Sometimes battles are not for the person you are arguing with but for other people who might read it. That said, when it gets into a back and forth, at times other people tune out. I seem to recall you have a YouTube channel. The most productive activity would be to pull the best examples together and make a video out of it then post the video multiple places. In fact we as a movement need to start collaborating on activities like that. Some of us have skills on research. Some of us have skills on editing videos. Some have writing skills. Some have a good video voice. And yes some of us have all of that, but time gets in the way. With more collaboration more videos, blogs, podcasts could be made.
And then we need to find the most fertile places to post them. Here is the sad truth. Right now its easy to make the argument that we are losing our freedoms to right wing teocons. That's because Obama is predient and the teocons hate Obama. Note that currently more democrats than republicans support the idea of an AUMF against ISIS but that's only because Obama is president. If John McCain were president those numbers would be reversed. True story. I had a discussion once with my ex-mother-in-law (who I get along better than with my ex wife) about politics. She was talking about how much she hated Ted Cruz. Now I'm not a big Ted Cruz fan, but I wondered why she was so anti Ted Cruz. Basically she had no reason except "He opposes everything Obama wants." Well...he is in the opposing party.
Of course she was 100% in favor of Obamacare and didn't want to hear any criticism of it at all. So I tried to bring the conversation to something we could agree on and asked what she thought about the NSA and Edward Snowden. Her response? "I can't believe you republicans don't want America safe." It was like she believed the NSA had been created by Obama as well and she was 100% in favor of it because using the "I have nothing to hide" argument I used to hear from republicans. I had a similar conversation with a close friend.
So what do we do with the fact that republicans only want to hear criticism of democrats and democrats only want to hear criticism of republicans? We cast not our pearls before swine. Sure, engage the "enemy" on opposing forums in order to refine your talking points. Put those talking points into a blog or vlog. Then post them somewhere there are people who, while not in the "liberty" camp, are open to hearing
that particular criticism. Find lead ins that will help get the point across. Sometimes you have a lead in that will let you appeal to both sides. For example, Ted Cruz said that we stayed in Iraq too long. That's
great material for a vlog/blog that you can successful bait both democrats and republicans with. Democrats love to bash the Iraq war because a republican started it. And since republicans repeat the stupid mantra that Obama got us out of Iraq "too soon" (silly because Obama didn't get us out a day before Bush agreed with the Iraqi government to have us gone and no republican has an explanation of how long we should have stayed anyway), democrats would love your video as a weapon to rub in the face of republicans. On the other hand republicans would at least watch your video because many like Ted Cruz. And the video would help Rand because it would show a "hawk" rival of Rand taking a dovish position.
Another good bait video idea is Benghazi. You can only bait republicans on that because democrats are "stuck on stupid" in simply wanting to defend Obama and Hillary. But there's a good hook that can be set once the republicans are baited. That hook is the fact that there is more to Benghazi than the "Why didn't the ambassador get rescued" question. The bigger questions are 1) what was the ambassador still doing inside of an obviously failed state and 2) why was the state a failed state to begin with? Question 1 is a "conspiracy theory" that actually plays well with republicans. Glenn Beck interviewed Blackwater Eric Prince who said that the U.S. ambassador was trying to get weapons the Libyan Al Qaeda linked rebels were using and funnel them to the Syrian Al Qaeda linked rebels. That really was an act of treason by the Obama administration. (Giving aid and comfort to the enemy). Of course this is rumor, though it is well documented rumor. (Award winning journalist Seymour Hersh did an article about this). But since it's strictly against a democratic administration, republicans are willing to listen and not talk about "tin foil hats." (These are the same people that were asking to see Obama's birth certificate after all. People are generally only against conspiracy theories when the theory goes against their worldview. The liberty movement is unique in having people against conspiracy theories for the sake of being against conspiracy theories because of stupid fears of guilt by association.) Question 2 is not theory at all. Libya, at the time of our ill advised war of aggression against it, had made peace with the U.S. and had turned its back on terrorism. The rebels fighting Khadafi were openly linked with Al Qaeda. This is all documented and most republicans won't argue against you about this. But now you've got a way to get republicans to question the idea of "regime change" in general. After all, Khadafi was as bad of a despot as Saddam. And Iraq has become as much of a haven for terrorism as a result of idiotic regime change as has Libya.
