tamp down your tolerance of right wing BS and speak up

::::::::

We are so enamored of mental tranquility that we stop short at any semblance of a truth, and go to sleep in the clouds.
Joubert

When I was in high school, all the guys would roughhouse. The shortest of the crew reacted differently. Maybe it was because, being shorter, he felt the same slaps in the arm or body slams, like football players do when they bounce off each other, more than we bigger guys. He was five foot five. We were five eleven or taller and probably weighed at least 40 or 50 pounds more. So my short friend reacted differently. If one of us gently punched him in the arm, he'd slam pack a no bullshit power punch that would hurt. He was smaller, but he wanted to give a clear message not to mess with him, that he wouldn't put up with it.

Liberals and progressives have let right wingers say all kinds of things that are racist, nasty, stupid, dishonest, misinformed or worse. It's often easy to let those remarks pass. Now that the Republican party has its lowest ratings since ratings were measured, meaning right wing ratings are at their lowest, it's time to stop tolerating any of this kind of crap. It's time to hit back at the bullshit with powerpunches.

If a right winger or, really, anyone, dishes out some nonsense right wing talking point, like, "there were WMDs in Iraq" or "Democrats just want to raise taxes" or "You want to leave Iraq like cowards" don't let them get away with it. Don't let them get away with any right wing garbage. Declare war on the garbage.

Tell them they are full of it. Tell them you don't believe they actually buy that stupid nonsense. Tell them they are suckers, dupes, being used by rich people and war criminals.

I'm not saying to hit them physically. I am saying to hit back verbally harder than you have before. Don't tolerate racist or intolerant talk or support of injustice. Take a stand. Remaining silent should no longer be an option.

These are times, when if you CAN respond, you should. Failure to do so allows the lie, the abuse to remain uncontested.

Every now and then, one of my writings sends me to my quotation collection. I have hundreds of quotation books and tens of thousands of quotations on my hard drive. My search for quotes on hitting back, on speaking out, speaking up, confronting, even challenging, did not result in a single quote, in the three books I grabbed that I thought would bear fruit. So I went to my personal database on my hard drive and came up with a few dozen. Here are some of the ones I found:

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and deeds alone suffice.
Whittier

We are so enamored of mental tranquility that we stop short at any semblance of a truth, and go to sleep in the clouds.
Joubert

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.
Blake, Gnomic Verses

Without contraries (there) is no progression.
Blake, Marriage of heaven adn hell.

"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."
Brooks, Phillips

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."
Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolu tion in France

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
Carlyle, Thomas

True contentment is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it.
G.K. Chesterson

The response to incongruities is one of the highest manifestations of the cerebral process.
Norman Cousins, Head First

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
Norman Cousins

"It is circumstances which show what men are. Therefore, when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer ofwrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. For what purpose? you might ask. So that you may become an Olympic Conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat. ...no man has had a more profitable difficulty than you have had, if you choose to make use of it as an athlete would deal with a young antagonist."
Epictetus

We only go where we need to go or go where we want to go because we overcome obstacles.
And I'm still overcoming obstacles today.
Danny Glover

We encounter the grinding wheels that sharpen our mental blades many places in life. Adversity, school, parents, spiritual guides, books, experience are all sharpening teachers. As we grow older, to stay sharp we must find new grindstones to whet and sharpen our potential and keep us at our brightest, most penetrating best.
Kall, Robert

What is the heaviest thing... that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.
Nietzsche

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In thedifficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.
Rainer Maria Rilke

*"I love to hear of worthy foes."
Scott, Sir Walter., LADY OF THE LAKE, canto 4, st.8

I am at my very best when the circumstances get dangerous.
Ted Turner

The human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest and therefore when most was required of imagination to build at all. Limitations seem to have always been the best friends of architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Risks are the spice of life, and this is the kind of moment that a test pilot lives for. THe butterflies are fluttering, but you feed off fear as if it's a high-energy candy bar. It keeps you alert and focused.
    You accept risk as part of every new challenge; it comes with the territory.Chuck Yeager, Yeager
Chuck Yeager, Yeager

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.
Niccolo Machiavelli

   "Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never
really knew.  They're what make the instrument stretch - what makes you go
beyond the norm."  -Cicely Tyson

We triumph without glory when we counquer without danger.
Corneille Le Cid, ii.,2. (1606-1684)

There are no gains without pains.
Benjamin Franklin

Happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.
John F. Kennedy

When you're green you're growing, and when you're ripe, you rot.
Ray Kroc (McDonalds founder)

Accept the challenge so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.
George S. Patton

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Theodore Roosevelt

One thing obtained with difficulty is far better than a hundred things procured with ease.
Talmud, Avoth d' Rabbi Nathan, Ch 3

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.
Rainer Maria Rilke

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences, and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.
E.M. Forster

Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking.
Samuel Johnson

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.
ghandi

 

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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