Jump Down, Turn Around

An Opinion Column by Pauline Chandler

I was walking down Fifth Avenue with a friend of mine on Saturday when I remembered a story my father used to tell me when I was a small child. It was about monsters and terrible things and there was a hero in it, and at the end, everybody was very happy. But as we all know, that's not the way life works.

W. promised us safety from terrorism and a new brand of prosperity, but the policies of corporate greed and malfeasance put us squarely on the road to Nowheresville, USA. And if it wasn't for the big wakeup call that America received in 2008, we'd still be there, waterboarding bakers we kidnapped off the streets of Iraq in Guantanamo Bay for kicks.

Unfortunately, as the Special Election in Massachusetts proves all too well, there are a lot of things still very wrong with our system. Things are hard, life is hard and times are hard, and Democrats are the ones in charge. So Democrats will be the ones who are punished for it.

But it doesn't have to be this way, if they would only stop telling everyone the truth.

Despite what the Founding Fathers may have believed about liberty and freedom, the cold reality is that people deep down are sheep. Give them a hint of grass and clover, and they surely will follow. And if they can't smell anything, they will simply look around for the nearest hanging wool and walk behind the other sheep. This is the stopped down, Wasilla Alaska type mentality that leads people to vote for a centerfold over a lawyer.

It's time for the Democrats to stop telling the truth and start telling people what they want to hear. People don't want to hear that they're going to have to make sacrifices for a common good, to help people who lack opportunity, who are lower on the social scale than they are. They want to know that they themselves are going to get something out of the deal. So tell them they will. It doesn't matter. Most of them drive pickup trucks and watch NASCAR. By the time they realize that they've had to make a sacrifice or two, and they're not getting anything concrete for their tax dollars, they will probably be on their eleventh beer, and hitting their wife.

If you've ever attempted to maneuver a dog into your vehicle so you can cart him off to the vet, you'll know what I mean. Dogs don't want to go to the vet, because going to the vet means getting shots and being poked and prodded and having allsorts done to make them better. So you leave a bone on the seat, and in hops Rover. Off to the vet you go.

Now more than ever, Masssachusetts proves that Democrats need to give the people a good bone.

President Obama must never again get up on stage and tell people the reality; that 50 million people walk around uninsured in this country, and at any moment could be hit by a car and be left on the street to die. If the tea parties prove anything, it's that people don't understand what "Health Insurance Reform" is. Big words confuse them and they end up pulling levers for truck drivers.

So call it something else. Call it a "Middle Class Tax Cut". As W. demonstrated, people love it when you cut their taxes. So tell them that's what you're doing, and get the real sausage of slashing Medicare and setting up boards that will make wise and fair health decisions for them under the radar. Half the voters in Massachusetts said they were voting for The Naked Senator Scottyboy Brown because of Health Insurance Reform. They wouldn't have been saying that if the Democrats had called it "Tax Cuts". That was the big mistake.

Same thing with taking over the banks. Don't tell people you're taking them over. Tell people you're "helping" the banks. "Bailout" has all of a sudden become a poisonous word. So call it "Bank Assistance". Call it "Bank Loving". Call it "Bank Is Good Now, Ook, Ook, Ook". Speak the people's language.

The result is the same, but everybody stays in the dark. This is what it's come to, in the era of YouTube and the Internet. It's so easy now to spread misinformation, and for people to be totally, completely and thoroughly misled. Democrats need to use this to their advantage, start doing some misleading of their own, and stop letting the other side win.

Put the honesty away, Democrats, before we lose something more than a Senator.

Pauline Chandler is an independent Nobel Laureate who writes for The Mega Independent.