Tuesday, January 16, 2018

The Proverbial Meme Dictionary...please add items!



PROVERBIAL MEME – a word, statement or phrase providing enlightenment, insight or epiphany; communication of a sudden realization, passed between friends; means of double connection and exchange

Memes in the dictionary are placed by an author and reviewed for validity as a meme by the property interest bearers of the dictionary.  Just because you put a few words together that sound good and satisfying to you doesn’t mean anybody but you is going to “get it”.  So we test drive the meme before it goes in the dictionary.  To save yourself embarrassment and disappointment, please “test drive” your meme before submission for inclusion.  Only the author may change the meme.  Solicitous appeals for revision are the only means of getting the author to change what is in the dictionary.  No amount of ego is going to effect change of the meme.

Meme Game

You give a meme to accomplish a task.  I wanted to give a little boy some money for a pen with gold flakes he sold me which I sold for a LOT more money.  I could only meet him at a huge event of over 4,000 people.  How could I find him to give him the money?  The game is for everyone to pass along the meme.  It will only mean something to that ONE person and he has enough information to find me.  The meme is “Money for the boy with the golden pen.  Barefoot, long hair, old.”

No gods
No masters
No martyrs
No cages

Let them do what they want and you do what needs to be done.

Success: failing enough times to eliminate what doens’t work so it’s easier to find what does work.

Millennials = waiting for permission and release


If you can’t trust women with power and control, why would you trust them with children?

We grow through blending the recipe of curiosity, observation and contemplation.  We are merely gathering the ingredients by sharing our thoughts.

If you turn off the sunshine, your whole world will disappear.

Debt
Dependency
Debauchery

Those who live by their own labor vs those who live by the labor of others.

Hope is not a strategy

Cockroaches = fast, dark, ugly parasites with no good intent.

Bureaucrates = cockroaches

Cockroaches always scatter in the light.

Mushroom = statist

Teachers give you the truth.  Mentors help you to discover it for yourself.

Judgement is useless.  Discernment is our goal.


Taxes vs voluntary charitable gifting

It’s never good business to kill your customers.

Intolerance is born of ignor-ance

If you habituate to carrying a target, you are sprinting toward defeat.

If you like the product, then the way it was produced is at least good.

Curiosity is the cure.

Media = controversy, calamity, carnality

They be fucked by their own design.

Drumming
Dabs
Dumbing Down

No time to wait, use their weapons against them.

Spend less time on things that are not going in the same direction as you.

There are only two kinds of people: Those who want power over you and those who want you to have power over yourself.  We make a thousand choices each day which one we are and an indicator of our choice is our use of the word “should”.

Who decides?
Who pays?
Who benefits?

Knowledge and wisdom are not proportional to the amount of disseminated information.

Freedom or popularity.

Problem, contradiction, exception.

Bureaucracy is a weapon usable by only one faction of politics; the one that wants power over you.

Onerous restrictions are awful.  Allowable infringements are worse.

Don’t be tricked into being so honorable you tell the Nazis where the Jews are.

Leaders are not forged by ease.

Arrogance = Ignor-ance

Decorum only serves those who hope to enslave.

Turn no cheek to those who intend harm.  Slap back.

The USA is the laughing stock of the world: trigger words, safe spaces, adults carrying stuffed animals and drum circles.

Don’t vote for what you don’t want.

TANFL = there ain’t no free lunch (formerly TANSTAAFL)
SNAFU = situation normal, all fucked up

PDXia = Portlandia or other situations where it’s nearly impossible to “live”.

Right Wing rage brought us the KKK and Left Wing Rage the Union Secured Weekend.  Both were attained by TWWTE.

Some achieve everything through force.  Others use persuasion and principle.  What is your preference?

The wicked witch enticed Hansel and Gretel, not with work and truth but lies and candy….free concerts, free toys, free seminars, free movies, free pools, free art, free books, free food, free shelter, free rides…..

If you don’t trust others, why should I trust you?

EVERYONE wants to take down the tallest poppy when it’s next door and not on a stage.

Fashion is an obsession with lying and controlling others.


