[Peace-discuss] Proposed flyer for AWARE demo 11/3
"E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森"
ewj at pigsqq.org
Sat Nov 3 01:10:53 UTC 2012
Maybe the Sign is For Rent.
On 11/03/12 6:11, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
> Notes-n-Quotes, where we usually get flyers copied, seems to have gone
> out of business.
>
> (Evidence: the shop is closed, and there's a large "For Rent" sign on
> the front window.)
>
> Anyone have a good suggestion of where to get flyers printed cheap? --CGE
>
>
>
> On Nov 2, 2012, at 2:47 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> Swing State Pickup Lines
>>>
>>> By David Swanson
>>> http://warisacrime.org/content/swing-state-pickup-lines
>>>
>>> Hi. You're beautiful. And I don't give a damn who you're voting for.
>>>
>>> Seriously?
>>>
>>> Which part?
>>>
>>> You don't give a damn who I'm voting for?
>>>
>>> I swear on the Fourth Amendment.
>>>
>>> We don't have that amendment anymore.
>>>
>>> You know that?
>>>
>>> Yes. What's the catch? Which hack are you hocking?
>>>
>>> None of them. I'm serious.
>>>
>>> For real? What planet are you from? Scratch that. Will you marry me
>>> and what planet are you from?
>>>
>>> I'm not entirely sure.
>>>
>>> Which part?
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> I knew it! I want a prenuptial agreement.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> But I don't care why.
>>>
>>> You don't?
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> OK, I have another guess.
>>>
>>> I'm listening.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> Now that's slander.
>>>
>>> How can it be slander when it's a guess?
>>>
>>> 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
>>> . . .
>>>
>>> So you DO want to make Romney president!
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> OK, I've got it.
>>>
>>> You've got it?
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> Um, we've got almost 100 million people trying that, and it hasn't
>>> sent anybody so much as a postcard yet.
>>>
>>> All right. Let me think.
>>>
>>> By all means. I'm not the thought police.
>>>
>>> I'm thinking.
>>>
>>> I can see that.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> That's five guesses.
>>>
>>> We don't waste time in swing states.
>>>
>>> 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 …
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> You know about it.
>>>
>>> Yeah, well, I call.
>>>
>>> Are we playing poker?
>>>
>>> Yeah, and I call. What have you got?
>>>
>>> What are we playing for?
>>>
>>> Beer.
>>>
>>> Beer? Are you, or are you not, better off than you were four beers ago?
>>>
>>> I am.
>>>
>>> All right. Here's the deal.
>>>
>>> It's too late to deal. I call.
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>> I guess.
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>> Well, yeah, when you put it that way.
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>> Right, so … ?
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> So, you want Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson?
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> Who cares what kind of people they are if Romney ruins their country.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> I don't understand.
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>> Exactly! Is that marriage thing still on the table?
>>>
>>> Uh huh. You know what I was thinking?
>>>
>>> No.
>>>
>>> Remember when the peace movement was big several years ago? I mean,
>>> not super big, but big enough to be noticed?
>>>
>>> Yeah.
>>>
>>> And then the Democrats came into Congress and into the White House,
>>> and it dried up, right?
>>>
>>> Yeah.
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>> You actually understand this! Now I have to ask what planet you are
>>> from.
>>>
>>> No, let me ask you something.
>>>
>>> OK.
>>>
>>> Did you call this "Swing State Pickup Lines" because "Why Can't You
>>> Morons Get This Stuff Through Your Thick Skulls" sounded less
>>> attractive?
>>>
>>> Maybe.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> [David Swanson's books include "War Is A Lie
>>> <http://warisalie.org/>." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org
>>> <http://davidswanson.org/> and http://warisacrime.org
>>> <http://warisacrime.org/> and works as Campaign Coordinator for the
>>> online activist organization http://rootsaction.org
>>> <http://rootsaction.org/>. He hosts Talk Nation Radio
>>> <http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41>. Follow him on Twitter:
>>> @davidcnswanson <http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson> and FaceBook
>>> <http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#>.]
>>>
>
>
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