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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Niki

Redirect your ire.

You attack the Tea Party incessantly, a demographic that used to be more or less 100% in line with this forum (check back to 12/07, you'll find this is the case) A year later, it was still the case. Now three years on, it's not.

Why?

Because people on the left are attacking the Tea Party. What does that do? I makes Tea Party undecideds move to the right, and it's makes Tea Party Liberals want either to not be in the tea party, or to not be on the left anymore.

Sure. All of the above happened in statistically significant numbers.


So if you're not attacking a small minority, who should you attack?

Well, remember when Bush was in power? Dems. put a lot of effort into attacking the Xtian right? What was that all about? It seems a lot like when the right started attacking Muslims.


Okay, so that's not the answer. How about this one: The people in power.


Whether they're republicans or democrats. Don't waste your effect attacking people who are not only not in power, but not likely to be in power, and attack the guys actually running the show.

Don't alienate them, just make your disagreements plain. Maybe single out some people like Kane just did of "maybe these guys should go"


But I consider myself in the middle. This year I voted for two democrats, one republican, a green, a socialist and a rent is too damn high party candidate. I almost voted for the black panther, but I went for the socialist at the last minute because the black panthers didn't have enough organization to get enough votes to reach ballot access, so it became a meaningless protest vote. Maybe next time Panthers, if you get your act together.

So, in spite of whatever people may hurl at me, I'm a completely undecided voter. I listen to the individual arguments and vote for the individual, not the party, as long as they stand a chance of at least registering as a protest vote. I voted Rent2High on a lower office because I thought the guy could win, it wasn't a protest vote.


Now, when people present arguments, very often they lose me as a supporter for their argument by two things:


1) Who they attack. If, in naming a problem or its potential solution, they target some group. Usually, this happens to be a group they're biased against anyway (Xtians, Tea Partiers, China, India, Jews, Mexicans, Muslims, rural folk, the rich, etc.) As soon as I see this attack, and am pretty sure that they aren't the cause of the problem in question, then I say "Oh, someone is using this particular issue to blow their own horn. Next?"

2) Who they don't attack. This is especially obvious when someone is very clearly connected to the problem but happens to be on the side of the person making the claim, and so they avoid blaming them, or even deflect the blame.

Like this Napolitano thing. Bodyscanners et al. Obama came out and stated his backing for her program. We know Chertoff and Soros funded bankrolled the business, and congress is bankrolling them. We suspect that a lot of advisors from the usual PTB suspects list supported the idea. That gives us a lot of suspects. Now what if, and I don't think anyone did this, but what if in this issue, someone were to attack Olbermann or Beck? Wouldn't it seem obvious that they were dodging the actual blame and attacking their own bugbears?

Here's another example. I hate socialism. I think it's a lousy system of govt. I'm no fan of Nazis. I have a real problem with govt, and I'm not too fond of police states. I'm a defender of the free market, and the private sector. Just recently when detailing the potential for debate and the source of abuse in Nazi germany when talking to Magon, I suggested socialists within the German govt. were the best chance for reason and solving the problem, and blamed the holocaust on private sector corporations. Not because I wanted to defend the Nazis, but because I think it's true, and it's a fairly obvious suspect that needs to be mentions. I don't actually feel that an argument needs to be made against Nazis, it's already been made.

Moving on

3) No one gets credit for attacking the opposition. This is what people do all the time, and everyone tunes it out. You get credit for attacking your own side.

Do you think that Ron Paul would have ever gotten the cult following he did if he had stood there throughout 2007 and 2008 and constantly blamed the democratic congress for the failings of Washington? Of course not. He took Bush through the ringer, and all his neocon republican friends with him. It's actually the thing which caught my attention back in 2002. I thought "Okay, I've been following the votes, and some republican in Texas I've never heard of is voting against the Bush agenda on every single item. What's the deal?

Well, the deal was that Bush refused to listen to congress' budgetary suggestions that accompanied the bills. Paul and a few others had confronted them on it a few times. The constitution pretty clearly gives budgetary powers to congress, and the Bush admin. was just flat out ignoring that in favor of their own spending preferences. Paul said it was just dictatorship, and anyone who allowed that process to continue was being complacent with it, regardless of the policy.

And I thought "And this guy then has to go to the RNC every two years and ask for their endorsement for office. This takes guts."

His stongest counterpoint on the other side was Russ Feingold.

Mike said recently "Why do republicans have a hard-on for Russ Feingold?" Well, Russ is no republican, it doesn't really have anything to do with that. It's that he's not a sap. He is willing to call the DNC on their own bull$#!+


So, how does that work out in the other direction? If someone just supports the RNC and Demint or McConnell? The Bush is always right crowd? It gets old real fast.


4) Think about your audience. Instead of just ranting what you believe, and against those you oppose, ask yourself what the potential audience for the message believes, and who you might offend with broad attacks.

It doesn't matter whether it's here, or on the news, but any time I'm reading and someone is clearly not sympathetic to my position, is willing to blame groups that might include me, or who just is willing to stop before getting to any suspects that I might deem plausible, I'm likely to stop reading and move on to the next. As a result, I will not hear the message. It's human nature, people are here are 1/2 hour off from work, they're not coming for abuse. The same is true for anyone writing online. There's an infinite amount of content, I can go elsewhere, I can go back to work, I can go play whackamole.

If you want to reach me as an audience, then it has to be some sort of analysis that isn't unreasonably blaming me, that's willing to take its own side to task, and that is logically trying to reach the real heart of the matter without fear of the consequences that someone on their side might get some oil spilled on them in the process.

And thank you, Niki, for what I take to be a genuinely interested question on the subject of my humble opinion of what might be effective political debate.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
I think they want to see as much anger and hatred as liberals did when Bush was in office.

(I could be wrong.)

--Can't Take (my gorram) Sky

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