Watching the Towers Fall and Moving Beyond Stuck-on-stupid!
September 6th, 2010Watching the Towers Fall and Moving Beyond Stuck-on-stupid!
Watching the twin towers of the World Trade Center come down, live on TV, had a profound affect on many Americans including this baby boomer. Probably due to age, serious motivation to join the Ohio Army Reserve did not develop, however, until 2004 when I was fifty years old. It was not only our enemies who influenced my attempt to join up; it was the mindsets of some of my closest loved ones. Those mindsets appear to be mental blocks that obstruct logic.
This obstruction of logic caused an acute affliction of angst in me until it seemed that only joining our volunteer forces would position me around clear thinkers, to keep me out of the insane asylum. Hopes were for nothing drastic, just going to serve as a slightly arthritic operations guy on a desk somewhere. Unfortunately, age already restricts me from serving as a first time member of our military. Hopefully world events will not degrade to the point that the Army needs to include my age group or skill level, but I was disappointed. Eventually motivation overcame disappointment and this is how it happened. It was not easy because I was stuck on stupid, for a while.
Years of stressful dialog with loved ones who cling to mental blocks about projecting US military power and about George W. Bush, had all ended in failure. My relentless efforts to present common sense, logical conclusions based upon facts from many sources had all failed. Beloved friends and family members were content with their mental blocks. Failure in my efforts finally became undeniable and had to be accepted as the truth.
After a stubborn period of denial, the truth of the failure was realized and accepted. Consequently, a redirection of energies became prudent, even necessary, and finally became apparent to me too. Very important relationships were suffering. Stuck on stupid had been my lot and my angst was hurting us. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Finding more fertile ground to plow became the cure. Being deeply concerned about our troops and setting failure with loved ones aside; a larger vision began to develop.
Do you know what our troops’ majority wishes are, politically? Would you like poll results or facts regarding what our troops want, politically and regarding your votes? Are you willing to believe the answers if you could find them? Do you believe our troops are just brain washed, uneducated dummies supporting the political line they are told to tow, while risking death from our enemies?
While most military volunteers would undoubtedly support your right to vote against their political wishes, it is human nature for our troops to hope we understand and share their principles, priorities and political wishes and vote to support them, especially during wartime. As a voter, is there a more important issue to research and understand than this one – What Our Troops Want – during wartime?
Creative inspiration and a redirection of nearly obsessive efforts resulted in an online store full of products to be proud of. Patriotic images with inspired messages that provoke thought on t-shirts, sweatshirts, women’s garments and other products win votes because logical truths usually persuade objective thinkers.
Truthful, persuasive messages were embedded into digital photographs of the World Trade Center (2 designs), the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge and other U.S. landmarks. Talking animals and nature scenes complete the ensemble of around twenty exclusive, imprinted designs with two back designs to choose from. The mission is to boost morale of our troops through increased voting unity and these designs help you influence voters with patriotic pride and logical truths. People can just read the shirt, tote bag or sticker with no discussion necessary. Truthful messages are like mustard seeds; they start out tiny and grow insidiously.
Part of a large vision is supporting our troops’ majority wishes with votes and helping you influence other voters to consider deferring their personal political wishes to our troops’ majority political wishes when voting. Voting as most of our troops will vote is really supporting our troops’ wishes. Anything else holds no water and is just more worthless talk. It is about getting voters to think about it.
The vision includes a full service web presence to serve and inspire our troops and America at large. It is a vision of a non-profit organization doing many wonderful things for and with our volunteer troops. But it is more than that; it is about starting a net roots or grass roots wave of serious, conscientious thought about how votes either support or subvert our troops’ majority wishes. These are the real world consequences of voting results. Votes embolden one group of combatants while they demoralize their opposition. Votes affect morale on both sides. Connect the dots.
A vision of a voter, or millions of voters, researching and considering what our troops want politically, before we vote, is now planted in you too. Our troops are volunteers who deserve our voting support. Will we dig for answers, polls results and letters from troops on the hundreds of military support websites on the Internet? A Google search for Military Times or Stars and Stripes will lead to an endless chain of links to letters, blogs, poll results and more than a person can ingest, if you care. Even with all of that, it will come down to a calculated risk and judgment call of what you accept as truth and logic, when you decide how to vote. Voters must set aside emotion and employ logic when they research and deduce What Our Troops Want. After the research, each voter must decide whose political wishes are more important, yours or the wishes of the majority of our troops.
Hopefully, you will not ignore our troops’ majority wishes by not voting. Unless you judge our volunteers as Red Coat types or Genghis Khan-style marauder types or Nazi types, why not vote as the majority of our troops will vote? Why cast votes that subvert our troops’ majority wishes? Our volunteer forces are the boots on the ground and this citizen will trust their judgment, at least for now. I hope the light comes on and another patriotic wave of voting troop support sweeps America very soon. Our volunteers deserve US voting unity and nothing less. Neither do our enemies.
AverageJoe Boomer works to help you boost troop morale, by influencing voters, with his site at VoteWithTroops.com and inspired, imprinted products at Wear the Gear
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Panelists: Christopher Achen, Professor of Social Sciences and Associate Chair of the Department of Politics at Princeton University; Andrew Gelman, professor in the Departments of Statistics and Political Science at Columbia University and director of the University`s Applied Statistics Center; and Larry Hugick, Chairman of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Moderator: Alan Krueger, the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School and Director of the Survey Research Center at Princeton. (Oct 7, 2008 at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Co-sponsored by the Survey Research Center, the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, and the New York and New Jersey chapters of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.)