Monday, January 8, 2018

Free Business Ideas - Including Games

As a libertarian, I'm all about everybody making a profit we can all those amazing things we want to with the money.  To that end, I hope these provide some opportunity for someone to make some money.  The only think I ask if you do succeed with one of these ideas is you give 10% of your net profits to a charity that refuses taxpayer dollars.

Game Changer

PURPOSE

To help all of us get a regular dose of the reality about who we are and what we say.  Small, pen-like recording devices are currently available and can be discreetly sported on a jacket, coat or purse.

RULES

Before play begins, the Leader of the Game (the one doing the recording) ascertains whether those "in play" are interested in seeking truth and finding out more about themselves.  It's no fun if you spring it on them and they get mad...you might lose a friend or two.

The Leader records the conversation between themselves and one or two other people without the others knowing the conversation is being recorded.  It is very important The Leader never leaves the situation before "the reveal".  All credibility and trust is lost if they do.

At the end of the "recording time", while the recorder is still going, the Leader reminds them of their desire for truth and finding out more about themselves.  They then "reveal" the recording device and ask all participants "Do you want to know what's on the recording?"

Unless there is 100% buy-in, The Leader erases the entry in front of the others and the game is over.

If all agree to listen....play the recording and let the game of Changing Who We Are begin!

NOTE:  It is very important that nothing else be recorded on the device and it is obvious what just happened is entry ONE of only ONE file on the device.

Living History

PURPOSE

If I had a dollar for every time I wished I had listened to my grandmother's stories or paid attention to my family's chaotic and eclectic ramblings about their lives and times past, I could buy Trump Tower.  And the unkindest cut of all; had I taken the time to ask about their lives and recorded what they said, the loss of those precious souls and the mystery surrounding their part of my own history would not sting nearly so deeply as the biggest regret of my entire life.

DESCRIPTION

Capturing the stories and histories of our families is a lot easier with a specified set of questions.  There's little point in listing those here as every family historian knows the ropes and the internet will provide all.  The difference here is to get the family talking and arguing and remembering and feeling and laughing and sharing and just having a rip-roaring good time being...a family.  It's amazing what happens to the dynamics when you get different parts of the family together...and sometimes talk about the other parts of the family.  Just remember....everybody will be listening to all of it.

While "Voice to Text" is a no-brainer today, it's still a bit iffy for conversations between lots of people so stick to tried and true recordings.  If your choice is CDs/DVDs, get the archival ones which reported last up to 10 years.  The normal ones bomb out in about 3-5 years.  Tape is still the winner in the longevity sweepstakes and I'm a big fan of dictaphone transcription.  Boy, do you get to really know and understand stuff when it goes through your brain and heart.

Final Record

PURPOSE

Whether solemn and subdued, tearful rituals of piety or joy filled crazy celebrations of the departed and their lives, funerals are always a little stressful for everyone to get through.  And nobody usually thinks to preserve what what said or done.  This would be a permanent keepsake for those attending and for future generations of curious progeny who never got a chance to meet their ancestors.

Families put together video/slideshow of the life being honored but what if it were a plug and play system which made it easy for any family, regardless of grief or stress, to have a lasting memory of their departed's "final life event".

Needful Things

PURPOSE

It's the business of getting for others exactly what they want.  Sort of the ultimate surrogate shopper.  Russel Turner came up with the idea and actually tried it out but didn't get any takers.  I still think it's a great idea I doubt he'd care if I gave it away.

Defining Times

PURPOSE

To encourage and proliferate an understanding of the meaning of words, their proper use and how important enlarging your vocabulary really is.

DESCRIPTION

Not really a fleshed out idea, just a thought for a trivia style game which can be played two ways:

1. Give people a definition of a word and have people come up with the actual word.
2. Have a "Meaning-Bee" where, instead of spelling the word, the contestant has to give an acceptably accurate definition of the word to the judges.

You already read the "suggested reading" :-)

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Send Our Seniors Back to School...lifelong learning is what we all need.

