Week of 11/09/2015

Why Liberals Continue To Lose
– by David Matthews 2

So (as of this column) we just had another election.  And I’m sure the vast majority of Americans didn’t know and/or didn’t really care about it because it was an “off-off” election, which meant that pretty much most of the “big” offices like President or Senate or Congress were not up for grabs.  There were a handful of states that had something big like a governor’s job on the line, but for the most part this was about local issues.  Stuff going on in your neighborhood.

Think about it... if you didn’t give a care enough to vote, then you apparently don’t give a care about what’s going on in your own community.  These are the things that affect you directly more so than anything that President Obama or the GOP-controlled Congress could ever do on a national level.

And there were some measures in this “off-off” election that would affect people.  Ohio voters, for instance, had the opportunity to legalize marijuana for both medical and recreational use, like the folks in Colorado did.  Citizens in Houston, Texas, had the opportunity to support or repeal a city ordinance outlawing LGBT discrimination.

Both these measures failed by the few people who bothered to vote.  Pot is still illegal in Ohio and rednecks can once again discriminate against LGBT people with impunity.  Worse yet, Kentucky’s version of Donald Trump, Matt Bevin, won that state’s governor’s race as a GOPer in a state that normally votes for Democrats.

And that has some people in the media scratching their heads.  How could this happen?  How is it that liberals continue to lose to the GOP?

Well, I could give you the Donald Trump reason: “Because they’re losers!  That’s why!”  Then again, he calls everything he hates “losers”.  It’s his thing.

But in truth, there are some simple reasons why liberals and the progressive ideas they champion lose out to conservative and neo-conservatives and their borderline-fascistic concepts.  And while I spend a lot of time going after cons and neo-cons for their crap, I’m far from a fan of liberalism.  While cons and neo-cons will goose-step towards fascism, liberals fumble and bumble about with ideas that sound good, but ultimately fail in execution.  But that doesn’t matter to liberals at that point, because then it just becomes a matter of keeping power at all costs.

So why is it that liberals have a hard time getting people to support their ideas?  After all, they supposedly have the “liberal media” and Hollywood and academia on their side, right?  It should be a cakewalk for them.  So why isn’t it?

Well here’s the problem in one word: salesmanship.

Let’s get brutally honest here... liberals don’t sell their messages.  They expect the rest of the world to simply accept their ideas as truths.  Legalize pot?  Of course!  Accept same-sex marriages?  Why isn’t it done already?  Healthcare-for-everyone?  Shouldn’t even be a question!  Clean air and water?  Naturally!  Better living conditions?  Absolutely!  End bullying and discrimination?  Should’ve been done a long time ago!  Discuss it?  Why should we discuss it?  Everyone knows these things to be true and good already!  So just put our people in and it’ll all be done!

Except it’s not that simple.  First of all, a lot of what liberals propose goes against decades, even centuries, of fixed mindsets and dogma, not to mention generations of conditioned human nature.  You’re fighting whole institutions that have gotten fat and wealthy and powerful keeping what they have going at all costs.  Even if it means the actual destruction of the planet and the complete extinction of the human race.  That is how entrenched their egos and their power-base are.

And the cons and neo-cons have spent a long time selling their messages to the masses.  They have Fox News and talk radio and newspaper editorials and the business sections and a whole bunch of lobbying groups and think-tanks that have also gotten fat and wealthy and powerful keeping everything where it is.  They have spent decades infiltrating the halls of academia to counteract the so-called “liberal scourge”.

And the cons and neo-cons have the laziest and most powerful argument in the world on their side.  Like Bruce Hornsby sung it: “That’s just the way it is; some things will never change.” 

As long as the cons and neo-cons have that as the high-ground, you can’t expect the rest of the world to simply accept anything else on face-value.

So liberals have to fight, and fight hard to get their message across.  They have to sell it to the American people for them to support it.  They cannot assume, even for a moment, that the great unwashed simply “get it”.  I’ve got news for you liberals: they don’t “get it”.  You have to sell it.  You have to actually convince them to accept it.

But it’s more than just selling the message.  You have to have a message to sell.  A lot of the Democrats have been running for office – and a few have won – simply because they’re seen as the “safer” of the two dominant and domineering parties.  Not because they have anything to offer but because the other side has been shooting themselves in the foot.  (And that’s not hard to do when you’re the party with support from the gun lobbying group.)  Now if you have the masses that firmly believe that the status quo is messed up and needs to be changed, you can’t expect them to buy the idea that you’d be their candidate if your strongest argument is that you’re more in-tune with the status quo.  People will buy into the lunatic if that lunatic promises to rock the power-base to the ground and looks crazy enough to pull it off.

