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Half, or Half Again

I have often chided people on the American Left for our failure to make
organized attempts to communicate with people who do not agree with us.
 
I have represented this idea here, to Shamir readers before, including in
the earliest posts of mine here. We must understand, I have beseeched
people to realize, that “politics is a numbers game, and the numbers are
VERY large, and that the object of the game is to get the most people on
our side. To do that, we must communicate with them”.
 
I had an essay posted here early on, before I was even yet a member of the
group, that argued that winning the support of the grossly misinformed and
deeply bamboozled people who have rallied to Trump’s banners, (to use them
as but one example), are mission critical to our success. We simply cannot
achieve our goals without the support of this huge segment of the yeomen
folk of the nation.
 
For some reason, the Left cannot seem to understand what seems so plainly
obvious to me. No one ever presents an argument against this, they just
won’t, and don’t, do it, or even TRY to do it.
 
Rather than make any attempt to try to communicate with those people, the
Left instead takes great enjoyment in feeling and expressing a smug sense
of righteous moral superiority to those people. And then, in the next
breath, they enjoy talking about the lofty ideals of ‘socialism’, and how
we’re going to overthrow capitalism and build socialism in America.
 
Yea….folks… sure… sure. We’re going to build a society on a foundation of
cooperation and compassion, while the largest single block of the American
working class, amounting to tens and tens of millions of people, hates us
and therefore opposes us.
 
Sounds like a great plan.... Should work great....Where do I sign up?
 
I have tried to get people to understand that building channels of
communication through which we can communicate with these people, (as well
as with ALL the common people, with VERY large numbers of people), is our
most crucial task. If we do not accomplish this task, we will fail to
achieve our goals.
 
It is every bit that simple. If we do not accomplish this crucial task, we
will fail.
 
How? How do we do that? Well….. I have a plan. (I've mentioned it here
before). Will it work? Lord god I don’t effin' know. I do think it will. In
fact, I am VERY confident that it will. But the only way to know, for sure,
is to try it out.
 
Anyway…..besides briefly mentioning this grandiose plan, which may or may
not work, (anyone else got one?), that’s not what I want to talk about
right now.
 
I want to talk about a much less grandiose, and much more eminently
practical and immediate 'plan' that we could very easily do now. Being less
grandiose, it is not the sort of plan that is going to accomplish our
goals, but it is something we can do NOW, that would advance us at least in
the general direction of our goals.
 
I mentioned in a post earlier today that I made the conscious decision,
many years ago, to apply whatever facility I have with the language to
attempts to communicate with people who do not agree with me.
 
I have had work published now and then, and like any other human, it is
gratifying to me to see one’s name in print, and have others admire one’s
work. What I realized many years ago, however, is that we already had
plenty enough excellent writers publishing excellent writing addressed to
people that agree with us. This writing has GREAT value, for MANY reasons.
But it is NOT, for the most part, read by people who disagree with the
writers. It is read by people who agree with the writers, and applaud the
writers for their good writing.
 
Most of the pieces I ever had published I didn’t even submit for
publication. They were made as comments somewhere, and someone contacted me
 
and asked if they could publish them. (And I have always told people that I
always consider that anything I write is in the public domain, and anyone
 
can feel free to post it, or share it, or publish it, anywhere, as they see
fit, without additional permission, (the exception being, of course, a
private correspondence in which I specifically request confidentiality).
 
I mentioned in an earlier post today that Israel and its American Zionist
supporters have organized brigades of operatives to read and post comments
in the comments sections of articles in American newspapers. (In other
nations as well, but concentrated in the US).
 
Zionists, and before them other Jewish interest groups, in general, are the
most consummate political organizers that all of History has ever seen,
(maybe the Romans, and a few others, came close), and their organization of
brigades of propaganda operatives to function through the available and
fully open channels of mass media, is just an example of their attention to
every detail in doing what is necessary to accomplish their goals.
 
One of the main places I ‘publish’ my work, for example, is in the Boston
Globe newspaper, since I live near Boston. Unlike most people on public
forums, I write under my own real name, and I often tell people that I am
‘in the book’, (which I am, full address and telephone number, and there is
only one of me in the entire state), and that anyone is welcome to give me
a call, or even come on over for a visit, (which, interestingly enough, not
one person EVER has, either called or come over, in all the years I’ve been
writing on that public forum).
 
