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Maybe the Sign is For Rent.<br>
<br>
On 11/03/12 6:11, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
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Notes-n-Quotes, where we usually get flyers copied, seems to have gone
out of business.
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<div>(Evidence: the shop is closed, and there's a large "For Rent"
sign on the front window.)</div>
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<div>Anyone have a good suggestion of where to get flyers printed
cheap? --CGE</div>
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<div>On Nov 2, 2012, at 2:47 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:galliher@illinois.edu">galliher@illinois.edu</a>>
wrote:</div>
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<h1 class="with-tabs">Swing State Pickup Lines</h1>
By David Swanson<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://warisacrime.org/content/swing-state-pickup-lines">http://warisacrime.org/content/swing-state-pickup-lines</a><br>
<br>
Hi. You're beautiful. And I don't give a damn who you're voting for.<br>
<br>
Seriously?<br>
<br>
Which part?<br>
<br>
You don't give a damn who I'm voting for?<br>
<br>
I swear on the Fourth Amendment.<br>
<br>
We don't have that amendment anymore.<br>
<br>
You know that?<br>
<br>
Yes. What's the catch? Which hack are you hocking?<br>
<br>
None of them. I'm serious.<br>
<br>
For real? What planet are you from? Scratch that. Will you marry me
and what planet are you from?<br>
<br>
I'm not entirely sure.<br>
<br>
Which part?<br>
<br>
I'm not sure what planet I'm from, and of course I'll marry you. Now I
do want to ask you one thing.<br>
<br>
I knew it! I want a prenuptial agreement.<br>
<br>
No. No. I want to tell you something about me and ask you if you can
understand it. I want to know if you can understand why I'm not voting
for Obama.<br>
<br>
But I don't care why. <br>
<br>
You don't?<br>
<br>
OK, let me guess. He's less evil than Romney but less evil is still
evil, and you don't want to be evil, and you just haven't managed to
grasp that the more evil candidate is even more evil?<br>
<br>
Good guess, but … completely wrong. You have to remember here that I'm
not a blithering idiot. I know it's hard, but try. In fact, I'm
willing to suggest that lesser evilism is a truism, requiring exactly
zero cerebral exertion to comprehend. The more evil candidate will do
more evil. Got it. But I'm still not voting for the less evil one.<br>
<br>
OK, I have another guess.<br>
<br>
I'm listening.<br>
<br>
You want the more evil candidate to win because you imagine it will
create the sort of mass resistance that will turn the country
completely around, whereas the less evil guy will just keep boiling us
slowly like frogs.<br>
<br>
Now that's slander.<br>
<br>
How can it be slander when it's a guess?<br>
<br>
Of the frogs, I mean. If you heat a pot the frog jumps out, and if you
drop him in an already boiling pot he cooks. It's all backwards
because frogs are just not as stupid as humans. We like to imagine . .
