Anti-troops/mission-in-Iraq protest by Code Pink, ANSWER, MoveOn, et al ad naseum to be overshadowed (again) by Gathering of Eagles on Sept. 15
Those who've done the "heavy lifting" (Iraq/Afghanistan Vets for Freedom) by risking their lives for the rest of us are now also doing the "heavy lifting" to wage a media campaign to counter the anti-troops/anti-mission propaganda of the American Self-Defeatists.
A Gathering of Eagles in D.C. on September 15, 2007, will again overfly, overshadow, out-number, out-class and swoop-down-upon an anti-troops/mission-in-Iraq protest by Code Pink, ANSWER, MoveOn, NotInOurName, Breasts for Bombs, Fonda-Lovers, 9-11 "conspiracy" nuts, et al, ad naseumas was done on March 17, 2007.
One of the problems that has heretofore plagued supporters of the troops and their mission has been the tendency of too many "independents" and "middle-roaders" to only "intermittently" pay serious attention to the news or actively engage in continuing self-education on the issues and the facts. Thus, they've heretofore been easy prey for the American Self-Defeatism propagandists and their intellectual/political soul-mates in the so-called "mainstream" media.
A recent manifestation of such problem came to my attention when a friend (who is a genuinely decent, "independent" person generally inclined to express "support" for the troops and their mission in social-conversation contexts to whom I had sent information about opportunities to become actively engaged in expressing such support) said she only "intermittently" paid serious attention to such things and seemed disinterested in active self-education about opportunities to overtly support groups or organizations seeking to support the troops and their mission and to counter defeatist propaganda. She's not even remotely sympathetic with the American Self-Defeatists. Yet it's such passivity that enabled the American Self-Defeatism propagandists to sway large numbers of "independents" and "middle-roaders" away from supporting the troops and their mission.
Fortunately for the country, however, fewer and fewer "independents" and "middle-roaders" are allowing themselves to be misled by the propaganda of the American Self-Defeatists and their overtly sympathetic allies in the so-called "mainstream" media. Why? In large part it's due to the fact that those who've already done the "heavy lifting" in battle (in which they did not have the luxury of paying "intermittent" attention to what's at stake) are now doing the "heavy lifting" in countering defeatist propaganda and in trying to get the attention of, and thereby educate, the "independents" and "middle-roaders" who pay attention to such matters only "intermittently."
Part of the challenge to supporters of the troops and their mission is to educate "independents" and "middle-roaders" that September 11, 2001, marked the end of the time when reality afforded Americans the apparent (but illusory) luxury of only "intermittently" paying attention to such matters. Expanding the percentages of "independents" and "middle-roaders" willing to step-up to the plate to begin, and continue indefinitely, their own citizen self-education will require a lot more "heavy lifting" in the form of media communications to counter American Self-Defeatism.
Supporters of the troops and their mission must also be willing to express such support in ways and in contexts likely to catch the attention of "independents" and "middle-roaders" primarily interested in other things, such as sports, for example:
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.
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.