The Little Words Mean the Most

Why Rhode Island's (my) state legislature needs a reboot-in-the-pants on women's rights

 

Two headlines in our daily paper, days apart, tell the tale of what REALLY matters to our testosterone-misdirected elected officials.

Women are told to go home, empty-handed.

The boys get to play with their baseballs ... while guaranteeing taxpayer investment in a professional sport that has fallen in popularity steadily since 1972.

Today, pro football is FOUR TIMES more popular than pro baseball. In the latest Gallup polling, baseball ranked its lowest since 1937, just a teensy bit more popular than soccer to US audiences. That's against a backdrop of falling attendance generally at all kinds of sporting events.

And Rhode Island is buying in!

 

 

PVD Fest with dear buds, Jill and Ed: art & food trucks

 

Speaking truth to plumbing

 

"The bathtub drains so slow!"

"Slow-ly, dear. Slowly. Adverb."

yeah. It swirls away.

I watch it. between my toes. hair, nasal ejects. I think it ends up orbiting Jupiter, the Gas Giant

IN REALITY, this is what's down every drain in YOUR house, if you don't clean them regularly:

 

Detroit Confidential: Is this what "affordable housing" looks like in your mind? Many perceptions are 50 years out of date.

 

Presbyterian Villages of Michigan, Thome Rivertown Neighborhood in Detroit.

Rule #13

 

 

 

 

 

FASTER

In Kansas City, MO, I saw first-hand "the American Dream"

 

 

At 6:45 AM, Arthur picked us up at the Hampton Inn on Walnut St. (highly recommended; wonderful people). Simone and I were headed for the airport after a series of secret meetings meant to change the nonprofit fundraising world (we'll see).

Arthur is outgoing, with a slight accent. Simone wanted more. No problem: he'd come to Kansas City from Albania in his early 20s; he's now 45. Communist rule was falling apart. He'd grown up in a bad period. Your neighbors would turn you in for saying, "I wish we'd had more to eat last night." Police state. Treasonous to say you didn't have enough food.

When Communism fell apart, he found his way to America. A lot of people, he said, drowned trying to escape to the West. He learned fabulous English by working lots of different jobs: dishwasher, construction, driver. He met a woman and married in the US. Has two children just entering their teens. His wife works as a waitress. Both parents take all the overtime they can.

Arthur has a deep, personal, sophisticated, attentive, and nuanced view of the US.

For him, the American Dream is not a cliché nor a rip-off. For him, it's a bargain struck: you work hard, you contribute, you get somewhere. He's happy, by the way. His kids are doing well. They will graduate high school, go on to college, get good jobs.

Here's what I learned I think from Arthur as we drove together to the Kansas City airport: the iconic American Dream is NOT 3 cars in the garage and a lake house.

The American Dream for Arthur of Kansas City is safety from a lawless dictator (Trump qualifies: my view, not Arthur's) and enough food so you don't have to complain about hunger and enough work of any kind so you can buy that food....

Every civics class in the US should ride in Arthur's limo.

816-810-6408

 

or maybe online (any "content entrepreneurs" out there?): Arthur's Civics Lessons from His Kansas City Cab

ALL THESE INSANE blog posts are in fact

 

 

 

 

DATA

for future scientists

 

BLOG AWAY. IT"S a GOOD thing

 

 

eventually

 

 

 

 

 

My North Star, she prepares to tackle via webinar a West Coast graduate school offering degrees in nonprofit management

 

 

 

 

Cincinnatus: "I

 

he said

"prefer the quiet life

of folding laundry dried

by steady sun and sturdy wind

to the halls of power, that kind

 

don't we all? So let's pick

 

our leaders from the basket which

matters most to our well-being: clean

laundry or filthy

power"

 

 

Actually

 

 

...for professionals trading in persuasion and emotional hooks (i.e., all you fundraising communicators), a visit like Pam's -- to the dark, vulgar, sphincter of America's worst side -- sounds positively like going to a high-end advertising trade school to me.

¶ Ignore the fact that you don't agree with their opinions and ideas (irrelevant).

¶ Look at how people actually talk. Real people ... when they are saying something with HEAT (however loathsome or deplorable you might find the statement) ... pay attention to how they talk. The adjectives. Adverbs. Their skill with pronouns.

¶ You can't defeat your political enemies with reasoned debate (you silly cookie-cutter Democrat elites!).

¶ You CAN, though, defeat your enemies by finding a more in-tune emotional message for some or all of the very same target audience. Something that sounds right to the right people at the right time. Instead of, say, like a lecture in policy facets.

¶ Students: consider it homework.

¶ How DO people on President Trump's FB page talk?

¶ Not the here-today, gone-tomorrow issues. {I'll have to promise "trust me" on this; after reading hundreds of books about politics and wars, history I think resembles the Northern Lights: today's RAGING HOT issues fade before the NEXT raging hit issue [not a typo] ... in a blink ... all the time ... every morning.}

¶ Get your wise-student hat on. You are "Entering a No Judgment Zone." If you're thinking "their arguments make no sense!", you're not focused on what matters: the language and emotional triggers buried behind it. If you find yourself saying, "What a racist asshole!", well, of course, you're right. But your homework will earn an F. You have to see through content, to the emotions below. And you know what? It's pretty amusing. The actual President Donald Trump drowns in butter. Adulation ONLY welcome here, on this site.

¶ Back to business: What ARE their emotions?

¶ How are they expressing those emotions?

¶ Are they hungry? Delicious! Nutritious! "Let me join you. I even brought my own knife and fork."

 

¶ Learn from everybody. Steal their success. Repeat.

 

¶ Remember: Trump's supporters put him in the White House. That takes a TON of emotional heavy lifting. That's VICTORY. The Democrats did not win the White House. Definition: you and yours are losers. Wrong consultants. Wrong beliefs. Wrong assumptions. Wrong data. Wrong messages for sure. Don't blame Trump because you lost. Democratic warhorses thought the 2012 elections would continue into 2016. They lost.

¶ Politics are NOT about winning debates. Politics are about gaining control. You have to win first. Then you can change stuff.

¶ If you're going to be in a bubble, please be in a bubble where lots of people vote. For any of you sitting behind drawn blinds thinking, "The fact that I didn't vote for Hillary was my protest against the system. The fact that I, admittedly, didn't vote AT ALL in the 2017 Presidential election was my protest against government in general ... because

¶ I AM that smart, I have read THAT much, AND I want the very BEST for this amazing nation ... this unique EXPERIMENT in modern democracy (where every voice can have its say) ... and for the small world and community and district and even block I live and work in ... as might my parents, as might my kids (if my mate and I so choose to have a bigger family).

¶ You know what, on 2nd thought, i was an idiot. DAMN!!!! And look what happened.

¶ The US Republican message machine is about as subtle as a Hallmark card. And the Democrats try to debate that. Reason vs. emotion. Any of today's top neuroscientists can tell you how THAT contest will turn out.

¶ You're not looking for the right words; you're looking for the right emotions. And STOP holding your nose at the very thought. That's WHY "they" call you elites.

PS ¶¶¶ "All fundraising communications should sound like conversation." (<George Smith)

¶ FB comments are how HONEST conversation sounds, warts and all.