a SECOND stolen election, when John Kerry promised...PROMISED!..

that THIS TIME...

EVERY. VOTE. WOULD. BE. COUNTED.

And you have a whole bunch of people who just can't add things up any more. The election was the LAST adding up they were able to do. Add up Bush' lies, the Iraq war, the federal deficit, and potential loss of women's rights--and vote Kerry.

That was it. Election Fraud they CANNOT add up. Kerry's concession they CANNOT add up. How Bush is still president, when everybody they know voted against him, they CANNOT add up.

They are traumatized. Treat them gently (except for the Democratic leaders, who knew damn well what kind of election system we had, and told us nothing!)