If you are only marginally aware of what conservative and libertarian students go through in colleges around the US, here's a few links to bring you up to speed.  It ain't your grandparent's college anymore.
Silence U Part 1 Brown University VIDEO

3 conservative students speak out about the free speech climate on campus PRINT
Silence U Part 2 Yale University VIDEO

Looks pretty discouraging doesn't it?  How can we, the hopelessly outnumbered, possibly achieve even a toe-hold on getting our voices and opinions heard on college campuses?


Don't worry, there is hope. Thanks to the long history of individual mentors like Tom Palmer and organizations like The Institute for Humane Studies, we are pumping out some fabulous libertarian educators for the future.  However, that doesn't help current students at Portland State University where courses like "Revolutionary Marxism" and "Bollywood: Communicating Contemporary South Asia through Cinema" are the norm.

This campus is quite happy to shut down any political activity if it's "triggering".  So how can we possibly support these student without becoming embroiled in the college's political agenda?

We call for reinforcements.  And just who on earth would that be?

We give a shout out to the libertarians and conservatives who graduated from college 'way back when...'.  That's right folks, we call in the old people, our "honored citizens" who don't give a damn about what kind of credit or grade they get in a college course because they've already been there, done that and moved on to successful lives and careers.  We send out an SOS to our army of aging, true grit libertarians spoiling for a fight, not overly concerned what anyone thinks of their opinion and steeled enough to take a few body blows to their intellect and ego.

Think that's a silly idea?  Well, imagine you are a fresh-faced, wide-eyed 17 year old young man from a conservative Alabama home and it's your first week at Portland State.  How shell-shocked would you be by the extreme progressive political agenda dominating courses like Calculus and Advanced Grammatical Structure?  You might start wondering if hell could be any worse than the brow-beating you've received from nearly every one of your professors because your opinions are politically incorrect.

Now imagine week two and how you would feel if that old lady in the corner started asking questions and making points you no longer felt free to because your grade hangs in the balance?  Would it give you hope and courage?  Would it go a long way toward making you feel you weren't battling Goliath alone?

There's little point in belaboring this concept.  I think you get the idea.  It's a pretty simple concept.

However, this is not something you can expect to "wing" and achieve success.  You'll need some due diligence in studying the highly effective tactics used to silence debate in the classroom and elsewhere.  It's called the Delphi Technique for achieving a predetermined "consensus" and you've run up against it in every government meeting you've ever attended. With even a modestly short study of the Delphi Technique, your ability to derail these tactics wherever and whenever you encounter them will increase dramatically.

The other thing you'll need is a team.  Two or three purposeful students knowing and countering the Delphi Technique can seed an audience and make a huge difference in the atmosphere of any class.  WARNING: You can't do this by yourself!  You will end up getting both yourself and your ideas marginalizing and discredited, please trust me.

So, how about it all you boomer libertarians with a desire to increase liberty and encourage free speech?  Think you might enjoy a little "slap and tickle" with the enemy?  Those young people could sure use your help and bridging the generation gap would have a whole new meaning.  GO FOR IT!

BTW did you get the double entendre of the title?  Send our seniors BACK, to school...the progressive agenda pushers on their lack of reason and our young people how to fight and win.

SUGGESTED READING:

The Original Scope and Purpose of the Delphi Technique
Long since abandoned for a much more productive use - to achieve a predetermined consensus.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Have you ever noticed a "magic leaf"?

We've all seen them.  

They hang, fluttering in the air apparently suspended in space but not time.  They dance and swing with each subtle breeze and amazingly withstand umbrella destroying gusts.

Usually we're in such a hurry they obtain merely a passing glance of wonderment and off we go.  Maybe we'll stand and watch for a few seconds or join in the squealing delight of some preteen discovering "the magical natural world" for the first time.

If you keep watching for these little happenings, you'll soon discover all sorts of debris hanging seemingly effortlessly from the sky.  Leaves, tiny sticks, flower petals, bits of anything really.

So, why are they just...hanging there?

I did find out.  Withstanding the urge to rush on to the next thing, I shut the car door and looked at the leaf dangling in the driveway next to the pine tree.  The usual dance ensued but because I was determined to stay put for a time, I also noticed the thread it was hanging from.  Obviously it was a spider web bit.  But where was the spider web?

