Unlock True New Strength to Win
Three Game-Changing Paradigm Shifts
A New Democratic Blueprint
The Hourglass and
The Sand
What the Sand Doesn't
Know is Bad for the Sand
Paradigm Two
Surprisingly Simple, Powerful and Unexpected
As the possibility of living the rest of our lives under authoritarian rule cascades towards the moment of decision, the most crucial relationship for every American right now has become the one between each of us and our Democracy. A relationship that can be seen in the truth of the hourglass and the sand. If our democracy were thought of as an hourglass, then all Americans would most assuredly be the sand.
Should the hourglass break, each grain of us will be at the mercy of the man who knocked us off the century-old Resolute desk. Gone will be our American right to create our lives on our own terms and determine our own destiny. Without the hourglass to protect us, we will be at risk from all the elements around us...the rain that will soak us...the wind that will scatter us far and wide. When all is said and done, we may never feel or be truly be safe again.
An Inconvenient Truth
Nicolle Wallace
The government of the United States is the largest in the world. Yet, four years ago, nearly sixty-three million people elected a man to run it who had no government experience whatsoever, making this an inconvenient truth we must recognize. People who understand what a president does, what the job is, how the government intersects their lives every day are also people who understand that the United States' Presidency is not an entry-level position.
How do you make the American people understand
that it isn't this abstract concept of Democracy that's at risk?
National Security is what happens in your backyard.
National Security is not feeling safe, sending an email, or writing a text.
National Security is what happens in
our homes and in our lives and in our families.
Donald Trump threatens it.
Making the Threat Personal
Deadline Whitehouse 8/27/20
Roger Ailes Built a Network...E, I, E, I, O
It is yet another truth that most Americans do not vote based on what they think about the issues. They vote in elections based on how they believe an issue, any issue, will affect them personally. Creating a narrative to that end, no matter how fictionalized it might be, is something Donald Trump excels in.
When Rupert Murdoch created the Fox News Channel in 1996, he hired former Republican operative Roger Ailes as its founding CEO. Ailes didn't come empty-handed. He brought with him a piece of history from the Nixon era, a 318-page document titled "A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News."
As such, making it personal is imperative for Democrats on more than one level. Voting for what affects us personally is not only "how"Americans vote; it is "why"we vote!
The central principle of the plan was to go around the perceived "prejudices of network news" and provide "pro-administration" (Nixon) content to Republican viewers in the heartland. In other words, news that people would perceive as important to them personally became one of Ailes's guiding imperatives at Fox News.
Fox accomplishes this goal by consistently and repetitively feeding people fiction as fact and, therefore, news. The clear counterpoint to that is to impart an understanding of how truth, not fiction, affects every American personally. To put it more simply, tell each of us at the personal core level, "this is what it means to you."
"We the People"
America,
"This is what Trumpism means to YOU."
James Madison
August 4, 1822
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
James Madison knew then what "We the People" have forgotten now. The greatest threat to Democracy occurs when the people who benefit from it no longer understand it. It is that understanding alone that serves as the guard rail between self-government and the whims of a king. We have forgotten, and the king stands at our door. If we are to turn him away, we must remember how democracy survives and why it needs knowledgable judgment to keep it.
At the very least, we must know why you don't elect a complete novice to the Presidency of the United States once, let alone twice. At the very least, we must know how American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights protect us personally, and what it will mean to lose it all and live in an autocracy that could become our fate. At the very least, we must know what the word autocracy means and the threat it presents to our lives, personally.
There are voices who can explain to those who must listen, and it must happen quickly. Not once, not twice, but every single day. Over and over and over again.
Those voices are ours, "We the People." It is up to all of us who do know to speak it out loud...every single one of us, be it those running for office, or on TV, or in print or online, or just any time we are with others who are willing to listen.
Some may not hear what we have to say, but most assuredly, they won't if we don't tell them. Many of Trump's base actually voted for him to disrupt the norms that form our daily lives' underpinnings. These are the people who least understand the necessity of a functioning government and how it contributes to the freedoms they cherish. If we are to put this country back together again after Donald Trump, these are the people we need to reach the most.
This is What the Sand Must Know Before the Hourglass has a Chance to Break.
