[conspire] (forw) Re: (forw) Not quite getting it

[Nick Moffitt]

On 23Mar2020 10:21pm (-0700), Rick Moen wrote:
> There's a story that gets told about FDR, possibly apocryphal.  Here's
> the variant that ran in SFGate, a while back:
> 
>   Harry Belafonte recalled in an interview with Tavis Smiley recently a
>   story he was told by Eleanor Roosevelt. She related a public event when
>   her husband, FDR, introduced Randolph and asked him, Belafonte recalled,
>   "what he thought of the nation, what he thought of the plight of the
>   Negro people and what did he think ... where the nation was headed."
>   Continuing the story, Belafonte recounted what FDR replied upon hearing
>   Randolph's remarks: "You know, Mr. Randolph, I've heard everything
>   you've said tonight, and I couldn't agree with you more. I agree with
>   everything that you've said, including my capacity to be able to right
>   many of these wrongs and to use my power and the bully pulpit. ... But I
>   would ask one thing of you, Mr. Randolph, and that is go out and make me
>   do it."

This is 100% the game you have to play when you have a sympathetic politician in power.  You may want the leader of your government to direct the budget toward health care and education, and the leader may want to direct the budget toward health care and education too.  But at every cabinet meeting, the toxic-sludge industry is going to be represented, and their voices are going to bang the table demanding a larger slice of the budget.  They justify it through jobs and tradition and other things that they can turn around and sell to the public via the press (and now, social media).

So you need to also go to the press and social media.  Make events happen, and make it clearer to the public that health and education for all citizens are the priorities, not a handful of toxic-sludge jobs in an industry that inexplicably pays no taxes.  You need to give your sympathetic leader the support they need to make the difficult choices without fearing loss of political capital.

And you have another choice, sometimes: stack the opposition.  Get someone who is absolutely TERRIBLE at articulating the pro-toxic-sludge argument, and put them in front of every camera, microphone, and reporter's notepad you can.  Arrange for them to holler in incoherent rage at public forums with the government, and make sure everyone associates the opposition with exactly this type of self-contradicting kook.

Just beware: sometimes these people become president.