I looked around the leaf, assuming it had caught on one of the strands of the web and pulled it down and was now hanging on for dear life to that strand while it pranced in my driveway.  I looked again.  No web.

The faint memory of looking for aboriginal hand prints in an Australian overhang cave came to mind.  I had stood there for 45 minutes close to dusk in eye popping strain trying to see the "sacred hand prints".  Nothing.  Dusk was easing toward "okay, time to go or you won't find the car" when I spotted them.  THOUSANDS OF THEM. That weird optical illusion thing of "can see the forest for the trees" had finally kicked in. I stood in rapt awe for 2 minutes and then bolted for the car...I was 42 miles outside Alice Springs in January in the Australian bush.  I could mummify out here before someone would find me.

It must be the same thing with the spider web.  So I kept looking.

A good 12 feet above the leaf, high up in the pine tree was the web.  OK, now it's getting weird.  You mean that leaf hit the web, caught a strand and stretched it out 12 feet?

Since that was not a working hypothesis, the only other option was the spider put it there intentionally to counter weight the web against high winds.

Seemed to make sense but not really worth much unless I found another web.  I did.  Again, and again and again and again.  It was consistently the same result.  Between 3-15 feet above "the magic leaf" there was a spider web with one, long extra strand holding "the magic leaf" or debris as it swung in the air.  Who knew.  spiders really are engineers!

So, tell me about your "magic leaf" experiences.  Do you agree with me?  What does an Aracnaphile think about this idea? (Is that a real thing?  There's the folks who study them Aracnologist, but I'm talking about those who looooove them).

I'd definitely be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Suggested Short Reading

Leonard E Read "Explore and Explore and Explore"

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Rather than heroes, I see them as whores

As more and more women come out of the wood work to testify about former abuse by powerful people, there is the unseen part of their silence that needs to see the light of day as well.

Yes, they were violated.  There will probably be sufficient evidence on many occasions to more than prove a violation happened.  However, I would like to ask some questions of these so badly damaged individuals.  The answers may help un-puzzle these accuser's current (and past) motives.

But first I'll tell you the story of my early career encounters with "free hands employers".  It was an office work job which I desperately needed as I'd been on my own since I was 17 (this was 1968 and I was 19).

The first couple of months were great!  I thought I'd found a home at last so I brought in my favorite coffee mug.  The one my dad had especially made for me in Japan after the war and it had my name on it.  It was gorgeous with the fine line drawing some amazing Japanese artists now on the streets after WWII.  It was stunning and I loved it more than anything more so after my parents parted in a very messy divorce.

Deep in conversation with the boss and holding my mug of coffee, I didn't notice everyone had left the office.  It was about 6pm and I said I should go when suddenly....the amazing groping octopus came barrelling toward me (he was middle eastern heritage in case you just couldn't stop yourself from asking that question).

I evaded most of the thrusting whatevers, gave a hard shove with my elbow to the gut (thank you Steve, the former boyfriend who knew karate) dropped my mug, grabbed my purse and bolted through the door.  I never returned. 

I ate potatoes for two weeks and scoured the want ads and billboards for housecleaning jobs until I got a new office position a month later (there was no internet).  So, you think it's not the same as what some of these women suffered?  You're right.  My experience was worse for several reasons.

The memory of the loss of that mug, now my father is dead, hurts far more than either of the two times I was raped (one was my direct fault, the other was totally bad karma and I'm lucky to be alive).  But I made a choice to greatly disadvantage myself in order to leave an unprincipled situation and person, regardless of what it cost me personally.  This was 1967 folks.  If you reported rape, you were often treated as a criminal and there weren't many women police officers.

These women didn't.  For the most part, they stayed.  Why?  Because they valued their perceived benefit in staying over their own principles.  They could have attempted to expose the person then but they chose to benefit from taking the disrespect of themselves and their principles.  Even the one who was asleep!  Seriously, you didn't know what kind of a person you were falling asleep around?  There were no "previous indicators" of who your manipulative, power-seeking boss truly was?  Really?

