Challenging the Conservatives: Let's Go Viral

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Andrew Bard Schmookler (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Andrew Bard Schmookler - Writer

It is now time for progressives to shift the mission. While not abandoning the work of talking amongst ourselves, we are now called upon to challenge the conservatives.

We're to go after them at this auspicious time. It's more auspicious now, when the evil spirits of the right are expressing themselves in the pure negativism of opposition than when, during the Bushite years, they possessed the levers of power. It's time to call them to their senses, and call them to the better angels of their nature. They are our countrymen; we are in the same boat as they. The future for all of us depends upon their healing.

And it is time for us to make what, in another context, is called “an intervention.”

Is it not the case that, until now, virtually no one on our side has been talking to “other side”? Keith and Rachel and many others have done good work in exposing the follies and evils of the right (and continue to do so). But they are talking to US, their allies, not to the people who are being led astray by Rush and Glenn and the rest of the Republican/right-wing manipulators.

On my radio show in Virginia, I've been talking to THEM. And now, after a period of time when I really struggled with the task, I feel a sense of clarity and solidity in this mission of “Challenging the Conservatives.”

I am finding myself drawn now, naturally, to writing messages that are addressed to that right-wing audience. In another context, I'll relate more about my own journey to reach this point. Here, my purpose is to enlist you –you who also see the darkness, the peril, the perpetual lying and fear-mongering—in this new campaign.

It's almost five years since I thought we should be launching a “prophetic social movement” so that, by “skillfully speaking the moral truth,” we could enlist the good people on the right as “allies” in the struggle against the evil that had seduced them. The trance state proved more powerful and thus impenetrable than I expected. And the mission became instead one of speaking amongst ourselves, keeping the fire of moral truth burning amidst the immoral darkness then dominant.

But now the time has come to attack that darkness where it still lodges in the minds and hearts of our countrymen.

The task will not be easy; the change will not come quickly. America will not be healed, however, without confronting this darkness. Our politics cannot become healthy so long as a third of Americans are under the sway of the hateful lies that the powers of the right use to manipulate their followers.

Here's the strategy by which my small efforts –and those of others—might become mighty enough to affect this battle of Good vs. Evil in America in our times: THE STRATEGY IS TO MAKE THESE CHALLENGES VIRAL IN THE INTERCONNECTED “NEW MEDIA” SYSTEM. That can work this way:

1) Come up with constructive ways of challenging the followers of the right. That's what I've been trying to do with my recent writings (such as "Slaves to Ideology" at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=4297 and "To the Good People on the Right: This Is Not How You Deal With Disagreements in Your Own World, Is It?, at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=4410").

2) All those people who read and see constructive possibilities in such challenges can then use email to broadcast them out into the world.

3) These challenges can be composed and offered up by anyone.

4) The place where the rubber hits the road is in the Inbox of conservatives that we know how to reach, and whom we judge appropriate for us to challenge. (Appropriateness is a call everyone must make on their own, whether to send such a thing to members of the family and/or to friends and/or to neighbors.) So all of us would make these judgments and send out these emails, in the belief that --OVER TIME-- this effort will help bring us as Americans closer together –with our politics not being a form of war, not being dominated by the spirit of lies and fear-mongering—and will help bring America out of the darkness.

5) In addition, making this process viral would mean people –like you who are reading this—also sending these missives out to people who are already allies, with the encouragement that they, too, think about what conservatives they know how to reach, and whom they judge to be appropriate to challenge in this way.

1 | 2

Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.