Repeat the truth (over and over again)

Unfortunately in this echo-chambered modern world, it is very easy for lies to be layered upon lies and built into a seemingly-reasonable truth.  This is done over and over again by those who are always willing to put their self interests above the common good.  They are also cowards unwilling to stand up for their mistakes and take their medicine.  It's much easier to go to their issue-friendly echo chamber and say whatever they want to say because they know it will be supported by more lies and more lies, and believed by those who want to believe their side, until it becomes this massive entanglement of lies, half-truths, lies of omission and cherry-picked facts that not even the smartest and most dedicated person could untangle it.
It also means that it's very difficult to counter this nightmare with simple truth.  Put forth the truth in the form of facts and they'll counter-offer their own cherry picked facts.  They're willing to go further than you because they have more on the line -- their character is at stake -- whereas all you have going for you is truth; and that's a heavy, burdensome thing to carry around.  It gets very tiresome banging your head against the wall; doesn't it?  It seems as though they'll never get it.

This excellent article by Barry Ritholtz in the Washington Post, "What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral," attempts to fight back against that echo chamber on the topic of what caused the financial crisis of a couple years ago.  You can sense his frustration in having to point out the same facts yet again that everyone should already know (and probably do if they were willing to examine it honestly.)
This political cartoon is a good illustration (pun intended) of the point I'm trying to make.  One complete segment of the country still doesn't realize this is the truth because so many out there don't want them to know who really ran up the deficit.

Every day we're being told by one segment of society that the people protesting in the Occupy Movement want a handout, when the reality is simply that they want to no longer be robbed by those in power; that they just want a more level playing field.  And what frustrates us so much is that we don't understand how a significant percentage of people are still being taken advantage of because they still don't want to believe their side has lied to them and stolen from them.  It also means they would have to admit that they've been complicit to some extent by continually voting for people who've made this possible and by echoing their lies.


So we'll just have to keep hammering the truth back at them until MAYBE some day we get back to a country that's more open to truth and fairness, instead of being interested in their side winning no matter the cost.

Smoke and mirrors

Today Congress reaffirmed that this country's motto is "In God We Trust." Isn't that already our motto? Don't we need jobs more than reaffirming what already exists and isn't being challenged?
See, that's what they do:  ("They" being the ones who are always telling you what a real American is)  They tell the gullible portion of this country that there's a threat to America, even when no such threat exists. It's like these things I see shared on Facebook all the time about supporting the troops and that far too many people don't. You don't know a soul who doesn't support the troops; no one does. But we hear it all the time. It's a divide and conquer tactic. "Those liberals out there are trying to take your guns (while gun ownership and ease of ownership continue to rise); they're trying to take God out of the motto; they don't support the troops." If they don't create an enemy, then even the reasonable people on their side of the aisle will have time to start questioning some of the things their side stands for.
It's all class warfare. They're the ones who are out their echoing that the Occupy Movement is using class warfare, when in fact it's a retaliation to policies of the right that have created class warfare against the middle class. But if you tell your gullibles that the Occupy people are trying to steal from hard working people, you distract them from the truth.  It's been a very successful tactic by the likes of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al, for years; tell conservatives what liberals think and want and stand for instead of asking one yourself.  When's the last time you, Mr. and Mrs. Conservative, asked a liberal what they stand for?  Try it, you're very likely to get a big surprise.  We stand for the same things a lot more than they want to you realize.
So the next time you start to nod your head in agreement when someone suggests to you that there are people who don't support the troops, who use their welfare checks to buy crack, etc, ask yourself if you know anyone that that's true about.
UPDATE:  This Daily Show clip from November 3rd fits perfectly, plus as always it's funny as hell.

The Daily Show
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Get the big money out of our politics

While I believe corporations should have a way to stand up for their interests, what the policy decisions of the last 30 years have resulted in is a situation where corporate money is seemingly behind every decision that is made, to the benefit of large corporations and the ultra-rich and against the middle class.
Are you tired of being robbed? Then get involved.
I strongly encourage you to read the article at this link at Huffington Post and to watch the video below. Let's see if that doesn't fire you up.


I would also strongly urge you to go to their website and get involved. You can sign the petition here as well.

Link Day

I'm just sharing some links, with comments, to articles and videos that I've found to be well written and informative in the last few days.  I hope you get something out of these as well.

First is this link from a Washington Post  article by Eugene Robinson regarding the results of a recent study by a scientist that the skeptics (more like deniers looking for any excuse to disagree) had been relying on.  Here's a salient quote from that article:
"When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find," Muller wrote. "Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that."
I also agree with the author regarding how much this article will change the minds, or more appropriately the position, of the political far right.
"But Muller's plain-spoken admonition that "you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer" has reduced many deniers to incoherent grumbling or stunned silence.Not so, I predict, with the blowhards such as Perry, Cain and Bachmann, who, out of ignorance or perceived self-interest, are willing to play politics with the Earth's future. They may concede that warming is taking place, but they call it a natural phenomenon and deny that human activity is the cause."