.<br>
<br>
So you DO want to make Romney president!<br>
<br>
No. I do not want to make Romney president. Not to create mass
resistance. Not to make it easier for President Hillary to put the
final nail in our national coffin four years hence. Not because I'm
mad at Obama and he hurt my wittle feelings. Not for any reason.<br>
<br>
OK, I've got it.<br>
<br>
You've got it?<br>
<br>
Yeah, you're not going to vote at all because that way you're sending a
message to the whole corrupt system that it sucks and you don't.<br>
<br>
Um, we've got almost 100 million people trying that, and it hasn't sent
anybody so much as a postcard yet.<br>
<br>
All right. Let me think.<br>
<br>
By all means. I'm not the thought police.<br>
<br>
I'm thinking.<br>
<br>
I can see that.<br>
<br>
OK. This is it. You believe that Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson or some
other hopeless candidate is our last true hope. You think they can
win, or could theoretically win, or might begin to build a party that
could theoretically someday win, or something like that.<br>
<br>
That's five guesses.<br>
<br>
We don't waste time in swing states.<br>
<br>
Well, they're all wrong. They're so far off Diebold couldn't count
them. They're not in the same ballpark. Those guesses are about as
close to right as …<br>
<br>
OK, so this isn't fair, because the answer is some crazy thing having
to do with that other planet you're from or something. It's not fair
unless it's something I know about.<br>
<br>
You know about it.<br>
<br>
Yeah, well, I call.<br>
<br>
Are we playing poker?<br>
<br>
Yeah, and I call. What have you got?<br>
<br>
What are we playing for?<br>
<br>
Beer.<br>
<br>
Beer? Are you, or are you not, better off than you were four beers ago?<br>
<br>
I am.<br>
<br>
All right. Here's the deal. <br>
<br>
It's too late to deal. I call.<br>
<br>
All right. All right. You know how we're always supposed to vote for
the lesser evil candidate, but then four years later they're both more
evil? <br>
<br>
I guess.<br>
<br>
You know how last time the lesser evil candidate was for taxing the
rich and ending wars and fixing NAFTA and restoring the rule of law and
protecting civil liberties and tackling climate change and passing the
Employee Free Choice Act, and this time the lesser evil candidate is
for cutting Social Security and Medicare and spying without warrants
and letting the CIA and Special Forces kill people every day and
expanding NAFTA to the whole damn world and establishing an
assassination program for men women and children and imprisoning people
forever without charge or trial and drilling more oil?<br>
<br>
Well, yeah, when you put it that way.<br>
<br>
No, I'm not putting it that way. Remember, I'm agreeing that the more
evil guy is more evil. We've been there, done that, right?<br>
<br>
Right, so … ?<br>
<br>
OK, so if we vote for the lesser evil guy every time but then the two
choices are both more evil, there must be something else we should be
doing. And I have an idea what it is. And we can't do it if we're
doing lesser evil voting. So, I don't want Obama to win. I don't want
Romney to win. I don't imagine that Stein or Anderson can win. I
don't think the outcome of the election can send a message. I'm not
interested in the outcome at all, because I'm more interested in
whether the people of this country are doing this other thing I have in
mind, and it just so happens that the only way they can do it is if
they are the kind of people who vote for Stein or Anderson.<br>
<br>
So, you want Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson?<br>
<br>
No. I voted for Stein. Anderson is great too. I don't give a rat's
derriere whether they get 1% or 20%, except as a side effect. I'm not
interested in them, although I like them both. I'm interested in the
millions of people who are going to vote or not vote and in what kind
of people they are.<br>
<br>
Who cares what kind of people they are if Romney ruins their country.<br>
<br>
He can't. He can't do it if they're the kind of people I have in
mind. And either Obama or Romney will do it, perhaps at slightly
different speeds, if people allow them to.<br>
<br>
I don't understand.<br>
<br>
OK, well, let me try to explain. It's hard to put into a sound byte.
Change comes from broad-based popular movements that impact the entire
culture. This is how we got civil and political rights, how we got
workplace rights and environmental protections -- such as they are.
Everything worth achieving has been achieved by educating, organizing,
inspiring, and pressuring the government, and not by picking the right
portion of the government to reelect, cheer for, and withhold all
criticism from. Now, you can say you want to vote for the lesser evil
person while simultaneously protesting him, but it doesn't work that
way. Most people's minds and most popular organizations devote
themselves to lesser evilism on a permanent basis, not just the week of
an election. Obama in 2009 told the big environmentalist groups not to
talk about climate change, and most of them haven't mentioned it since,
even in the midst of a hurricane. One group mentioned it and declared
that the tar sands pipeline would be Obama's test, but the price for
failing the test is having that group and its members vote for Obama's
reelection a little less cheerfully. Obama told the unions and
advocacy groups not to say "single-payer healthcare" and they obeyed,
forbidding mention of it at their rallies, asking instead for a
mysterious "public option" that was then of course denied them. You'd
think it would be hard for people to sell out this way, especially in
non-election years, but they help themselves along by the art of
selective information consumption. Most -- not all, but most -- Obama
voters have managed not to know about drone wars or kill lists or the
Trans-Pacific Partnership. And, of course, it's extra hard to engage
in serious activism while unaware what's going on. By activism I mean
educating, organizing, rallying, marching, lobbying, reporting,
editorializing, inspiring, blockading, boycotting, interrupting,
mocking, replacing, and nonviolently resisting evil policies in the
thousands and thousands of ways available to nonviolent activists.
