Stop SOPA
Click here if the video doesn’t show up.
If you enjoyed this, please click here and share it with your network!
Want to read more like this from Christopher Penn? If so, please subscribe right now!
Click here to read my blog on Google Currents on your mobile!
Marketing White Belt |
Watch me speak:
Attend virtually! |
I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
A baseball parable about politics
Once upon a time, there were two baseball teams, the Red Sox and the Yankees. Each team did its thing, and the owners made money, the players made money, the advertisers made money in the stadiums and on the televisions, and all was more or less well. Fans got to root for their teams and enjoy $7 hot dogs and mediocre beers while cheering from the seats. Occasionally someone even hit a fly ball into the stands and made everyone happy.
Then a rivalry developed between the two teams. Each team’s fans became more ardent supporters of their team and detractors of the opposing team. Red Sox fans didn’t like Yankees fans. Yankees fans didn’t like Red Sox fans. The rivalry grew intense over the decades, but strangely, it didn’t drive people away from the stadiums. Quite the contrary – people flocked to see their teams and cheer for their teams more than ever.
The owners made more money. The players made more money. The advertisers made more money. The fans still got $7 hot dogs and beer, and started to express their dislike for the other team using words like war, traitor, and hatred. Fans even started to murder each other over the rivalry. But instead of trying to cool heated heads, we are content with the owners, players, media, and advertisers fanning the fires ever higher, even if the consequences of doing so are more dire, because the folks running the show (literally) are making a lot more money.
This in the world of propaganda is known as a granfalloon, or minimal group paradigm. We create a largely meaningless distinction and divide people along that distinction until we’ve created two or more ardent camps that will do actual physical harm to each other.
Now let’s port this idea over to the realm of politics. We have two large teams in the United States, the Republicans and the Democrats. We have owners – the campaign funders who benefit from the decisions made by lawmakers of each party. We have players – the elected officials we put in office and their appointees. We have advertisers and media who benefit from the enormous sums each election cycle. And we have the fans – us, the citizens.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the bitter rivalry between the two teams in politics has the same outcomes as the bitter rivalry in baseball and is thus encouraged by the establishment for their benefit. The owners make a lot more money. The players make a lot more money. The advertisers and media make a lot more money.
And the fans – we, the people? We get the equivalent of $7 hot dogs and beer, get to root for our teams, get to be divided into our respective camps and incited to violence for the benefit of the owners, players, and other interests running the show. One nation, indivisible? Hardly.
The next time you have a knee jerk reaction to someone or something because of the political label on it or them, take a step back and recognize that you’ve been played by the moneyed interests and transformed from a rational human being into a rabid fan. Mentally remove your team jersey, put away the meaningless bluster you’ve been asked to recite by your team, and give some actual critical thought to what’s in front of you.
If you enjoyed this, please click here and share it with your network!
Want to read more like this from Christopher Penn? If so, please subscribe right now!
Click here to read my blog on Google Currents on your mobile!
Marketing White Belt |
Watch me speak:
Attend virtually! |
I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
Not another dime: a protest that works
Please consider the following:
- Local Governments, Churches, Community Groups, Prominent Business Men And Others Are All Divesting From Big, Corrupt Banks
- Bank customers flee to credit unions
- Massive pile of news results about closing bank accounts
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the protest that works.
This is the protest that actually wakes up the powers that be.
This is the protest that generates results, that generates real change.
It’s the protest that says:
I do not believe in you, therefore I do not do business with you. Not another dime until you change your ways.
You want to change corporate America? Do not do business with companies you don’t believe in. You don’t like X company’s labor practices or wage practices or environmental practices? Don’t buy another thing from them. Find someone else. This is the age when you can Google for nearly everything and probably find 5 alternatives online that are cheaper, better quality, or more environmentally friendly.
You want to change the rule of big banks? Do not lend them your money. Find a local credit union or community bank and bank with them instead. Check out mycreditunion.gov to find one near you, then go close your account with the big bank and do business elsewhere.
You want to change the tone and tenor of Washington politics? Do not give a dime to any candidate running for office, period, because the electoral system is funded by individual donations as well as large companies. You want to make real change happen with your money? Skip the political candidate and donate to the local food pantry instead.
On a big picture level, the ballot box certainly is one of the most powerful tools that a citizen of a country (if they have the right to democratically elect their leadership) has access to. But on a day to day basis, there’s an even more powerful tool: your wallet. Make conscious choices about what you believe in and support those choices with your money. Encourage others to do so as well. You don’t need to convince everyone, just 4-5 friends and colleagues to make similar choices.
When you choose to stop doing business with someone, let them know why. Send them an email. Post it on their facebook page. Write up a blog post. Say to them very publicly and succinctly, with substantiation or citation of the facts you used to make your decision, here is why I am not giving you another dime. Hashtag it #notanotherdime or something like it so that others can see you and join you.
As evidenced by the powerful protests above, it does work.
