“Special interests” with their Big Money deceived Washington State’s voters in the November 2018 election to defeat a good initiative that would have helped the climate — and to pass an initiative that protects giant food corporations from local democracy. Those “special interests” with their Big Money used anti-tax messaging to defeat I-1631 and to pass I-1634.
It’s easy for extremely rich funders to buy huge amounts of advertising and propaganda with simplistic “anti-tax” messaging. That message taps into many people’s latent biases, just like nationalistic and racist messages tap into many people’s latent biases.
Regarding taxes – like so many other issues – we need to develop proactive strategies to “re-frame” the issues so people will understand taxes differently.
Actually, taxes are how a population cooperates in order to fund things that our society needs. Taxes are the “dues” we pay for living in a civilized society that provides services our people need (schools, libraries, fire departments, streets, parks, etc.). Oliver Wendell Homes once said, “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
I address this issue – and many other hot issues – in my November and December 2018 TV programs, both of which you can watch through the “TV Programs” part of my blog, www.parallaxperspectives.org. Both months’ programs focus on the nasty worldview that has been dominating the U.S. November focuses on the problems, and December focuses on replacing it — and how to achieve that.
Each month’s blog post also includes a VERY THOROUGH essay that fleshes out the information with more insights and more analysis, and offers links to additional sources of information.
The December program is watchable in December 2018 on cable channel 22 on Mondays at 1:30 pm, Wednesdays at 5:00 pm, and Thursdays at 9:00 pm.
Links for watching the November TV program AND reading my very thorough essay based on it are posted to my blog: http://parallaxperspectives.org/tv-program-a-blistering-critique-of-u-s-politics-part-1-choose-a-better-worldview-to-build-a-better-world
Links for watching the December TV program AND reading my very thorough essay based on it are posted to my blog:
http://parallaxperspectives.org/tv-programs-part-2-of-choose-a-better-worldview-to-build-a-better-world
Both TV programs and their respective essays emphasize that BELOW THE SURFACE of the specific issues we care about, THE UNDERLYING WORLDVIEW DRIVES HOW THOSE ISSUES PLAY OUT. In order to make progress on any specific issue, we must also STRATEGICALLY CHANGE THE UNDERLYING WORLDVIEW from the currently dominant one (which is greedy, cruel, corrupt, unjust and violent) to a new worldview that will be the opposite. This will help us make progress on ALL of the issues we care about!