Mouse Words, responding to Digby:

The people who vote because they’ve been whipped into a frenzy over fears that tolerance of people different from themselves might actually put their own lifestyles in danger are a surprisingly diverse crowd. It ain’t just Bubba. In fact, many a Bubba could care less what you do, as long as you don’t do it in his backyard.

Mouse Words is very reasonable in this assertion, but herein lies the problem. Bubba could care less what you do as long as you don’t do it in his backyard, but Bubba was convinced in this last election that the entire country was his backyard, and you were going to bring an orgy there and make him participate and he would feel very bad and ashamed of himself when all the neighbors saw. Telling Bubba you don’t want him anywhere near your orgy and in fact there really isn’t an orgy, it’s just two girls holding hands, won’t do a damn thing if he’s being told by people he’s voted for for years that yes, in fact, here comes the orgy, can’t you see it? Try to squint. Look harder. Tilt your head a little. Here, sniff this ether. There it is!

Why are we responding to this shit? Why are we defending ourselves and trying to understand and figuring out a way to appeal by debunking their bullshit propaganda?

Why in the name of all that is holy and blue in these United States aren’t we attacking with propaganda of our own?

The real Republican agenda? Starving your grandma. Starving Grandmas for Truth need to stand up on every channel and say “Don’t let Mr. Bush and his friends take my money away. Don’t let them starve me to death.” Is it a true reflection of their plans? Probably not. Do liberals want to marry you to Mr. Schmidt down at the feed store and take your gun away and ban the Bible? No way. But did the Republicans sit around wondering how to debunk the liberal line about how they’re not so great on domestic policy? Hell no. They attacked and attacked and attacked. They put up billboards that had the Bush/Cheney logo and “One Nation, Under God.” They convinced people they had to vote for Bush in order to keep God, because Kerry would have killed God dead.

I know not all y’all are sports fans, but honestly. You don’t win hockey games by circling your own net and praying the other team doesn’t get a shot off. They might not score as many goals then, but you won’t score any at all if you spend all your time in your own end hoping nothing hits home. Herb Brooks standing in front of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team showed them film of the USSR players, the best team in the world, and the kids asked how they were supposed to defend against that. You don’t, Brooks said. You attack.

You take their game and you shove it up their asses. You do what they do and you do it harder and better and faster and more.

And it’s past time we learned that.

We need to make the 2006 elections about how the Republicans tried to steal Social Security away from you. They tried to take your money and give it to Wall Street fat cats so the fat cats can use it to line their litter boxes. And if the ads are any more nuanced than that, well, I don’t know if I have any hair left to pull out but I’ll try. No more nuance. No more debunking, truth-squadding, greeting assertions that cut straight to the lizard brains of Bubba and Bubbette and everybody else anywhere with a long list of factually correct rebuttals. That stuff feels good and it looks great and in the end it convinces nobody because we’re still repeating their lines instead of coming up with our own.

They’ve handed us this issue. Handed it to us on a silver platter surrounded by fig leaves, with a fat red apple in its mouth. What Would Lyndon Johnson Do?

A.

reposted because site was going wonky earlier