In the second part, I must admit to being as guilty as they but for entirely different reasons.  Our crime was to not hold the person accountable for their behavior.  OK, 1967, me a know nothing, high school educated, child abused sickly being with about as much self-esteem as a toilet seat.  I was stupid, completely alone (no family or friends I could ask for anything) and broke.

And then we have these women who were in polite society situations with highly educated, wealthy, respectable people in probably not too shabby a paid job.  Yes, they had a lot more to walk away from but they did turn their backs on the most precious thing in their existence.  Their principles.

The most egregious condemnation of these women is their silence about those with so much power.  My little middle eastern mauler could only do so much damage in his small sphere of influence and probably did to the maximum and to many.  But in the magic realm of someone like Al Frankin, the immense possibilities to do harm are virtually endless, especially with those who idolized him.

So now that you've come forward, years or decades later, how many other women after you were damaged because of your decision to remain silent?  These were not stay at home dads and they free-ranged the world including every backwater country or location you can name.  If they were willing to rape you here in the US, exactly what do you think they may have "gotten away with" as visitors to places so ravaged with control issues they no longer even exist.

History abounds with the unmentionable acts of those with immense power and privilege.  Unseen they have committed atrocities throughout the ages...because they could.  Why do we think anything has changed?

So, no, rather than celebrate all these women "coming out" about famous people it saddens me it took until now for them to speak and seemingly only when a heap of others did.  That does not speak well of our current "society" or women.

Only when we look at each other on a day to day basis as "a set of values" instead of "a color" and "purveyors of principles" instead of "collectors of power" will it change.  It's the same answer over and over.  When we change, they will change.  When we establish these kinds of guidelines for assessing each other; when we practice these ways of being in our homes and businesses, then will those who want power over others change their behavior.

Start with today.  See people for who they really are; their values and principles.  Ignore their appearance which could lead you to an entirely wrong conclusion.  Look for who they really are by how they treat and deal with others.  Seeing only the surface may find you turning away from a future life-long friend...you never got to know because of their "packaging".

Suggested SHORT Reading:  

Frederik Bastiat "That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen"

Monday, October 23, 2017

An Open Letter to Libertarians (big AND little L)

Why we will continue to lose until we are ashamed of being un-herdable cats.


Recently I experienced one of the most spectacular failures of my activist career.  I spent two months living, breathing, dreaming, eating and of course promoting an event called “Principles of Libertarianism”.  This was my quintessential offering of enlightened understanding and shortcuts to create spider hordes of libertarians throughout the world…ok so Walter Mitty and I have a lot in common.

I had secured heaps of incredible libertarian promotional products from over 10 national organizations.  These were for the anticipated capacity crowd and I overtly spammed my entire world with the news and flyers.  However, the event fell a little short of expectation.

The five homeless scarfing up the food and kombucha while bagging the bottled water and anything they could sell outnumbered the real attendees by two.  And did I mention my presentation was underwhemingly received by everyone.

Oh, it gets better.  I did it all in front of a representative from our favorite political liberty promoting organization who flew in from Virginia.

It was a costly and embarrassing experience:  wonderful food but perishable and a loss; 93 copies of “The Law”, mountains of fantastic promotional material to shoehorn into our 840 sq ft home and a tepid, quivering ripple of response instead of the trumpeted arrival of the Holy Grail I had foreseen.  I literally had to bootstrap my ego up just to get it into the toilet.

But the greater tragedy, the big failure, wasn’t even my apparent mega-disaster.

How could what should have been a great promotional opportunity become such a woeful NON-event?  It was a good date and time, a centrally located, well-known downtown location, easy to get to/park with a well-appointed FREE room and then I publicized the heck out of the thing.

It wasn’t enough.  I kept trying to get folks involved and actively excited, but the enthusiasm to get involved just wasn’t there no matter how hard I tried.

