Vinegar and honey.
The whole point of building on the nines, as slinkP will tell you, was to increase the us, and that you can’t do by walking up to them and sneering and spitting and backhanding them in the face, telling them they’re idiots, full of shit and nonsense, signifying nothing. Find the common ground—it’s always closer than you think: enemy soldiers on the front lines will forever have more in common with each other than with their own generals. Find that common ground and show them the way to us. —Anything else is chest-thumpery, sound and fury, heat without light; aggrandizing the us. Not increasing it.
But sometimes—
Here’s the Yes on 36 site—the one that’s, you know. For kids. Check its hip air of faux defiance, its commodified dissent: “I won’t be redefined.” Check the language in the Q&A on 36: “Measure 36 puts very simple wording in our State Constitution saying marriage is only between a guy and a girl.” Check how open-minded they’re trying to be: “Hopefully all Oregonians are against discrimination. But Measure 36 is only about marriage.” Check the focus of the clippings in their morgue: “Support for same-sex marriage among youth is shallow and summed up in one of the young generation’s favorite words: ‘whatever,’ Stanton says.”
(Of course, you should also check the muddled mix of rough and smooth edges, the use of white-on-grey Trebuchet, the outdated, washed-out rave flyer colors, the Gen X nostalgia-trip Fisher-Price rip in the logo, the awkwardly obvious stock photography and off-the-shelf clipart. You should meditate on why the promotional videos might only be available in Windows and RealPlayer formats. You should view the source and ask yourself what webdesigner worth their salt would use tables for something like this. But hey.)
This is honey, from a comb that’s slick and sophisticated enough. Conn Creative may be a small shop, but it’s a small New York shop, and that alone is enough to suggest this wasn’t ginned up by plucky volunteers with a passion for parttime politics. This them has a bankroll, and they’re using it in a bid to reach out and tear up Larry’s and Cshea’s marriage license, and they have the nerve to try and tell me it’s for my good—and they want so very badly to look hip while they’re doing it!
Gah. It’s the old paradox of contempt for contempt, intolerance of intolerance: I tell myself it would do no good to tell Conn Creative to sit down and be you silent, Christian; they would only stuff their ears with Leviticus and yammer “Sodom Sodom Sodom” till I gave up and went away. I tell myself it would do no good to show them the weddings that will not be stopped by this farce, and the families that will be hurt; they will swear up and down that they aren’t discriminatory, wouldn’t dream of it, that marriage is indeed threatened, oh yes, that this and this alone will save it. —I can’t find common ground with this moonshit bullshine. I have no honey to give them in return; all I have in my mouth is vinegar. All I can do is spit, and sneer. Thump my chest. Throw off some heat, no matter how dark I seem.
This amendment—if it passes—is written on tissue paper. It won’t last the decade. We will unwrite it, one way or another, and one day Larry and Cshea will once more be as married as Jenn and me, and just about everyone who ever spoke prominently in favor of 36 will shift and look away and change the subject whenever it’s brought up; if pressed, they’ll write it off as youthful exuberance, as having been caught up in the spirit of a time and a place. One or two of them might have the class to apologize for what they did, but most will just shrug: it all worked out for the best, didn’t it? You got what you wanted. Thank God it’s over and done with.
—Wouldn’t it be so much better to beat them back this year?
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Remember to vote today, campers! (part two)
Look, I don't know anything. If you're a liberal and you want to read something smart and civic-minded about voting, then you should go read Daily Kos. And if you want to feel inspired, read this post, which Kip says...
Obligatory Election Day Post
Wow, a lot of the fandom people on livejournal seem very fired up about this election. I had no idea that they were all so political! Some people are even slipping into a bit of "crest of a giant wave"...
Now irrelevant Get-Out-The-Vote post deleted
Original text below the link, but it's pretty darn moot now....