Sensible Advice

DailyKos has some great forward-looking advice: Don’t Mourn, Organize. Today’s going to be a crap day, no doubt, but we’ve got to look ahead. Josh Marshall also says some great things.

My biggest question: how do you make people see what they refuse to see? So many things should have tipped this election away from Bush. On the radio last night I heard someone say that it would take a “gate” to do it, yet so many things that, in my view, are much worse than Watergate: Abu Graib, tax cuts for the rich, outright lying to the American people, the entire fucking Iraq situation from beginning to end. But people accept what Fearless Leader tells them: a few bad apples, economic stimulus (and don’t you mind that deficit, with numbers that are so big that it won’t apply to you), the War on Terror(tm).

As long as terrorists aren’t blowing themselves up on people’s front porches, Americans think it doesn’t affect them. But honestly, let’s take some bets: how long before the draft gets reinstated? Do you seriously think Bush’s promise that there will be no draft can hold up under the pressure he’s created in Iraq? And how soon before the U.S. is compelled to invade Iran? And if that happens, what type of “coalition of the willing” will stand by our side? For that matter, who’s going to be left to help out in Iraq? Or Afganistan, for that matter?

So, that is the challenge: how do you encourage someone to see the truth? How do you get past the disinformation machine that is making Americans believe that everything is okay? Because everything is not okay.

Published by Jeff Carlson

Author, photographer, and late-nighter Jeff Carlson writes for outlets such as Popular Photography, DPReview, Creative Pro, and others, and is a contributing editor for TidBITS. He is the author of Take Control of Your Digital Photos; The Photographer's Guide to Luminar AI, Take Control of Apple Watch, and Take Control of Your Digital Storage, among many other titles. View all posts by Jeff Carlson