OK, back to the drawing board and re-hone my skills to engage people, figure out what would appeal more to volunteers, learn better how to connect people to the ideas, get a new strategy, study my target market more….wait a minute!  I just did all that stuff over the last two years and I’m pretty damn good at marketing libertarianism in this Collectivist Mecca called Portlandia so what went wrong?

“What we have here is a failure to communicate”.  An excellent line from a cool movie and it was a very apt description of the situation.  Libertarians are big people, right?  You just have to offer them a good thing and they will recognize the importance of doing a big event publicizing libertarianism, hand out libertarian gear and be at the ready to discuss any topic from the libertarian perspective.  They would just jump right in, offers of help would flood my inbox, and everybody would happily choose a task with “peddle” to the metal, expanding the influence of liberty….yadda yadda yadda.

It didn’t quite work that way.  It didn’t really work…at all!

The only parts that glowed with success were the four amazing people who “soldiered up” for the experience and braved the day with me.  For their help, I will be eternally grateful.  Without their stalwart pitch-in ability it would have been a Chernobyl instead of just an annoying sinkhole.

However, despite enthusiastically promoting the event to tons of libertarians months before, I wasn’t seeing anybody beat a path to my door by a long shot.  No enthusiastic landslide of folks competing to offer help.  No “hey, I’ll post this for you” or “give me some flyers” or even “here’s the list of members” from organizations who should have jumped at the chance.  While everyone thought it was a fantastically important and much needed presentation that would do a world of good, no one offered to get in and help get it done.

Now, this may seem like a whine-fest since you probably get folks to sign on to your projects or workshops wherever you are promoting libertarianism.  You have to motivate and entice, cajole and encourage.  I get it and I do it all.  However, here in the Northwest it must be the water or the air, but we have difficulty getting people to do anything but talk, blog and pass out information about the problems.

There is, thankfully, Albert Jay Nock’s marvelous “remnant” who consistently show up with their hearts, minds and hands in a determined CAN DO space, but most libertarians seem to have too much on their plates to get involved.  They all have important things to do like running businesses, having families, getting an education, starting new careers, taking care of parents.  So, it’s easy to see how hard it is for people who love freedom and donate generously to find the extra time to also do the promotion and hands-on work.

I understand.

What I don’t understand is how come all those collectivists who also have jobs and careers and college educations to pay for and businesses and families manage to find all that time to do the volunteer work which is creating the amazing success they have had marketing a seriously messed up product.

And please don’t say “they get all that money from the government and George Soros and all those state employees to help them”.  It’s SUCH an embarrassing argument when we call ourselves rational business people.  Imagine you’re little Umpqua Bank here in Portland and you use those same excuses about having to compete with Bank of America.  Does the excuse sound a bit more pathetic now?

You see, I’ve worked intimately with “the other side” on the fluoride campaign here in Portlandia.  The City Council thought they could just shove a high dose in our drinking water and call it good…no discussion, no vote.  HALF the Democrats and two libertarians said “Hell No!”.  And it was a right royal battle to behold.

I did a lot of data entry in the main database and spend hundreds of hours in the office.  Our ability to choose to not ingest fluoride prevailed by a healthy margin but in this town; all wins are only “for the moment”.

HOW we won that campaign was the Blue Ribbon eye opener.

What I experienced working with this all democrat crew was the complete opposite of everything I’d been told about how the left operated.  It was also unlike anything I had ever seen in the boatload of liberty and conservative campaigns I’d worked on.

Below are a few things I learned when I worked for eight months in the Portland Clean Water Campaign.  After that exercise in humility, I took a long, hard, unvarnished look at the liberty movement over the last decade.  You didn’t need to be Sheldon on “The Big Bang Theory” to see why our nonexistent strategy and lackluster efforts had culminated as inch worm progress for liberty and an avalanche of legislation for enslavement.

We are practically moving retrograde while the George Soros Express to the Dark Ages roars past us at vision blurring speed.  Maybe it’s time to take the noteworthy pages from their playbook below and start making just a tad more progress.

            1.    Volunteers are their greatest asset.  Leadership is ever mindful of this in all they plan and do.  Considerable time and effort is made toward the “feed and caring” of the foot soldiers.  This nurturing and mentoring attitude is the magic glue that keeps their army coming back time and time again.  They don’t have to continually get new people to work because they have put off the ones they used before.

