Discussion for article #221328
I’m so confused by the media narrative.
Take gun control for example. The media keeps saying that politicians are afraid of the NRA. I can’t say I get that. The NRA lost almost every election in 2012. Yet we have no background checks and legislators run away from the issue. People are ready to beat down the gun issue, but they still can’t get anyone to vote for it in Congress.
So, someone tell me what is working here?
I wonder if there is a sense of immediacy in the contact that groups like the NRA have, which, coupled with the potential power which they represent tends to hold people’s attention in the same manner that deer seemed pinned by headlights.
This is the same dynamic employed by bullies in schools and other settings.
That immediacy is much more powerful in dominating decision making than apparently abstract potential consequences which require thoughtful reflection and analysis to absorb.
I have long been troubled by the frantic drive to raise funding which seems motivated by a belief that all that is required to win elections is to buy them. Have we on the left become victims of our own scare propaganda?
My reply to Moodpost captures some of the essence of the dilemma, but the fact is that ideas, when well articulated, can capture attention even more effectively than power and control behaviors such as the rampant use of money and intimidation.
History tells us that the messages of Ghandi, MLK, and even Jesus, were much more powerful than all the forces arrayed against them.
When will we acquire and deploy the courage of our convictions and stop cowering before the Bundy’s, Koch,'s, NRA,s and their ilk?
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