Look at the wannabes running for President in 2016.  Look at the GOP clown car and what they represent, and then look at what the Democrats are offering in rebuttal.  Now ask yourself which clown car would you want to see drive into the Washington Circus Tent, center-ring?

And, by the way, it doesn’t help your cause when what you propose sabotages the very idea you’re trying to sell.  Remember that marijuana legalization referendum in Ohio?  That measure had a few conditions to it, like giving a small group of businesses monopolist control over whole process.  That’s why it failed.  Not because of the idea, but because of the fine print. 

If you look at Obama’s prized Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”, there’s nothing in it that provides healthcare-for-all.  It’s the forced purchase of a corporate product under the legal “pretense” of it being a tax.  It’s corporatism, plain-and-simple.  But the liberals allowed the cons and neo-cons to brand this as “socialism” because they weren’t paying attention to the fine print and instead were chanting the idea as a mantra.

There’s one more thing that liberals need to do when selling their message.  It has to appeal to the masses on a personal level.

Remember the whole scare about AIDS in the early 1980’s?  People were scared about AIDS and HIV back then.  They treated it as the Black Plague of the 20^th Century.  I’m not kidding, folks, I was there.  I saw the hysteria over it.  I remember when people were panicking over drinking fountains and toilet seats and whether someone with AIDS and HIV was breathing the same air as everyone else.  But within a decade, the hysteria died down.  Part of that was because of advances in treatment, but also because more people came out, and there were people that we could identify with.  And, no, the world didn’t come to an end because of this.

Same-sex relationships were unheard of twenty years ago.  So much so in fact that we bought into the fear and hysteria of the bible-thumpers and had laws passed to outlaw even the suggestion that same-sex relationships could get government recognition.  What changed?  More people came out.  Celebrities and sports figures.  People that we could identify.  People at work or in your community.  The idea of same-sex relationships slowly worked their way into our media.  It wasn’t in-your-face, but it also wasn’t a taboo topic.  But the idea was sold to us gradually on a personal level as something that was not to be feared.

Look at the recent focus on police abuses.  When it was simply about police abuses, there was tremendous support for the victims.  But as soon as it became “Black Lives Matter”, the support started to evaporate.  When it was just about police abuses, that was something that affected people on a personal level.  The idea was that this could be any of us.  Any one of us could have a bad encounter with a police officer.  But as soon as the talk went to “Black Lives Matter”, that turned off everyone who wasn’t African-American.  It wasn’t about “us” anymore, but about a specific group.

Oh, one more thing... stop boasting about how many people you’ve “registered to vote”!  Registration is nothing!  Liberals here in Georgia were crowing about how many people they “registered” in 2014.  The problem was that none of them bothered to show up to the polling places come November.  You want to impress me?  Get all those people you registered to actually vote on Election Day.  Otherwise you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

The truth of the matter is that liberals and conservatives have pretty much ruined America with their petty games, and either one or the other side needs to go away.  The cons and neo-cons are playing for keeps, so unless liberals are ready to cede the game and turn what they have over to my libertarian friends - who will eagerly accept that challenge – then the liberals need to stop assuming that we automatically agree with them and to start selling the masses on why we should listen to them again instead of the cons and neo-cons. 

Week of 11/02/2015

They’re Still Our Dogs
– by David Matthews 2

When I was a young child, someone broke into our home.

My father worked as both a police officer and also at the local shipyard building subs.  He made plenty of enemies during his time, and one of them decided to pay us a visit.  My sister and I were not harmed, and we didn’t even know about what happened until after the fact.

But the incident convinced my father that we needed a guard dog.  Our current dog, which my parents got when I was born, was a loyal protector, and did her best to help fend off the intruder, but she wasn’t strong enough.  We were loaned a German Shepherd for a while, but that was only until the eminent threat was gone.

We got a Doberman puppy which we named Knight.  It was believed that Knight would be the kind of guardian dog that would deter anyone from bringing trouble our way.

Keep in mind that this was the 1970’s, and Dobermans were the pit bulls of the day, especially after the release of “The Omen” movies.  They were sleek, black, and seemingly bred for violence.

That’s great for being guard dogs.

But it’s also bad for a family with young children.

Knight proved himself to be a real nightmare... for us.  He snapped at people.  He charged at myself and my sister.  He destroyed anything he could get his jaws around, especially shoes, clothes, pillows, and our cherished stuffed animals.