I have established a widely recognized identity among the Globe's online
readership. Most people hate me, of course, since I am disturbing their
most cherished beliefs. It’s hard to gauge the readership numbers. I assume
that on some days, nobody reads the comments on subjects about which few
even read the articles, (like Ukraine, and/or Syria, for example, which
hardly ever have any comments except mine), but on other days, and/or other
subjects, I think that dozens, and/or hundreds, and maybe occasionally even
thousands, (?), of people read what I have to say.
 
The most important audience I am addressing, of course, the ones whose
minds I most want to affect, is the writers and editors, and believe me,
folks, I guaran-effin-tee ya that a LARGE majority of the staff of writers
and editors at the Boston know my name, (and some of them actually like me,
but many most definitely do NOT, LOL).
 
Here’s an article, for example from a couple or so days ago about a new
maple syrup plant opening in Vermont:
 
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/04/17/mapleproduction/OYJXrcBWe58wbBiGqQydYN/story.html
 
Look at the comments to see how a simple local interest story can be used
to draw people into an awareness of the general from the specific.
 
I also initiated a correspondence with the reporter, and caused him to
expand, by some increment, his own thinking process, his own political
consciousness. Will that be reflected in his next article? We’ll see, but I
have often enjoyed the gratification of seeing such seeds I have planted
sprout and grow, (at least in some increment).
 
In another post earlier today I mentioned the relative importance (to me,
at least), of a publication called The Forward, (formerly The Jewish Daily
Forward). The reason this publication is importance to me, even though I am
not Jewish, is because it offers some insight into what Jewish Americans,
and even Jews in Israel, are thinking about, and what they think.
 
I write there quite a bit, which as I explained earlier can be a real
‘adventure’, because the comments section is not moderated to any
considerable degree. (I have had posts censored, but only maybe three or
four out of what must be hundreds). It is a real wild west saloon
atmosphere sometimes, (actually usually, LOL), although I look for every
opportunity, (which do exist), for reasoned discussion with thoughtful
people who are Zionists.
 
Many of the commenters are writing from Israel itself, and I’ll tell ya’
what, folks, you wanna talk about some crazy ass muhfudgers? Whew!!! If you
want to know just how virulently hateful and racist, and just
pathologically dingbat nutball CRAZY that extremists in Israel are, you can
find out first hand, virtually in real time, just by reading the comments
sections to articles in The Forward.
 
Here is a recent article about the brilliant young Jewish American woman
who got canned by the Sanders campaign because it came out that a couple of
years ago she had told Bibi to f*ck off. (Is this a ‘family list’, or can I
 
stop using asterisks and euphemisms? I’m just an old carpenter, and on the
job, among carpenters, about every other word starts with ‘f’ or ‘sh’).
 
If anyone is interested, they can see the response I made to some more
thoughtful comments by a Zionist, a man named Moe Fried. I had conversed
with him before, at some length.
 
You can also see how I dealt, (or tried to), with a spirited young knuckle
dragger. (Young bucks are always so funny, in how they remind us of the
fools we ourselves once were). I knew him from a previous conversion as
well. His schtick is really rather mild here, but gives a bare sample of
what one must be prepared to confront. (I’m tellin’ ya’, there are MANY
crazy people who are monstrously PROUD of being the most virulently ugly
racist extremists that you could possibly imagine).
 
Here’s the article:
 
http://forward.com/opinion/339104/why-it-was-right-to-suspend-simone-zimmerman-from-bernie-sanders-campaign/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_MainList_Image_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Daily%202016-04-21&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20Monday-Friday
<http://forward.com/opinion/339104/why-it-was-right-to-suspend-simone-zimmerman-from-bernie-sanders-campaign/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_MainList_Image_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Daily%202016-04-21&utm_term=The%20Fo>
 
Anyway…..Don’t mean to bore everybody by going on and on. I’m just hoping
to get more people to realize, (and I’m sure that many here already do),
that there is an open channel of public mass media communications fully
available to us that can be used to access the minds and belief systems of
people who do NOT agree with us, and that these are the very people who are
most important for us to communicate with.
 
If we were half, or half again, the organizers that the Zionists are, we
would have organized cadres of writers writing in every metropolitan
newspaper in America, and every other online publication that we can find.
 
But we’re NOT, (half, or even nearly half again). Why not? THAT is THE
question.