This Politico opinion piece by Joe Scarborough, who is a Republican and a former U.S. Representative (though I'm sure the far right calls him a RINO, especially since he has a show on MSNBC), that fairly points out one of the constant issues in our political dialogue -- lying to make your point.  While I don't entirely agree with Joe's use of examples, I most certainly agree with his point.  To say that since Democrats supported Clinton's agenda of regime change in Iraq, they can't disagree with Bush actually doing it, is disingenuous but it's still a good article.  Here's the opening line of that piece to give you an idea what issue he's specifically talking about:
"Republicans spent the past decade being shocked and stunned by Democrats who dared to question their president’s motives for going to war in Iraq."
  
For those who still don't understand the rage of the middle class, maybe this Politico piece will help. And even this piece soft pedals the issue to some extent, but it is a fine article about the influence of money in our political system.


This excellent article from The Daily Beast reminds us that the NeoCons are still out there and that their motives and money influence and scare factor are still there.
"They’re back! The neoconservatives who gave America clueless, unpaid-for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a near doubling of military expenditures, during the Bush years have risen from their political graves. Someone, maybe a media tiring of President Obama’s interminable plight, pulled the stake from their heart. Now they’ve returned to the op-ed pages, the talk shows, the think-tank discussions, and the advisory ranks of Republican presidential candidates."

Finally, I'm remiss in not consistently watching the best show on television, "Charlie Rose."  What follows is classic Charlie Rose, a half-hour, in-depth discussion on an important topic, in this instance the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Unfortunately, they don't have embed links there.  So you'll have to follow this link to watch the video.  The whole 24 minutes is very much worth watching and listening to but in particular listen to Chris Hedges starting at the 20:20 mark and see if you agree with me that it's as well said as I've heard regarding the absence of the liberal media and how he describes the Tea Party being different from Occupy Wall Street.

Semper Fi, Shamar Thomas

As a Marine, I couldn't be prouder.  Another honorable face of the Occupy Movement.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More thoughts on the Occupy Movement

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Above is an excellent interview with Ellen Schultz regarding another way large corporations are ripping off the middle class.

The Clueless Generation article in The Daily Beast.  I disagree with his premise in part.  He states that the Baby Boomers had it so good that they don't understand the current plight of the middle class.  As someone who's at the end of the Baby Boomer Generation, I and many like me can attest to feeling affected all along the 30 year ride of policy changes that got us here -- rise in education costs, deregulation, runaway debt and a flattening of wages to name just a few.  This didn't happen overnight.

Opinion piece by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich addressing the seven biggest economic lies
I don't know how many times we've stated these exact statistics and truths but they haven't sunk in enough yet.  So we'll keep on pointing them out.



From this excellent Vanity Fair article on Elizabeth Warren:"In those speeches, sometimes using slides filled with numbers and graphs, she would, as she did at a speech in Manhattan in early June, outline the impact on middle-class Americans of rising health-care costs, burgeoning debt, and the depletion of not only their savings but also, with the rise in joblessness, their confidence. She spoke of “the Wild West” conditions deregulation had created, where banks could sell virtually any product they wanted, on any terms: mortgages they knew consumers could not pay off, credit cards whose rates they could raise at whim, products that came with a mind-boggling array of penalty fees, many of them not fully disclosed. But it was her final remarks that brought down the standing-room-only house in June. “We cannot run our country without a strong middle class. We cannot run a democracy without a strong middle class,” she said, her voice quavering slightly. “If we hollow out the middle class,” she said, “then the country we know is gone.”

Did you know that Warren was originally a Republican?  (You must read this Vanity Fair article)  But to quote the article again:
It was in 1979 that Warren had her Damascene conversion—the experience that would lead her to become the nation’s top authority on the economic pressures facing the American middle class, and trigger her passionate advocacy. In 1978, Congress had passed a law that made it easier for companies and individuals to declare bankruptcy. Warren decided to investigate the reasons why Americans were ending up in bankruptcy court. “I set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters,” she said in a 2007 interview. “I was going to expose these people who were taking advantage of the rest of us.” What she found, after conducting with two colleagues one of the most rigorous bankruptcy studies ever, shook her deeply. The vast majority of those in bankruptcy courts, she discovered, were from hardworking middle-class families, people who lost jobs or had “family breakups” or illnesses that wiped out their savings. “It changed my vision,” she said.

The only way we're going to change things for the better is to continue the momentum of the Occupy Movement by being angry and unafraid to stand up for the truth, and then to vote.  The moderates and the liberals outnumber the right in this country; and if we all show up at the polls, it doesn't matter how much they lie and how much they spend or who's on the dole.