Prelude to Outrage
It’s been a slow up-swell since 2008. People became alarmed when the “change” Obama promised turned out to be something to be feared and dreaded, not hoped for.
So people began to organize…locally… just citizens sitting around the kitchen table commiserating, deciding to do something about it, then going outside on the porch to see there were hundreds just like them in the streets, looking for other people to join up with.
It was spontaneous combustion.
Thus the tea parties (I use the lower case on purpose) were born, and Hollywood couldn’t have produced it better (even if they’d been on our side); millions pouring out of their homes seeking others to clasp hands with and to march onto…
…what?
The next election, in 2010.
Lay down those pitchforks and pick up what?
Ballots?
Since 2009 we’ve watched a number of people-with-money-and-connections try to turn these millions of patriots into a unified army, a national Tea Party (actually several), with national spokesmen who could afford to throw a splashy convention, with guest speakers, spending millions just so people could come together, get drunk, hobnob with internet personalities who aren’t even interesting sober, and with some talk of forming a real live third party, all so we can march…
…into what?
The next election in 2012.
Is that all there is? Peggy Lee sang and and millions of us ask?
Another Direction for a Very Sound Reason: Morale
This has been on my mind since 2006.
Leaders, long before they ever started writing memoirs, e.g., a guy in Asia named Temujin comes to mind, have known that they have to keep their soldiers energized for a fight. Morale. A fighting edge. And Temujin, also known as Genghis Khan, cut a swath across half the world, allowing his soldiers to rape and pillage as a way to keep their appetites whetted for the next venture.
We don’t do that anymore, at least in the West, but the math to a successful enterprise when employing a lot of people is still pretty much the same; keep them on the edge of their seats, just itching for the next fight, by keeping them up to their elbows in “good reasons” from the last one. And train, train, train.
In the NFL this requires about seven days. In electoral politics it’s about700, so you can see the problem of morale and fine-tuned fighting skills with 24-month cycles.
The Democrats do this very well. We don’t.
There’s a reason for this. And a connection. The Islamic empire was built the same way Temujin built his, only five centuries earlier, conquering almost a third of the known world. In fact, they sort of wrote the book on “unceasing war,” war without pause or peace.
Food for thought, for we are now in an unrelenting war on two fronts, one at home, the Left, and the other abroad, with the Islamists. They are not randomly joined.
Because of their own peculiar make-up, a kind of burning rage of merely being born into an unfair world in which they are not acknowledged as superior, a life-long teat fit, the “unrelenting war” suits the Left well. There’s is a war of a thousand cuts, where surrender as often comes from just being tired, plumb tuckered out, as if you’d had to try herding four kids at Kings Dominion for eight hours in 95 degree heat. Being slain in combat would be a relief.
Time to shift gears
My old group did analysis, and sometimes (when we could) put together small operations. Our idea has always been to wage war against the Left in every way, and every place, we can. I’ve been preaching this for the longest time.
But the hurry-up-and-wait-700 days voting process is built mostly on outrage but has done little to meet the Left in the streets, alleys and sewers, let alone defeat it. Mostly it has produced a rich industry in selling being angry, (talk radio, books)…leaving a lot of people wanting.
We know a lot of people who want to move beyond outrage.
I have a lot of reasons why this is a good thing, beyond the morale factor. Over the years I have listed many of them, and will do so again at a new site that launches today…
Announcing: GREAT AMERICAN ZEROES (.com)
Great American Zeroes is the name of book I never wrote in 1980 that would’ve had a photo of George Armstrong Custer on its cover. Today its center-folds will be local crooks you never heard of, but also people you/we/all can do something about.
We can make them afraid. We can make them dread getting up in the morning. We can keep them forever looking over their shoulder.
Last year I gave the GAZ name to three men I had known in Macedonia during the Kosovo War. They are specialists in the art of fighting dirty.
They go by John Russell, Vincent Rossini and Augustine D’Onfrio and have already added another colleague from the Balkans, Markovich. They plan to add a couple more. I will be in and out, usually with overviews…
…but GreatAmericanZeroes.com will be an activist site with an edge. It will not be a place to come to get angry. It will be a place to come to begin thinking how you can turn outrage to action.
GAZ will not be like UnifiedPatriots. No dispatches or diaries. But it will be interactive, i.e. you can comment (no login), leave tips, links. And yes, in time, the Left will try to intervene eventually. So it will require a clean-up crew over time.
There will be stories, and leads, right now called “Recent Intel” as well as stories begging the question “What Is to be Done?” (Lenin, 1911) or what can we do about this situation? Your story leads will be welcome.
But GAZ will not trade in outrage, rather an intellectual exercise about a series of problems that need to be solved. If you have solutions (serious ones please) just chime in. Feel free to use as many aliases as you prefer (recommended).
Also, although the format has not been established, GAZ will be offering little tips which someday may work their way into a book much like Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, which I also suggest you all acquaint yourselves with…if you want to move beyond outrage.
These tidbits will include little how-to’s, some embedded, others in the open, as well as news about how various tactics and maneuvers have worked elsewhere.
News you can use.
Eventually they will post a How-to-start-your own-AGITPROP project on a few bucks a day. More sophisticated programs are also available, as they have to pay their way somehow.
From GAZ, as a clearinghouse, you will learn how to network with existing groups in your locale; tea parties, school groups, conservative internet sites, to other groups like yourselves around the country.
Security will be of paramount importance if you are going to be any good. Some things you do in the open; attend a rally, carry a placard, form a barricade. Others you don’t.
We only ask that you observe a few rules:
1) Obey the law
This isn’t hard, since unlike the Left’s attack on us, when you “target” a guilty man, he will behave as a guilty man , not one who is innocent. You won’t have to break the law. Legal terror is wonderful tool; learn it, use it, love it.
2) Do not inhibit anyone in the free exercise of their rights
Don’t worry, as we learned in Wisconsin, most will cross over anyway. Union thugs will lash out because they are bullies, stupid college kids from Illinois will cross the line, forgetting they are in Wisconsin pretending to be local union workers, or UW students.
When they do this we will be waiting for them. Then they are ours. And if you do your jobs well, they will not want to come back for a second try.
3) Punish every lie
This speaks for itself, but every public liar, from college student to public big shot must know his lie has been duly taken down by the Recording Angel, and will be dealt with.
Other than that, kick ’em where it hurts. Every group or class of people have things that scare them. E.g., Union thugs often lie to their wives, “Honey, I’m out bowling” when in fact they’re beating up guys in wheelchairs for $200…but worse, not telling Mame they have two extra C-note s in their wallet.
Like I said, there’s all sorts of ways, and all sorts of methods, from blogging (the low end of activism for you couch potatoes), to videos, to fliers on campus, to placards and protest, to stealth neighborhood invasions such as SEIU pulled on the AIG execs.
(Oh, yes, GAZ will need to raise a little money to operate a full-time ops center. One of my jobs is to search for deeper pockets.)
