I'm just posting this diary with the hope of getting a little feedback. What is below the fold is the contents of an email I sent off to my local Democratic Party. I'm not a professional activist, nor do I profess to know how to write in such a way that people read and think about my ideas, so please don't attack what I've written along those lines, OK?
I just want to know if this would work. If this might be the solution to a problem. If this is, AT LAST, something that I (and folks like me) can do to help.
Hello! I'm a solid supporter of the party and have dabbled a bit in volunteering, but I've dropped out several times out of discouragement. It just seems to me that things are hopeless in this county when it comes to overcoming the basic lack of information and high level of suspicion/dislike in the rank and file of the opposition.
But I think I may have found a way to "safely" get around that and I want to talk to someone about this idea.
You see, one reason why I shy away from OPENLY helping the party in this county is because I have a business that relies in part on community goodwill...and I'm an African American selling an upscale product to a market potentially hostile to my ideological views. However, I think I've figured out an organized, widespread, effective way to promote the points we need to make with far less risk: viral messages.
No, not viruses or other harmful things: just objectively worded messages that are spread far and wide, repeated over and over, everywhere.
And, no, not those idiotic emails, either: just publicly posted messages placed in locations where people routinely post their (political) opinions or ideas.
* Message board messages.
* Comment area messages.
* Letters-to-the-editor messages.
WHEREVER people can post politically, we post the same, short message--always including unimpeachable links to more information. And next month, we broadcast another. And the next month, yet another. And slowly we build a base of facts about what is going on. BUT! The brilliant thing is that it doesn't even matter whether those with whom we agree or disagree change their minds. Our goal would be simply to get people to pay attention to the facts that are "out there" in general.
WE see and are appalled by how the opposition has honed the skill of ducking questions into a fine art, right? Well, imagine how heightening people's awareness of the presentation of facts (and, in doing so, the mispresentation of them) could affect the conversation. Have you noticed, for example, how more and more media personalities ARE pressing politicians to answer the questions they are asked, not dodge them? Even the media is beginning to make note of the problem. That reinforces why now may be just the right time to get out and push the message that FACTS MATTER (and that those who dance around them maybe shouldn't be trusted).
But the key to avoiding the kind of selective perception which prevents messages from reading their targets is to SHOW, DON'T TELL: Just put the facts out there, over and over and over again, without any additional commentary. Turn the tide of misinformation by raining little droplets of facts down on the shores of ignorance! (OK, OK, sorry. Got carried away a bit).
But what are these messages?
NOTHING BUT FACTS, of course.
This is the message that got me started. It was simply posted as is, with no introduction or conclusion. Just a simple list of facts (yes, from right here on KOS, but I didn't mention that in my email--and had I originated it, I wouldn't have included the header):
TEN Things the GOP doesn't want you to know about the debt:
1. Republican Leaders Agree U.S. Default Would Be a "Financial Disaster"
2. Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt
3. George W. Bush Doubled the National Debt
4. Republicans Voted Seven Times to Raise Debt Ceiling for President Bush
5. Federal Taxes Are Now at a 60 Year Low
6. Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Pay for Themselves or Spur "Job Creators"
7. Ryan Budget Delivers Another Tax Cut Windfall for Wealthy
8. Ryan Budget Will Require Raising Debt Ceiling - Repeatedly
9. Tax Cuts Drive the Next Decade of Debt
10. $3 Trillion Tab for Unfunded Wars Remains Unpaid
We're always saying it, right? "The facts are on our side." But people don't KNOW the facts and so the opposition gets to argue "fact free."
So why not organize ourselves into an army of computer users who can distribute a single, new, factoid list every month onto thousands of news article comment boards, websites, newspaper editorial pages, and so on and so on and so on. If 1000 people posted the message on just three boards every day they sign onto their computers, and maybe included a message to "pass it on," why wouldn't it -- and the technique -- spread? There are rumors that the opposition is paying people to do this already. But we wouldn't need to do it subversively because we wouldn't be distributing propaganda, just FACTS. We need to get the facts out there. We can focus on just our county or our state, or we could find a way to expand it as far as it can go.
Look, we are all upset about the lying and misinformation. And many of us are upset about how our elected representatives seem hamstrung about calling it out, right? RIGHT? Well, let's stop waiting for the wet noodles to come up with a way to deal with the Republican Misinformation Machine.
Let's build a FACT FACTORY and start churning out little information widgets to power an increasing awareness that, yeah, facts DO matter!
I'm willing to do what I can to get something like this off the ground. Can you help me?