Topic category:  Other/General

Dennis Miller's 20070520 "The Buck Starts Here" video, which needs to be watched by the "independents/middle-roaders" who watch "The Daily Show," the "Colbert" report and similar fare for "insights" into the news, will be appreciated by those of us who watch those shows for insights into the minds of defeatists and moral dilettantes. The link to that video is here. (Hat tip to HotAir here.)

However, unless we who understand the stakes find ways to get the attention of the "independents/middle-roaders" who actually draw insights from such shows, from the skin-deep, "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" mentality of the traditionally dominant news media (aka MSM), and from Creative Coalition "insights" regularly planted in entertainment, the defeatism crowd will win because they've influenced "independents/middle-roaders" enough to cause polls on support for the war in Iraq to nose-dive and thereby influence weak-kneed politicians who worship polls to abandon, or flirt with abandoning, the effort in Iraq.

Between now and the 2008 election, the only mean for influencing such politicians is to influence "independents/middle-roaders" in order to influence the polls in order to influence the weak-kneed politicians. How can we do it? We don't have a "Creative Coalition." We don't have meaningful influence in the "MSM." We don't have Soros' money. No "Swift-Boat" version of a truth-squad media campaign has emerged. Too many non-defeatists foolishly think the solution is to be "harder" on "conservatives" in the next election on every "conservative" issue (spending, entitlements, borders, etc.) except, of course, Iraq, which will, by then, be lost if defeatists continue getting their way. That approach will succeed only in closing the barn door after all the horses are out.

We need to figure out a way to reach the minds of "independents/middle-roaders" in order to change the results of polls so that they reflect a determination to succeed rather than fail in Iraq in order to influence weak-kneed, fence-sitting politicians, who worship the results of polls, to support success rather than failure. Who can/will step up to the plate and organize an effective, nationwide, professionally crafted truth-squad campaign to educate "independents/middle-roaders" in order to accomplish this result?

Many of us say (convince ourselves?) that we're "already doing all we can do," but most of what we're doing is the equivalent of "preaching to the choir." A common phrase that pre-dated baby-boomers coming to power in the wake of the 1970's began with the words "If I don't do it ...." The pre-baby-boomers-in-power version of that phrase (especially during World War II) ended with "someone else will have to do it." The baby-boomers-in-power version is "someone else will." We need to restore the sense of moral responsibility reflected by the former phrase or else our legacy to our posterity will be the amoral, self-serving, narcicistic, rationalistic standard reflected by the latter.

Isn't that the real point Miller is making? The "buck" starts here-- i.e., with us. It focuses us on our need to counter the latter by recognizing that if we don't figure-out how to do it and then do it, no one else will. Let's get started. Those of us who have any contacts with any anti-defeatist in any facet of the media must cajole, beg, plead with, and persuade them to join in a collective effort to craft and implement a media campaign to defeat defeatism. Now!

Jim Wrenn, Editor at WrennCom.Com; Editor at PoliSat.Com.

Permanent link to version of this commentary at PoliSat.Com is HERE. Permanent link to version of this commentary at WrennCom.com is HERE.

Jim Wrenn
Political Satire/Commentary at PoliSat.Com (Editor)

Biography - Jim Wrenn

Jim is a proud descendant of 18th Century criminal exiles from England who swam to the Outer Banks when the British ship taking them to a Georgia penal colony sank in a storm near Cape Hatteras. Having the prescience to prevent their descendants from becoming "TarHeels," they immediately migrated to Virginia, where, within just a few generations they worked their way up into poverty. Jim's grandfather was the first in the family tree to see the distant horizons, but his career was cut short by severe injuries he sustained when a cousin cut down the tree.

After a brief stint in the Amry (ours) following graduation from law school, he began his legal career in the state bureaucracy but was never able to break into the federal bureaucracy. Several years later, he entered the private practice of law and co-founded a small law publishing company. Later, finding the publishing of small laws unstimulating and finding his private practice too private to be lucrative, he began writing political satire/commentary. His greatest vice is taking himself too seriously.

He wrote the definitive books on the Clinton Era Error: the Clinton Liebrary Book (pre-October, 2000), which he later updated as the Clinton Liebrary Book 2001 Edition to include Election 2000, the post-election shennanigans, and related events through August, 2001. The 2001 edition is the only known literary source that conclusively shows why Bill Clinton pardoned Susan McDougal but not Webster Hubbel. It also presciently contains the Billary/Hillary Dueling Memoirs. At every opportunity he shamelessly promotes his books for orders on-line or by fax at www.ClintonLiebraryBook.Com. He's also the Librarian at the Clinton Liebrary (www.ClintonLiebrary.Com), which owns exclusive rights to Bill Clinton's most famous speech as well as Bill Clinton's comments after revelation of the identity of Deep Throat in 2005.

As an amateur scientist as well as a scientific amateur, he de-bunks the man-is-causing-Global "Warming" theory, and predicts that by the middle of the 21st Century (when he will be safely dead) physicists will discover the obvious flaws in Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which will lead to vastly-faster-than-light travel through polarization of gravity. As a constitutional-law scholar, he's trying to teach those who hold a static, zero-sum-game view of economic and social theories to understand that "property" is not a "thing" but rather is a human right.

Although he regularly teaches Continuing Legal Education courses to lawyers, he's too-often available through he Rubber Chicken Speakers Bureau to speak on politics, satire, etc., at luncheons, dinners, root canals, funerals, etc. His speaking fees are so outrageously high they border on criminal price-gouging, but as a free-market advocate, he defends his fees on the higher moral ground of charging whatever the traffic will bear. For more information (surely more than one would want or need), go to www.PoliSat.Com.