What one thing would you cite as your favorite reason to support Barack Obama for President? There was a thread about this elsewhere and there were LOTS of great and MOST usable answers.
I thought of one, and then started thinking about the PSY-OPS behind it, how the very image of Obama, the very looks of him, are emblematic of the change that we want. The reasons stare at you as plainly as the nose on your face - beginning on the surface and seeping in, deeper down. I want Obama to be the guy we all look at, BECAUSE OF WHAT THAT'S GONNA DO TO THE MINDSET, AND HOW IT'S GONNA WORK ON THE MINDSET.
THE MINDSET.
THE NATIONAL ZEITGEIST.
THE PERCEPTION.
BECAUSE PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING!
AND IF YOU MANAGE PERCEPTION EFFECTIVELY, YOU MOVE LARGER AND LARGER NUMBERS OF PEOPLE BY INFLUENCING THEIR THINKING, AND YOU WIN.
I want THAT FACE sitting across the bargaining table or in the opposite chair with the other world leaders. I want HIS face to be America's Face to the World. I want HIS face speaking to all the other nations with which we share this planet. I want the rest of the world to develop the mindset that HE is America, too. A radical departure from the same Anglo middle aged/elderly male faces that have paraded in and out of the White House over the years. One basic type. With the same or similar backgrounds, many with pedigrees. But nonetheless, multiple versions of the same basic middle-aged-or-old white guy. One Anglo middle-to-old man after another. Well, as Obama himself would say, "not this time."
I think, human nature being what it is, and humans' tendency to learn and absorb concepts visually. The majority of humanity is visually-oriented and that's how information is processed and how learning occurs. So we, citizens of Planet Earth, start seeing the America Guy as a tall, thin, middle-aged African-American guy instead of ALWAYS some middle-to-old-age white guy. It couldn't be more different from what we've been sending out there every four years for all of our history (unless it was a female - of any color). It would be emblematic and metaphoric of change. Change embodied. Change you can see just by looking.
What you see influences what you think. You start seeing something different, it influences and starts modifying your mindset, and you start responding accordingly - differently than you had before. It's an open invitation for all of the world to shift gears, try something different, close a chapter and open up a different one, or set the old book down and pick up a new one. It is FIRMLY established and agreed to by some 84 percent of Americans responding to a major recent poll that America has lurched off onto the wrong track. Eighty-Four Percent! That's an historic high! Never in my life... Given that, doing the same things that led us here, following the same priorities that led us here, with more of the same people from the same political mindset that led us here, is just one of the worst ideas ever, assuming that you, too, believe America's gone horribly wrong in every way imaginable, and you do NOT want to perpetuate the same abysmal results and human conditions that we have now - um - "enjoyed" - for the past several years (under bush/republi-CON leadership/stewardship).
So I'd like to harness that human-nature tendency and make it work for us - and for the Obama campaign, and ultimately, for our entire battered, humiliated, terrorized, brutalized, defiled, lied to, and jerked-around country. Yeah. It's a mind game. But it's a beneficial game - to introduce a very obvious-looking change agent in a time when change is longed for. And you REINFORCE the idea that WE are the change agents, that it WON'T be business-as-usual, what's been going on will NOT be continued, the same missteps WON'T be taken some more. The same philosophy of "leadership" and "stewardship" will NOT continue. We will be turning the page. Nothing UNDERSCORES that, subliminally, or telegraphs that outward as effectively as The Man of Change himself.
The world will look at who's representing us now and have to adjust its opinions and reactions of us as a result. We DESPERATELY NEED to advertise that We're Under NEW Management" and to MEAN IT! The way we prove to the world that we do indeed mean it is to show what kind of change we've already made. This president won't think, or do, act or react, the same as all the other same-ol's. And seems to me the world is rather desperately waiting and hoping - and even praying - to see that. In Catholic school, we learned about Outward Signs. Well, there he stands.
I've got a lot of other positive things Obama, but that's the one that comes to mind first, more often than not.
We were discussing this in depth, here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6386253 Anyway, this was my thinking in that thread. I was encouraged to post this separately. I think PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT is EVERYTHING, and that it's a game we not only must play, but that we must play TO WIN.
Call it OUR "Art of War."
What do you think?
As Thom Hartmann would say - "Tag! You're It!"