To be right-wing means to side with the rich/powerful -- whether you yourself are rich and/or powerful or not. Case in point, the Ku Klux Klan -- most of whom are poor trailer park trash and yet they masochistically support capitalism even though a WHITE coal miner dies every six hours from BLACK lung disease.
When you speak for the rich/powerful, by definition, the rich/powerful can AFFORD to pay for airtime, column space and so forth. However, when you speak for the poor/oppressed you're rolling dice and taking chances, because by definition, the poor/oppressed can't afford to take care of themselves -- let alone a spokesperson ...
Now juxtapose the aforementioned onto the following: Free speech ain't just a quality, it's also a QUANTITY. This means it's not just a matter of whether you're allowed to have free speech, it's also a matter of HOW MUCH free speech you have. If the rich/powerful pay for Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, etc. to be on the TV every day ...
... meanwhile, the poor/oppressed are lucky to have an obscure website, is it any wonder why the world is the way it is? If the bad guys are reaching millions daily and the good guys can only reach a few thousand on occasion -- well, how does that old expression go? "A lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
Rather than acknowledge this David and Goliath disparity, the predominantly white left will claim a lack of subtlety is the cause of all our woes. Even though Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc. are anything but subtle, people like me are constantly told to "tone it down" lest we alienate potential recruits.
First, seeing as how white left-wingers are more statistically likely to be related to a Republican than any other demographic (as Michael Moore stated right after the 2004 election, "88% of Bush's support came from white voters"), their constant calls for subtlety are suspect at best.
Second, while it'd be nice if an activist could convert a right-winger as quickly as those ghosts turned out Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol (keeping in mind each ghost was rude to Scrooge), none of the activists I've ever met over the years can walk through walls or travel through time, so such overnight conversions are obviously rare.
Extreme paradigm shifts (Ron Kovacs of Born on the Fourth of July fame, for instance) don't happen very often, so why is the emphasis on civilizing savages? Mainly because the white left is afraid for the lives of their ig-nant kinfolk: Should the revolution go down tonight, their archetypal conservative brother-in-laws at the Thanksgiving dinner table would end up target practice for someone asking what would Che do (as opposed to asking what would Jesus do). Unfortunately, white leftists are more concerned with the fate of their right-wing relatives in a post-revolutionary scenario than they are with WHY there'd be such a revolution in the first place.
For the record, I've always been against killing my enemies (thank all those Batman comics I read as a kid), but cussin' 'em out AIN'T a Human rights violation! Let's play compare and contrast, shall we? Recently, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dared America to impose sanctions on his OPEC nation as a terrorism sponsor: "Great, let them make their [terrorist] list and shove it in their ... pocket," Chavez said with a pause for comic effect.
My boy Hugo told Uncle Skkkam to shove it! In contrast, that overrated pretty boy Barack Obama recently denounced his own minister in order to keep from alienating those who ought to know better. Because the Reverend Jeremiah Wright rightfully pointed out, among other things, that America, "supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans," Obama has now cut Rev. Wright off like a gangrene limb in war time.
Hugo Chavez was elected and reelected via landslides. In contrast, Obama will be lucky if he can squeak by this fall without having the election stolen from under him, so don't you dare claim Obama's cowardice is a winning, realistic strategy! Besides, win, lose or draw, I'd much rather have a leader who's honest and fearless.
Finally, the goal of activism is not necessarily to convert but to present a choice. Scrooge could've just as soon told those Christmas ghosts to kiss his ass -- in which case, he'd have simply wound up in Hell after he died. On Wednesday, October 24th, 2007, Desiree Anita Ali-Fairooz from Code Pink waved blood-colored hands in Condoleezza Rice's face at a congressional hearing while yelling, "The blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands!" IS THERE A SINGLE PERSON ON THIS PLANET DELUSIONAL ENOUGH TO CLAIM ALI-FAIROOZ SHOULD'VE BEEN MORE SUBTLE?!
As Fidel Castro once said, "History will absolve me!" Likewise, history will also absolve Desiree Anita Ali-Fairooz, President Hugo Chavez, yours truly and anyone else who alienated the ignorant or suspect. The comfort level of the spoiled be damned.
SOURCES:
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/06/int04033.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKN1462936620080314
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/14/obama.minister/?iref=hpmostpop
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/24/4789/
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/31/6768/
... THERE'S A STALKER ALERT IN EFFECT ...
http://www.saablofton.org/announcement.html
... I REPEAT, THERE'S A STALKER ALERT IN EFFECT ...