So Dave Budge has taken a break from blogging. (His ‘hanging it up’ post disappeared, so he’ll be back. No link available.) It’s a familiar scene. We write, for me every day, and then a cloud descends, and from deep inside comes a voice asking why. Why put yourself through this? We try to be thoughtful, but I look at the number of readers, impressive, but comments are few. Any mining of the numbers only discourages. In my case, a post I wrote about Vince McMahon, of XFL fame, draws hit after hit, thank you Google. Really, it’s only a few people.
Rob Natelson offers homage to Budge in this post, and writes about a trip to Columbus, Montana from Missoula, about four hours, to talk to a small group of people. On arrival, he finds that he has to pay the gate fee of $40, and worse yet is limited to a ten minute talk! That is like asking Krakatoa to have just a little eruption.
But his worst part was having to drive back to Missoula, message undelivered, down $40 to boot, and humbled.
OK. I understand all of that. That is what it is like when we know the truth and simply speak truth. I’m like that too. That his truth and my truth are diametrically opposed? That is because he is just wrong.
Two points to make here: One, blogging. It’s fun. But I do not try to make too much of it. It’s exercise, mostly. What is the purpose of a pushup?
And secondly, minds. How do they change? They don’t react to truth, mine or Natelson’s.
But minds can be changed. In 1980 millions of minds changed, and that legion became the “Reagan Democrats.” How did the Reagan people do it? Did they reason with voters? Speak truth to them?
Get real. They bypassed reason using “wedge” issues, mainly abortion. The Republican leadership, and Reagan himself, cared less about that matter. But it drew on emotion, strong emotion. Dead babies. Reagan favored saving innocent babies. That image was enough. It changed minds.
There are other wedges, of course – guns, mosques, buildings falling down, American soldiers being dragged through streets, flags being burned. Oh, can’t forget gays, always a useful group. The topics don’t matter, that is, the people who present the images only care about the power to change minds. It is emotion-based. Reason has nothing to do with it. That is why blogging does not change minds. We do not undermine. We reason. Or try.
In politics, not a word of truth is ever spoken, nor did the fire of libertarian philosophy burn strong in Ronald Reagan. He was a tool, a smiling face, an actor. Maybe he knew this, but we’ll never know. Once elected, the people around him enacted their real agenda. When subjected to votes, they dragged out the babies, the Cadillac welfare queen, the gun nuts.
Maybe Mr. Natelson knows this, and maybe he knows he is pissing in the wind. If so, hat tip. I am a wind pisser too. But unlike Dave Budge, for instance, I don’t suffer illusions.
I like to write, I like to argue. Period.
Piece of Mindful 
Krakatoa… Haven’t laughed that hard in a long time at something written on my regular blog rounds.
As for truth… Truth is spoken everyday in politics, it’s simply cynically exploited by those that don’t really care and twisted until it no longer resembles the truth.
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So voting doesn’t matter…unless we vote for Reagan…then it matters?
Reagan, the conservative icon, increased federal spending on a straight line with past and future presidents, we did not get any appreciable change in abortion policy or any conservative social item, and we got amnesty for illegals which only opened the floodgates until it was the channel of the river itself. So, yeah, you’re right. Voting doesn’t matter.
As for propagandizing the masses, I’m in awe of the Left wing, who pretty well rule public discourse, shutting down any discussion of biological differences between population groups, elevating people of color to permanent victim status, securing an ever increasing flow of public funds to close a never changing education gap, and in general putting government in charge of more and more of life. You’ve won. All you are doing now is consolidating your gains and shouting me down when I suggest we shut off a few street lights in Colorado Springs.
(You’ll gripe now because you have no unions. But the Left doesn’t want unions, because they take away from the power of government.)
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What I am saying is that there is no connection between the will of the public as expressed throuigh voting and public policy, and used Reagan as a demonstration. The public, when polled, was opposed to most of his policies, yet they voted for him. The reason? Wedge politics. The public voted against teh Iraq War in 2006. The public voted for ending the Iraq War, Guantanamo, the Bush tax cuts, and for a public option in health insurance in 2008. No change.
And please go back to our exchange over what constitutes “the left.” The left strongly supports unions. Democrats do not.
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What is the will of the public? People are against Guantanamo in a casual way, from what they’ve heard from the media, but when confronted with the details of the alternatives, they agree to keep it open. People want a public option in health ins., but when they contemplate the thing being run by the same bureaucrats that inhabit the Army Corps of Engineers, they back off. People say they want USA made products, but when given the choice between WalMart and a higher priced domestic stocked store, they go with WalMart. Our politicians reflect us better than you indicate.
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That is called “push polling,” as in “would you vote for so and so if you knew…”, or “would you favor single payer I’d you knew that puppies would be tortured because of it?” I could easily design a poll on Gitmo that would influence the outcome in the other direction.
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If you can push-poll people, other people can push-poll you.
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Indeed, which is why push polls are meaningless.
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Mcluhan said, “All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.” It manages our fear like a conductor does an orchestra. We generally don’t know crap about the world in which we really live, therefore we make bad choices.
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