Disclosure: I’ve been banking with a credit union since 2001. I do not hold investments outside of index funds in any banks.
If you enjoyed this, please click here and share it with your network!
Want to read more like this from Christopher Penn? If so, please subscribe right now!
Click here to read my blog on Google Currents on your mobile!
Marketing White Belt |
Watch me speak:
Attend virtually! |
I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
My visit to Occupy Boston
Yesterday, I paid a visit firsthand to Occupy Boston, the local branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I’ve been writing and talking about economics and politics for a while and about the Occupy movement, so I figured it was time to do some primary, field research and go there myself. So what did I find?
First, the Occupy movement is certainly diverse. Take a look at this short, incomplete laundry list of issues:
- Corporate taxation
- CORI/Background Check Discrimination
- Workers’ Rights
- Violence
- Murders
- Gun Laws
- Foreclosures
- Political Corruption
- White Supremacy
- Disparities in Education
- Budget Cuts
- Racism
- Bank Bailouts
- Voter Fraud
- Affordable Housing
- Corporate Crime
- Fraud
- State/Individual Sovereignty
- Foreign Wars
- Religious Intolerance
- 9/11 Conspiracy Coverup
The criticism that the Occupy movement doesn’t stand for anything is patently false. The reality is, based on conversations I had and the piles of brochures and other things I was given by volunteers is that the Occupy movement stands for far too much, so much so that it doesn’t know what it is.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the movement completely lacks focus. With a laundry list of issues that long, there has to be some common ground. For example, people cited Arab Spring in conversation, but they neglected to realize that Arab Spring movements had a very clear set of targets: Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Qaddafi, etc. In each case, the target was the incumbent sovereign government that created conditions of structural inequality or injustice.
The second takeaway from Occupy? They’ve done a good job of identifying the problems (as you can see from the partial list above) that are totally valid and worth addressing. But because they have no common focus, no common ground, they also have no set of solutions to advocate for. Again, going back to Arab Spring, the common ground was clear: get rid of the guy in charge. I talked to two volunteers (who requested that I not reprint any identifying information) who, when asked how they’d solve the problems that Occupy is addressing, shrugged and said that they weren’t sure, but something had to be done.
A third volunteer said that we had to end corrupt government, end the power of corporations, and redistribute the wealth accrued by our corporate/government complex. When I gently suggested that that was the effective goal of communism, the gentleman I was talking to loudly protested, “I’m no goddamn communist. I’m a ****ing American!” I gave up at that point trying to explain that communism was an economic system, not a political one, and that communism can work on some scales and in some contexts. (Israeli kibbutzim are one such example of successful communism)
This is the third takeaway from the Occupy movement, one they’ve self-identified as an issue for their members. In order to more effectively articulate what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed, they need to get better educated about economics and politics. Of the five people I talked to, none had even a basic grasp of the difference between Keynesian and Austrian economics, which are the two effective viewpoints being promoted by various political sects today. For those not keeping score, the Democrats tend to lean more Keynesian, and the Republicans (especially Ron Paul’s ideological base) lean towards Austrian.
The bottom line for the Occupy movement is that it’s got a lot of energy. The people in it have their hearts in the right place as the political, economic, and social issues at the heart of the movement are very real. That said, it needs to get better educated and better marketed in order for it to resonate deeply with the average person and give them something to aim their discontent at.
If you enjoyed this, please click here and share it with your network!
Want to read more like this from Christopher Penn? If so, please subscribe right now!
Click here to read my blog on Google Currents on your mobile!
Marketing White Belt |
Watch me speak:
Attend virtually! |
I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
Celebrating America: Amendments to the Constitution
In celebration of America’s independence, I thought I’d publish 3 posts about the most important document that most Americans haven’t laid eyes on in years, if not decades: the Constitution of the United States of America. Despite being freely and widely available, not many people have read it recently, if at all, yet it sets down the rules about what you and the government can and cannot do. It’s worth your time to read it. The full text of the Amendments to the Constitution (11-27) is after the break (to avoid swamping RSS readers with a wall of text).
Celebrating America: The Bill of Rights
In celebration of America’s independence, I thought I’d publish 3 posts about the most important document that most Americans haven’t laid eyes on in years, if not decades: the Constitution of the United States of America. Despite being freely and widely available, not many people have read it recently, if at all, yet it sets down the rules about what you and the government can and cannot do. It’s worth your time to read it. The full text of the Bill of Rights, Amendments 1-10 of the Constitution, is after the break (to avoid swamping RSS readers with a wall of text).
Book Me to Speak
Got an event coming up? Learn why you should book me to speak!
• Download my 2012 speaking kit
•Book me to speak now!
Get Marketing White Belt
Grab my new book, Marketing White Belt: Basics for the Digital Marketer, and get better at marketing right now!
Blog Delivery
Things I recommend:
I recommend:
for Wordpress themes like this one.
I recommend:
for Twitter audience building.