House of Eratosthenes

I got a mass e-mail from the chairman of the democrat party earlier this morning, and it was a little spooky because I’d just been hearing the guys on the radio talking about it. To summarize it, it says: Our opponents are heaping abuse on our “heroes,” threatening them, using racial epithets, smashing up their offices. Will you chip in five bucks to help us defend these “heroes”?

The years roll in, the years roll out, the lies stay the same. We over here are goooooood people, those people over there are rotten stinkers. Anything — anything — to keep from actually discussing the benefits and drawbacks involved in the actual policy. I was noticing this just as Holy Man was being sworn in some fourteen months ago. The campaign slogan might as well be “Now that it’s settled Republicans are a bunch of dirty rotten stinkers, let’s turn our attention to what dirty rotten stinkers those Republicans are.”

I see a weakness with this. The weakness is, when you deliver this kind of sales pitch you have to hand down the decision on what has been decided. Yes! Those Republicans are such awful people! You aren’t letting the “mark” make up his own mind about things because you cannot afford to. It’s always a more powerful sales pitch when the mark is allowed to make up his own mind.

This is how democrats see people: as marks. If they could sell it that way, they would. But they can’t. So the mark has to be forced into turning his own decision, into a personality popularity contest between democrats and Republicans. Well, this is fragile. Among the actual voters, the politicians from either party aren’t too terribly popular right now.

So I saw this video at Daphne’s place. And I had me an idea.

The problem, as I see it, is that passing judgment on whether another human being is wonderful or godlike or sneaky or dirty or rotten or a scoundrel or a scruffy-looking nerf herder…it’s tempting. It’s fun to play god. On the other hand, pondering the destiny of the country, toward independence or toward bondage or toward oblivion…well, that’s kinda dull and boring.

Percentage of GDP? That’s the most boring thing of all. Tax policy? Ugh.

What resolves all of these difficulties? One key phrase:

“They are worried that we are not dependent enough on our government.”

Or…

“They are worried that we have too much control over our own lives.”

This shifts the discussion over to where it belongs, in such a way that the entire conversation remains alluring and appealing to our primal instincts. The observer is left to ask “They are worried about…what was that again?”

The opponent that is trying like the dickens to sell this nanny-state health care scheme, can pull all sorts of tricks to try to dismiss this. The opponent can say “oh, you’re just a shill for big pharmaceutical products, trying to make people pay more.”

The problem there is with the facts. There really isn’t much in the legislation that saves money. The legislation, from all I’ve been reading about it — to say nothing of the process that hammered it in — is mostly concerned with power. The difficulty has been getting people to pay attention to this.

Not everybody wants power over their own lives. But just about all of us are rankled with resentment and distress at the thought of some stranger telling us what to do. And the issue of the busybodies actually having an agenda to push things off in that direction — well, that is really what needs to be discussed.

And here’s a way to do it. Not by making these people look like strange, weird aliens through a colored lens; show them to be strange, weird aliens, by showing what is real. Just come out and say what this whole thing is really all about: Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer want more people to be dependent.

It wont win over everybody. But it will turn the conversation toward where it needs to go.

This is delicious:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/25/congressional-staffers-complain-double-standard-health-care-law/

And in a way, it’s encouraging. But it’s like someone said a few days ago on here (can’t recall who)…when I’m sitting in an emergency room for days in agony, and I hear some liberal next to me say, “I didn’t think it was going to be like this!”, I’ll feel a little better knowing I wasn’t duped by all those wonderful promises, like that idiot was.

Rush kept replaying a sound clip on Tuesday’s radio show, of some guy talking about how the new ObamaCare would be “like Christmas; we’ll pay our co-pay and everything is going to be all right.” Rush went on to suggest that the guy get in touch with that gal who thought “Obama’s stash” was going to buy her a new kitchen. This, Rush said, is why Obama still has a 42% approval rating.

The ignorance of people is absolutely staggering…and the things I hear come out of the mouths of my co-workers every day only reinforces that perception. I fear the Republic is gone.
- cylarz | 03/25/2010 @ 10:58

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Prison for the Human SoulThursday, March 25th, 2010

Prison for the Human Soul
Thursday, March 25th, 2010