            2.    There are always several pop-up and scheduled, well organized, high energy, fun and exciting events for volunteers and staff.  They are always scheduled with specific results and outcomes in mind and they usually achieve them.

            3.     A lot of time and effort goes into training people to “do the ask” with role playing and scripts.  Consequently, everyone is helped to feel comfortable doing a direct ASK for money or support, with or without a script.  They are particularly enthusiastic when thanking people for their previous support…and then asking for more.

            4.    When offering tasks, the organizing people give volunteers a sense of “turf” or ownership of either an area or a position.  They encourage the feeling of responsibility and commitment.  The job or task becomes their territory and they develop a proprietary interest in what happens there.

            5.     Excellent training is provided for whatever task you are asked to participate in.
a.           Scripts for phone work are always provided and constantly reviewed for success and
b.           People monitor the success of activities or events, have criteria for success and change readily when their strategy isn’t working.

            6.     Accurate record keeping is a hallmark.  They keep copious and accurate records of everything and pass on the gathered information and statistics to those within and outside the organization.
a.           Keep track down to the level of who knocked where, who they spoke to, how long, the outcome and how to follow-up.
b.           Keep locations of yard sign placement, especially the larger ones.
c.           Constantly updated volunteer information about what they work on, their success and failures on every project, how they work, who they work well with, what they really like or are good at doing.

            7.    Focus their marketing efforts only on the “serious voters” with a track record of participation in the process.  They actively shop for their supporters and quickly move on from those who aren’t.  They give up convincing the completely ignorant in the early stages of the campaign.

            8.    Repeatedly offer an opportunity to sign a “pledge” to promise to vote NO on the issue.  There were other activities that also gained a commitment to follow through from whoever they talked to.
            9.     The “pledge” method also worked when they were registering voters (which they had lots of people doing at every event).  There were a lot of people who changed their registration from Non-affiliated to Democrat which indicates who was doing the door knocking.

          10.      The fluoride issue split the Democratic Party and the Democrats on the “no mandated fluoride in our drinking water” side got a genuine slap in the face from the Nurses Union when they experienced some of the aggression and negative pressure libertarians regularly experience.  It was semi-sweet revenge but only for two minutes because they immediately taught them how to respond in that kind of a situation.

          11.      The majority of registered Democrats were NOT on our side.  Additionally, despite this being the perfect political cross-over issues for many conservatives and libertarians, extremely few from the liberty side ever came to help with the fluoride campaign.  They all voted with us but never came to help.  There were innumerable opportunities to cross pollinate that went sadly un-taken.  This may have been the greatest opportunity for political cross pollination that has ever happened in Portland O.

          12.     People are held accountable for failure and leadership doesn’t bother to go behind closed doors to do it.  In front of an office full of volunteers, they will politely upbraid someone with a comforting smile on their face.  There are also interesting and subtle ways employed to let you know others followed through on a project and you didn’t.

          13.     Something we also do which is self-delusional; they have endless ways to mentally justify an inconsistency so they can live with it.  This is called cognitive dissonance.  However, they “work through it” mentally, actively embracing and nullifying their opponent’s viewpoint with creative perspectives and specific, repeatable “understandings” on the subject.

          14.    When they find opposition, they don’t just marginalize or dismiss it.  They develop tactics and strategize for their hopeful resolution.  They always assume whatever it is they are fighting will crash and burn and their good idea will ultimately prevail.

          15.   They keep a very clear vision of what they want and stay in focus and on task every day.

          16.       I observed and overheard a lot of serious mentoring from more experienced folks usually over the phone but also in person.  This supposedly grass roots movement had a lot of very sophisticated campaign strategies, e.g. they targeted libertarians with robo calls highlighting a local libertarian policy group which said “even Cascade Policy Institute was for a NO vote”.  They seriously understand the difference between having a teacher give people the truth and having a mentor help them discover it for themselves.