And remember that my sister and I were young children at the time!

The final blow came when Knight lay in hiding and then charged at my little sister.  At that point we realized that we couldn’t keep him anymore.  He wasn’t a guard dog anymore.  He was a menace.  He was a threat.  And we had to give him up before he caused any more problems.

That wasn’t the last time we had a dog in the family, but it was the only time that we had a pet that we had to give up.  It also pretty much cemented my preference for cats.  And I know from experience that cats can be just as protective as dogs, even if they don’t look it.

And it wasn’t an easy decision to make then.  We didn’t want to give the dog up.  He was cute and he was young, and when he wasn’t being a menace, he was playful.  But my little sister lived in fear of Knight after that incident, and that was no way to live.

Every time I see some news report about abusive police officers, I think back to those days with Knight.

Look, I get it.  We don’t want to hear about cops behaving worse than the criminals.  We’d rather hear about the cops that do good things for the people in need.  We want to hear about the cop that stops a shoplifting mother and then buys groceries for her and her family because they need it, not about the cop that pulls a girl to the classroom floor and drags her like an animal carcass before handcuffing her because she supposedly “deserved” it.

Like I said before, my father was a police officer.  I worked with police officers.  I have a degree in criminal justice from one of the best colleges in the country.  If not for some physical complications, I probably would have been a cop.  So I really don’t want to be hearing about cops acting like a bunch of junta thugs.

I’m also not a big fan of the “Black Lives Matter” crowd right now because of their recent actions.  Look, I understand that you want to be heard.  You want to get your point across, and it sometimes feels like nobody cares.  You’re not the first person with this problem.  Talk to the “Occupy” crowd if you don’t believe me.  But storming the stage and taking over speeches of the people that would otherwise be on your side is definitely not the way to do it!

But do you know what I’m also really sick and tired of hearing?  All of the pompous, self-righteous, self-serving police sycophants that beat their chests and scream “Cops lives matter too!”  All you people are doing is feeding the extremist bunker mentality that has been slowly growing within the ranks of law enforcement.  You’ve turned the “thin blue line” into a six-mile war trench, and reinforced the siege mentality that says that there are no rules for cops, that anything is fair game, and that the ends always justify the means.  No, quite often the victims of these very public instances of police abuse are not “saints”.  But does that still justify what is done to them?

Ask yourself this question: if you ended up on the business end of that nightstick, how would you want to be treated?  Don’t think it won’t happen to you?  There are two reporters that were arrested and subject to police abuse in Ferguson whose only crimes were sitting in a restaurant and reporting on the protests as a part of their jobs.  There have been people arrested for the “crime” of sitting on their own porch at their own homes and recording police officers doing their jobs across the street.  Still don’t think that it can be you on the business end of that nightstick?

Let’s get brutally honest here... we need to accept the reality that these police officers are our “dogs”.  We pay for them.  We train them.  We arm them.  And much like that little Doberman my family used to have, we expect them to be our protectors and our friends.  We expect them to go after the “bad guys” but to also “serve and protect”.

And much like that little dog my family used to have, when our taxpayer-funded “dogs” get out of control, it is our responsibility to deal with them.  If they can’t be controlled, then they need to be removed.  It is that simple.

This is what we expect when it comes to dog owners.  We hold them responsible when they can’t keep their dogs under control.  Not all dogs are bad or out-of-control.  A lot of them are caring and loving and loyal.  But every instance of them attacking and mauling and killing people, especially children, poisons the faith and trust we have with them.  That’s what happened to German Shepherds and Dobermans in the past, and, now, of course, pit bulls are under public scrutiny.

Likewise, as I’ve said in a previous article on the subject, I’d like to think that most cops are good and decent.  They want to make a difference.  They want to help out their fellow man.  Unfortunately, every publicized instance of their good deeds are negated by the abuses.  And with the overabundance of digital cameras on cellphones and tablets, and the access to online social media to host those videos almost instantaneously, there really is no alternative.  I want to hear more about the good things they do and less of the abuses.  But that’s entirely up to the police and their sycophants.

Granted, cops aren’t dogs.  And that actually makes it worse, because at least when the dog crosses the line, we don’t really blame it.  We blame the dog’s owner.  Cops, on the other hand, are human beings, which means they are supposed to know better.  We’re paying for them to be trained to not only know better but to actually do better.  We should expect to see that in how they do their jobs, not see that our tax money is being spent in vain.