Someone said to me yesterday: "But Martin Luther King Jr. didn't start
a third party." Of course he didn't. Neither am I. I wouldn't have
wanted him to. I wouldn't want you to. But he also didn't sell out to
an existing party. He didn't endorse and campaign for candidates. He
didn't tell anyone that voting was the only tool available, because --
of course -- voting comes far down the list of tools that have proven
effective through history. And when the voting system is as corrupted
as ours is now, the only way to render it even more useless is to
promise half the candidates that you will strive to annoy them
throughout their terms but never ever vote against them (unless it's in
a non-swing-state and in small enough numbers not to matter), and if
they'll let you come to meetings at the White House you'll see what you
can do about not annoying them either. Latinos threatened not to vote
for Obama and won some immigration reforms. Labor unions threatened to
bend over, and Obama kicked their ass. Is this beginning to make sense?<br>
<br>
So, you think activism is more important than elections and you really
mean it? So when elections get in the way of activism you want people
to change their electoral behavior in whatever way will make them
better activists, regardless of what happens in the election?<br>
<br>
Exactly! Is that marriage thing still on the table?<br>
<br>
Uh huh. You know what I was thinking?<br>
<br>
No.<br>
<br>
Remember when the peace movement was big several years ago? I mean,
not super big, but big enough to be noticed?<br>
<br>
Yeah.<br>
<br>
And then the Democrats came into Congress and into the White House, and
it dried up, right?<br>
<br>
Yeah.<br>
<br>
Well, what if it hadn't? What if it had kept growing? What if
everything that went into electing Obama the first time had gone into
the peace movement? What if the Nobel Committee in its infinite wisdom
had given a peace prize to the peace movement? What if the peace
movement had a billion dollars and a gazillion volunteer hours to work
with? Wouldn't that have been worth more than having Obama instead of
McCain? Wouldn't that have made both McCain and Obama better or
replaced them with better people and led to a choice anyway of the
lesser evil candidate who would have been even less evil? Or if it
didn't, but the movement continued to grow, wouldn't it stand a chance
of turning things dramatically around in the coming years, unlike Dr.
47% or Captain Drone Warrior if left to their own devices?<br>
<br>
You actually understand this! Now I have to ask what planet you are
from.<br>
<br>
No, let me ask you something.<br>
<br>
OK.<br>
<br>
Did you call this "Swing State Pickup Lines" because "Why Can't You
Morons Get This Stuff Through Your Thick Skulls" sounded less
attractive? <br>
<br>
Maybe.<br>
<br clear="all">
<br>
-- <br>
<p>[David Swanson's books include "<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://warisalie.org/" target="_blank">War Is A Lie</a>." He
blogs at <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://davidswanson.org/"
title="http://davidswanson.org" target="_blank">http://davidswanson.org</a>
and <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://warisacrime.org/"
title="http://warisacrime.org" target="_blank">http://warisacrime.org</a>
and works as Campaign Coordinator for the online activist organization <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://rootsaction.org/"
title="http://rootsaction.org" target="_blank">http://rootsaction.org</a>.
He hosts <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41" target="_blank">Talk
Nation Radio</a>. Follow him on Twitter: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson" target="_blank">@davidcnswanson</a>
and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#"
target="_blank">FaceBook</a>.]</p>
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