11/25/2005 11:12:00 AM|W|P|Doc|W|P||W|P|113293517985107902|W|P|They are sorry.|W|P|xxdr_zombiexx@yahoo.com11/20/2005 08:57:00 AM|W|P|Doc|W|P|By xxdr_zombiexx | zombienotes | 11.20.2005 | Daily Kos Posting For a long time - beginning when I was one of the main news editors for Marijuana.com - I have strongly advocated and recommended NOT trying to politely deconstruct reefer madness propaganda of the GOP and for several reasons. Mostly, though, the reason is that our access to the media is so severely limited, one wastes time trying to refute the tenets of reefer madness one by one, in polite, well-constructed logical arguments. Another facet of this is that reefer madness propaganda is not based on science or logic or facts to begin with: it's based on lies, fear-mongering and intimidation: there is nothing there to "reason with. Today on the front page of The Daily Kos is a post that quotes Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, a serious news blog whose title always reminds me that the GOP focuses on maintaining a consistent message through the use of regularly-released "talking points" that people can track through the MSM. Once they are released the little points are head to be repeated everywhere in the media - TV news, sound bites from politicians and the drivel spewing from rightwing talk radio. Anyway, the post on Kos today - Today's Republican Party - focuses on the vehement GOP backlash against Democratic politician John Murtha, who recently ripped them a brand new asshole over the Iraq war. Armando at Kos quoted Josh Marshal's article about some conversations with a republican reader and Marshall was saying he did not really understand why the GOP went so berserk in their backlash against Murtha. He reports being tod this:
Discrediting a critic's argument isn't enough, because it takes too much time in an environment when time is everything. Campaign politics are the primary frame of reference for politicians in Washington today. Republicans of late have practiced this trade more aggressively . . . Karl Rove's influence on GOP political operatives may be even more profound, and GOP political operatives have vast influence in Republican politics. Finally and very frankly, Democratic politicians tend to be wimps. . . . This encourages Republican political operatives to use rough tactics. I don't think this is a matter of ideology. In fact I don't know what it is. I just know if I were a Republican politician there wouldn't be many Democratic politicians I would be afraid of. . .
Armando adds:
Ever wonder why the Front Page of Daily Kos is so ferocious at times? That's why. That is today's Republican Party. That is what we are fighting against.
Politeness and a dollar buys one a cup of coffee in politics these days. While it's nice to be polite - and I am normally a very polite guy - the GOP has worked for years to reduce the quality of public debate as can be seen any day on mainstream news programs like "Hardball" or "Crossfire" (which was completely punctured by Jon Stewart's appearance back in February) and anything coming out of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity's pie-holes. But that's politics in general and my particular topic is relegalizaton of cannabis. Not that the Dems are all that friendly about the issue, the GOP has reefer madness as a core value of their politics. It is a dividing issue in the culture war - either you are against mary-ju-wanna, or you want to legalize all drugs for small children to take at school. This is how they frame the "argument. I have seen so many people who want relegalizaton state so surely that if we can just write a good LTE that exposes the "facts" in a polite and well-dressed manner (no tie-dye or jeans) that we will then eliminate this erroneous policy. It will never happen that way. Look at the ferocity with which the Federal government attacks marijuana reforms when it can. Look at the war they wage against the ever-more-popular medical marijuana movement. This mindset will not be punctured by polite readings of scientific studies. This mindset must be fought with vigor and with some meanness, for that is what we - you and me - are up against. We do not have the MSM access the GOP has, we do not have 10's of billions of taxpayer dollars to blow repeating our message endlessly, like the ONDCP does. We do have the internet and we do make use of it and since the mid-1990's there has been some progress. The bottom line for now is that when one does have the opportunity to take on and refute reefer madness propaganda one should be prepared to blast out one's perspective in a sharp and critical manner, and forgo this nonsense of point-by-point refutation. Cannabis never should have been made illegal. It is not a threat to people and never was. Cannabis was used for all sorts of things that are now prohibited, harming American farmers, industrialists and now harming sick and dying Americans who could use the medicinal properties of the plant to alleviate some of their suffering ESPECIALLY while they suffer the GOP war on Medicaid attempt to "reform" Medicaid. Either you support cannabis reform, or you are complicit with a vicious and repressive policy which harms and kills Americans every day. The war on Iraq in general and the WMD issue in particular were built on bullshit and most people know this now - there is fundamentally no difference with reefer madness. It was built on lies and bullshit and can only be perpetuated by more of the same. They are counting on people to remain polite and ineffective. So when one hears John Walters or some other professional liar ranting on about the evils of mary-ju-wanna, call it bullshit and don't pretend to be polite. If facts actually mattered we’d not have cannabis prohibition to begin with. Forget logical argumentation - just catapult the message. PS: Do see and contribute articles to the Omnibus Cannabis Information & Relegalization Advocacy Thread @ SmirkingChimp.com. Thanks!|W|P|113249776555013386|W|P|Just catapult the message!|W|P|xxdr_zombiexx@yahoo.com