          17.     They excel at treating people as if they were diamonds and gold.  They encourage, listen to, commiserate with, patiently wait for and sincerely complement each other for work well done or needed.  They talk to each person on the phone like they have a valued, personal relationship and that person is very special…and not just to ‘the cause’.  We have no clue and treat volunteers and even paid staff as dumbass disposables, replaceable-in-a-heartbeat.

          18.     Leadership is constantly pumping people up with what they had done or will do (sometimes a little over the top but then who doesn’t like having their exploits exaggerated, right?)

          19.     There was an often stated and very clear vision of what they wanted, why they wanted it and how they plan to get it.  This was reinforced a lot.

          20.     They are:
a.           Organized
b.           Dedicated
c.           Focused
d.           Practice follow-through
e.           Provide consequences
f.             Offer NO excuses---NONE (not what we keep telling ourselves they do, is it?)
g.           Market to the max every time and to every one
h.           They have a very clear vision of their future.

          21.     They bust their butts continuously.  They work REALLY, REALLY HARD and expect everyone else to do the same.  They do expert peer pressure but most of the pressure to excel is internal.  They use the specter of the other side to motivate volunteers by fostering a sense of urgency and potentially dire consequences.  They consistently reinforce how “the other side is really powerful and we have to hurry up and work really hard to keep the vision or our shared future interact”.

          22.     One great advantage we have but seldom use is the ability to promote the concept of choice in the discussion.  They are always very careful to stay away from anything that includes the choice thing as a prime motivator – it was last on their list “Reasons to Vote NO on putting fluoride in drinking water”.  According to their market research, “having a choice” didn’t resonate that well with the target audience.  That’s a bit scary in itself.

The single most important thing they do which we blow off as totally unnecessary is amusingly ironic considering who most of us pride ourselves on being. They know how to build and maintain effective, cohesive and extremely long-lived teams.

We, on the other hand, relish and groom our seemingly eternal image as a bunch of cats incapable of even agreement on the basics let alone voluntarily being “herded”.  We have demonized team building in the political arena as some outside attempt to control us.  We feel completely relaxed and righteous about how little we do in service to a common goal we all say we desire and value.

The unintended but completely justified consequence is we are exactly where we deserve to be.  And nothing will really change until more people start picking up shovels, work as a team and achieve strategized goals.

Policy lobbying is not cutting it.  Serious seekers (those willing to pick up shovels and do the necessary grunt work) are hungry for “get your hands dirty” tasks that empower us to further success.  We want passion, commitment, serious and fulfilling work and FUN.  We also want a sense of connection with a purpose, a goal and a team.  We want some plans of action that will empower our daily lives, not another plea for our money so “those who know how” can elect the right people, organize the right project and promote the right policy for us.

The top down solution model is no longer serviceable.  You can work forever to get the apex of the pyramid of power to move a hair’s width or you can go to the base of the pyramid, enliven the potential ocean of libertarians and they will, in no uncertain terms, gently tsunami the whole pyramid, including the apex, exactly where the greatest number of choices dictates—yayyyyy!

Why not start creating and employing our own strategies for success instead of empowering those of our enslavers?  We know we are completely capable of obliterating the web of self-replicating chaos created by their passion for conformity.  With focused intention, we will dissolve the current reality we helped them fashion with our passive acceptance.  No longer will we excuse our lack of accomplishment and success with the supposed advantages of the other side.  We will own up to the humbling fact that the real cause of all our ills is we did a very shabby job of marketing what Michael Cloud calls “the greatest product on earth”.

In my near future I see the time when we will finally shoulder the responsibility of remaining as vigilant of our freedom as Jefferson cautioned so long ago.  We can tip the scales in our favor only when libertarians become as passionate about our values and access to choice as some folks were and still are about the Spotted Owl.

Renee Daphne Kimball released 8 August 2017, Portland, Oregon

suggested short read:

Earthworks has a great little book that illustrates my example and which came out...decades ago.  Have a look.  There are some great suggestions and I've used many of them in my marketing campaigns for liberty.....they are principled, they work, so what are we waiting for?  "50 Simple Things You Can Do To Fight the Right".