Tag Archives: military budget

Putting Boots (Birkenstocks) on the Ground: Part V

It’s all about people power. Not PACs and SuperPACS. Not big piles of money. Change still comes down to the choice each of us personally makes in the voting booth. Power resides in our aligning our individual choices, so that collectively — as in tens of millions of us united in an unstoppable juggernaut of people power — we get done what needs to get done. We must elect representatives who represent us. We will guarantee they will represent us by making candidates sign legally-binding contracts. Or we don’t vote for them. Continue reading

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Putting Boots (Birkenstocks) on the Ground: Part IV

People must unite at a local level, not under party banners, but as a voting bloc around issues that are important to them. Party labels — also very much the case with ideological labels — muddy the waters, get people unfocused on what’s truly consequential. ‘Democrat’, ‘Republican’, ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, ‘libertarian’ — even more so with ‘socialist’, ‘Tea Party’, and ‘Green Party’ — have recently become so emotionally charged, clear thinking becomes difficult, constructive dialogue impossible. Continue reading

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Putting Boots (Birkenstocks) on the Ground: Part II

Americans actually agree on a lot of important things. Most things! But the astonishing and powerful consensuses get lost in the trivialization, marginalization, and other weapons of mass distraction and sheer propaganda we all endure just trying to find out and understand what’s going on. We are teased, taunted, cajoled, manipulated, titillated, dazzled, and generally overwhelmed by the main stream media. Thus we lose focus. We can’t keep our eye on the prize, because by watching television we have no idea what the prize even is.

Turn off your TVs. Hide your smart phones under the mattress. Let the screensaver on your computer do whatever it does — swimming fish, go-go dancers, shooting stars — and don’t disturb it to watch the latest Trump riots or primary predictions. Go talk to someone. Your neighbor, your cousin, your kid’s teacher, that lady down the street who is always working in her garden, the guy who polishes his car three times a week. Bring cupcakes. Get to know them . . . and talk. Continue reading

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We’ll just have to agree to agree.

Agree to disagree? I have a better idea! How about if we agree to agree? Go from there. Continue reading

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Throw the bums out!

Either we rise up now in a bloodless coup at the polls or we rise up later in the streets. Revolution in the streets will not be bloodless and I suspect it won’t end well. It’s up to us to make the choice. Continue reading

Posted in Political Analysis, Political Rant | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments