What if There Are More Ways to Win Than We Thought?

If I may, please allow me to begin "About Us" in what is admittedly an odd place... with a confession. You see, there is no us. A sales trainer from decades gone by once shared with those of us in attendance what he considered to be one of his cardinal rules.

When you're talking with people about a product or service, you should never use the word "I." It's always "we," he said. "Even if 'we' is just you and the mouse in your pocket." That was well over forty years ago, but it stuck and has since expanded to many other situations in my life, as well. My name is Fran Greenberg, and the scholarly looking rodent with the glasses modeling a MAMA hat is the mouse.

My life's work has been divided fairly evenly between a career in sales and human services. I owned and operated a personal introduction or dating service for nearly two decades before switching to human services, the last sixteen years as a caregiver. I would have to say that what has characterized my work the most has been the influence of a gift I received over fifty years ago. It was a gift from a professor I had during my freshman year in college. His name was David S. McKeith.

Why Republicans are Better at Winning Elections than Democrats

Written During the 2016 Election

Once upon a time, the Swiss were virtually unchallenged as the preeminent watchmakers of the world. A dominance which was ended by their failure to embrace the paradigm of their own invention. The paradigm they had so long held as truth was that the face of time needed to reflect the craftsmanship and artistry embodied by a sweeping secondhand's majesty.

They deemed very ordinary the stark numbers positioned side by side on the new models they had created. Since they did not think much of what they had done, they did not believe anyone else would. Being of such mind, they introduced their digital timepiece at a World's Fair, not as the new future, but as a novelty.

Attending the fair were a group of Japanese entrepreneurs who had no such long and honored history of craftsmanship influencing their perceptions. They looked out from within an entirely different paradigm. These businessmen saw the beauty of function rather than design in the numbers flashing by in perfect intervals. Surely, they believed, others would see it that way as well, and they were right.

Like the Swiss watchmakers, we Democrats have rested our electoral hopes and the future we could provide to the American people on a false paradigm.

With all due respect to those who think otherwise, winning elections is not about convincing the voting population on our issues' rightness. This is so because most Americans do not vote based on what they think about the issues. They vote based upon what they believe about the issues.

Can you imagine for even just a second any of Donald Trump's most loyal supporters turning down a five dollar an hour raise? Yet, on election day, they will passionately pull the lever for a man who thinks they should earn no more than ten dollars and change an hour.

Why? Because they believe what Donald Trump has told them to believe about what this issue means for them. “Fifteen dollars an hour is bad for business, and that means fewer jobs, and that is not just bad for you, but also everyone close to you.”

People vote in elections based on how they believe an issue, any issue, will affect them personally.

Does that belief need to based on truth? No... as it has been proven over and over again, it doesn't really matter.

As you well know, in the last two decades, we have traveled further and further away from living in or caring about a fact-based world. Leading that charge has been conservative media (on and off the web) and Republican lawmakers.

While we Democrats labor to win elections from within our paradigm of selling Americans on the virtue of the issues, Republicans do just the opposite with much greater success.

They sell their version of the resulting impact on the “American People,” should an issue become law. Any basis as to the truth of what they claim is becoming totally irrelevant.

Just look at the Affordable Care Act.

We sold the Issue: Over 30 million people in America do not have health care insurance.

They sold their version of the Impact: This law will be very bad for the rest of you.

This law is still being debated rather than improved because we never sold the “rest” of the American people on why this law is good for them. The fact that when polled individually, many of the components of the law find favor with this majority is a testament to how little is really known or understood about how the law benefits most Americans. Put it together, call it Obama Care, and the opposition becomes instantaneous. Even ordinary people who support the Affordable Care Act do not know how to defend it adequately.

The very sad truth here is that today's Republican media machine has become so good at getting the electorate to believe the innuendo, half-truths, and often complete falsehoods (i.e., the Tea Party), which they put forward as truth that they don't even need to back up what they say.

All they need do now is find a way to put out the word...hence the completely manufactured Tea Party. Most distressing of all, Donald Trump is the direct beneficiary of all this groundwork. He hasn't been challenged to back up any of his empty claims and rhetoric. All he has to say is, “Believe me,” and people do, which is surprisingly easy to comprehend from the underlying paradigm's perspective.

Of all the polling we have heard and seen, the most alarming one to me was this...