So how to bait democrats with the same story? Start off attacking republicans. Bring up the fact that John McCain was leading the charge for intervention in Libya. Or talk about Syria and how Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer openly said that we should partner with Al Qaeda against Assad in Syria like we partnered with Stalin against Hitler. Point out to democrats that this is treason by Fox News. After all Al Qaeda attacked us (go along with the MSM story here whether you believe it or not) and Assad hasn't. (Note, to Republicans you can point out that Assad helped America in the war on terror by torturing suspected terrorists on our behalf and that Obama lied when he claimed that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people as the U.N. places the blame for those attacks on the U.S. / ISIS linked Syrian rebels).
Really, everything I've described is a modification of the Bill Clinton "triangulation" strategy. (See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangu...%28politics%29) The basic idea is to find some common ground with your opponent, then argue above it, either to bring them along or to bring people who agree with them along.
In this case, we aren't looking for the "middle ground." We aren't looking for "compromise." We are looking for the "liberty ground." Everybody supports liberty at least in theory. But partisans are only willing to defend liberty when it is under attack from the opposition party. So get people defending liberty by showing them how the opposing party is attacking liberty, then gently bring them to the point where they see their own party is doing the same thing. Our enemies control both parties. We have to expose that.
If I had a name for this strategy I would call it the "bait and hook" strategy. You "bait" people with what you know they will agree with and then you "hook" them with what they would normally disagree with, but is so close to the "bait" that they don't pick on the attack until it's too late for them to go into defensive mode. So often we (and I am guilty of this) lead with the "hook." We want to convince democrats of why Obama is bad and republicans of why Bush was bad. We should do the reverse. Talk to democrats about how evil Bush was...and then set the hook with making the Obama comparison. Talk to republicans of how bad Obama is....then set the hook by making the Bush comparison.
What woke me up to liberty was the Alex Jones film "9/11 the Road to Tyranny." I was already headed there but that film brought me over the top. I was expecting a "bash Bush" film because, after all, 9/11 happened on Bush's watch. But "Road to Tyranny" also spent a lot of time exposing Bill Clinton. I would not have watched a film attacking Clinton if I had known that was what the film was about. That's the strategy we must use. Draw people in attacking people they don't support, then show them how the people they do support are exactly the same.
Along those lines, the recent revelations about powerful democrats linked to child prostitution is again fertile ground. Bait republicans by doing a video showing Bill Clinton has been alleged to have gone parties were child sex slaves were in attendance but then "hook" them with providing documentation of the Franklin cover up where under aged male prostitutes from "Boys Town" were being used to service powerful republicans. (That would be a good place to drop in a clip of Newt Gingrich saying "Boys Town is my favorite movie".)
Really, the possibilities for this are endless. Then the question becomes how to "market" this all. Everyone of us needs to be vlogging/blogging. We spend far to much time talking to and/or arguing with each other. But blogging can be a lonely thing. We need to do cross blogging. Take the conversation beyond the forums to each other's blogs. We should cross link stories and post each others blogs to other forums. That would increase visibility, Google rankings and ultimately traffic. Even those of us who aren't good writers can simply copy/paste (with attribution and back links) content from others. Then tweet/facebook/pin the material to our social networks. Here's where Google+ shines. It allows you to segment your social network. So some "bait" can be sent to republicans you know and other "bait" to democrats. That requires having some idea of the political affiliations of your social circles. But then you can seek to build "segmented" social circles by interacting with people in different forums. YouTube is great for that as it is linked to Google+. Add people you see bashing Obama/Hillary/Biden in video comments to your "republican bait" circles and people you see bashing Bush/McCain/Romney to your "democratic bait" circles. And, at some point, we have to go beyond the internet. Call into right wing talk shows with "republican bait" and mention your blog/YouTube channel on the air. NPR has left wing talk shows where you can call in with "democratic bait." And you can call into CSPAN and bait either side. Eventually we need to actually spend money on advertising. A 30 second radio spot that says "Do you want to know the truth about ISIS, how they started and how to
really defeat them? Go to
http://blahblahblah.com today to find out what you can do to help!" can play well on any radio station. This should only happen once we have a sufficient quality content.
Raising awareness about the truth of what's going on is the most important thing we can do in 2015. Nearly 80 of Americans have gone temporarily insane. In 2013 Obama tried to get support for arming the Syrian rebels against Assad. He failed to get that support but he armed them anyway. Those rebels turned out the be bloodthirsty terrorists and/or joined at the hip to bloodthirsty terrorists. Now most Americans support giving more weapons to those same rebels so that they can fight themselves. Remember that at one time 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was involved somehow in 9/11. That false conspiracy theory persisted among republicans with Sarah Palin believing it as late as 2012. We've got to start turning the corner on this for Rand to have a fighting chance. We have to turn the corner for freedom to have a fighting chance.
Originally Posted by lilymc
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