68% of the people in this poll believe it's the Democrats who are responsible for our dysfunctional Congress

68% - ??????????? Yes, 68%, and this is the wind beneath Donald Trump's wings!

Republicans, Independents, and even some Democrats who would not think of going to a medical intern for surgery or hire a law student to extract them from legal dilemma are ready put a man in charge of the largest government in the world who has no experience in government whatsoever...nor in the extremely challenging politics of the world.

For so many of these voters, their willingness to put aside this man's complete unfitness for the job is based on the belief that only someone outside of government can right the ship of state.

A second paradigm, which Donald Trump is consciously framing his campaign, is right out of fictional President Andrew Shepard's movie ending speech in The American President.

1- Here is what is wrong with America
2- Here is who is responsible
3- Here is how, I, the white knight and the only one who gets it
4- Will vanquish the foe

It is all as preposterous as it is scary because if we don't accurately counter it, there is a good probability it will succeed. It most certainly did in the past.

By the time the semester concluded, that was not only how I saw history; it was the way I began to see life. Before, where I had seen only the house now, I saw the foundation beneath it and the frame within it. It would be very accurate to say that nothing in my life has been the same since. My vision had been altered for a lifetime.

I can remember sitting in Professor McKeith's American history class as if it were yesterday. I was awestruck. Unlike anything I had experienced before, his take on history was as compelling as it was exciting. According to the professor, nothing in our nation's past just happened. For every significant moment of recorded history, many causes below the surface led to the observable effect.

During my two-month Corona Virus hiatus, I reorganized a great deal of my life at home. (The mouse was no help.) On a mini travel computer drive buried in a drawer full of assorted junk, I discovered something we had written during the 2016 campaign. It hadn't been finished, nor had I seen since. 

During the 2008 campaign for President, that vision turned towards politics. I had volunteered in local elections over the years; however, this was different. The Democrats were going to nominate either the first woman or the first black man to be President of the United States. I could already feel the rumblings underground that would soon spawn Trumpism. MSNBC and I became constant companions, and the mouse and I began to chronicle much of what we watched from the hidden frame rather than the easily seen walls.

While I didn't know what to do with what had been written then, nor with anything else written regarding politics in the last twelve years, I truly hope we have figured it out now. (The mouse was some help on this one.) The genesis for this website started over four months ago from that uncovered thought process. However, as the website began to take shape, a revelation occurred that came as a total surprise.

Events in our collective lives have been moving so rapidly since the end of April that even what was written on these pages just a few days ago has been rewritten and edited. Not all the thoughts put down four years ago have been able to make it to the website, and if we were to try to get them all in, we wouldn't be finished until after the election. The mouse suggested including the original document here, and I agreed.

We've just joined Twitter (Name: Make America Moral Again. Handle: whatifdotvote), and we'd love to have you follow us. We do plan to keep updating our thoughts as decision time closes in. We look forward to connecting with you there.

Until beginning this website, I had no idea how much my vision had also been formed by the countless conversations I had had during my years operating Compatibles beginning in 1984. As Compatibles was a personal service before any introductions were made, I met in my office with the thousands of people who had called for information.

In those initial meetings, always lurking in the background was the unspoken stigma as to what it meant about "you" if you needed someone to "get you a date." It was difficult to meet people back then due to a lack of societal opportunity.  For so very many, though, that actual outward reality had become an internal conversation of self-doubt instead.

From the conscious mind's perspective, that outward reality was understood and could even be somewhat believed. However, what the subconscious mind was holding onto, "If I were okay, I wouldn't need to do this," was an entirely different matter. Unlike connecting online today, there wasn't an easy and acceptable way to meet people.

Convincing the subconscious that you could join a dating service and still be okay was challenging, and I only heard from those who had only made it partway to okay when they called. However, explaining to my visitor how Compatibles worked also enabled me to support him or her in letting go of the negative internal conversation conflicting with the sought outcome.

What I learned over those many years was three-fold. The first was how our more powerful subconscious mind could maintain us on a pathway that was opposed to conscious desire and even detrimental to our well being. The second was that it was possible to contribute to another person by conversing with their subconscious mind, and the third was how to do it.

My revelation was this: Because of Compatibles, as my vision shifted to politics, I already knew on the periphery that reaching voters' subconscious minds could be a factor in election outcomes and that Democrats could benefit from doing so. However, what was once background knowledge has become crucial as a counter to Donald Trump and the consequences of allowing him and him alone to connect with America's subconscious mind.