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We desperately need a new Meme Messaging Strategy [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-01
OK, I have a rant.
Our Messaging Sucks. We know it. It totally blows. There's plenty of energy out there, which we are currently wasting on attacking Schumer for a minor vote that IMO wouldn't have gained us anything. We need to harness that energy in a new direction. MARKETING.
Building conceptual consensus. Right-wing media constantly workshops these ideas and memes them, then they promote the ones that POP. It's salesmanship. We don't have it.
We didn't respond to the Trans issue at all. We didn't even try to defend human rights and freedom of choice. We dropped the ball. We could have made it an argument between bigotry and science. The sciences, medical doctors and psychologists all agree that gender dysphoria is real and that the treatments they have adopted are effective mostly at preventing children and young adults from self-harm and suicide. Do you want these kids dead or alive? Do you believe what medical science says or what backward religious bigotry from 2000 years ago says?
We could have won that argument.
We could similarly win the debates on DEI. It doesn't cause "Reverse Racism", It doesn't subvert "Merit" - it's simply widening the pool of applicants so that the best can emerge, even if they happen to be a veteran, handicapped, or a woman. It doesn't let prejudgment, inertia and laziness control our choices and decisions.
We need to attack all the wrongful presumptions that fuel MAGA on the economy, on spending, on taxes, on "removing waste", and on Climate Change. Democratic Presidencies have always led to deficit reduction while Republicans increase deficit spending and often end with a recession. Many times we have to clean up their mess, then they come back into office and make another mess.
We could have made the argument that yes, absolutely the government can be more efficient and reduce waste — but you don’t do that by starting out firing all the people who know how things are done. That’s not about efficiency, that’s about destruction. How do you know the details of what needs to improve after that? Who do you ask how things work? Unless you don’t really want them to work anymore and you just want everything broken.
Even on the issue of child predators and human trafficking - we should be the heroes. Many LGBTQ youth are driven out of their home by repressive families. They wind up on the street, dispossessed and homeless where they can be victimized by predators.
We have the facts and truth on our side, We have to stop getting rolled.
Some would argue that it’s the message delivery system — Mainstream Media — that sucks. That they don’t really deliver our messages and tend to water them down to a fraction of what they really are.
And that’s true, which is why we need to catapult the anti-propaganda above and around them. Right-wing media gets their message repeated through memes and soundbites on social media. It spreads like wildfire. You don’t have to hear the full argument, just that “CRT is White Hate” or “DEI is Reverse Racism” and the job is done.
Part of the problem is that we tend to get into long-winded detailed rebuttals. I know since I have that bad habit myself, in spades, but we need to cut things short. Get to the point. Make it stick. Help it spread. Make it viral.
Right now, we have no power. We can’t pass a law and we only barely block laws from being passed. The court system has the ball and their kicking ass. We need to remind people why MAGA is failing so badly in court.
Their entire premise of leadership is upside down. The President doesn't make law, he can't just make a DECREE and have it enacted, especially when it runs counter to laws passed by Congress. If he wants to change something, he has to go back to Congress and have them change it, he has to pass legislation.
And that's exactly what they suck at. Governing.
They can’t do it. They can barely lift their finger to even try.
The perception is that the White House and the GOP have the power, but they don’t.
They don't have the most power now because they aren't even using that power where it would make the most difference, in Congress. Especially while they have both houses. If they wanted to shut down the CFPB, they should repeal it. If they want to cancel USAID, they should have VOTED to remove it. If they want to kill HIV and Infectious disease prevention - then should VOTE to have that happen. They aren't doing that - they aren't even trying. So the courts are going to undo this stupid temporary EO bullshit each and every time. It's not real, it’s only a Show!
All that Trump is doing right now is temporary.
He can change foreign policy and tariffs without Congress, but not a lot else. Executive Orders aren't the Law. Trying to change the law with an EO is itself illegal and unconstitutional. Trump is failing in every quarter because he doesn't understand basic constitutional standards and doesn't respect them.
He literally thinks he’s a King.
He thinks he can create law with a wave of his hand. Remember the argument he had with the Maine Governor when she said “we’ll follow the law” on transgender athletes?
He said “We are the law.”
You are the what now? That’s fucking delusional. And that’s exactly where he’s vulnerable. He has a pile of delusions and fantasies flying around in his head — “I won the 2020 Election and the Deep State stole it from me”, “All my enemies conspired to bring me down with false charges”, “Russia Russia Russia was hoax [except for the 5 Trump people who were convicted of lying under oath about Russia]”, or “Mexicans are Rapist.” He thinks he can dissolve the Deep State with a stroke of his pen and thousands of mass firings. He can’t. He can’t substantially change government without changing the laws and agencies through Congress, and he can’t do that without dealing with Democrats.
The point is the laws aren't changing. Trump is wrongfully usurping Congress by trying to do it on his own illegally. It's Totalitarianism. It’s Fascism.
He’s trying to threaten the judges with impeachment and the specter of vigilante violence. He’s trying to extort law firms into not suing him, but the lawsuits are still coming and his EOs are getting knocked down with court orders, temporary restraining orders and injunctions one by one.
These EOs are illegal, that's why they are being restrained by the courts. Firing probational employees without cause - many of whom had just gotten promotions or transfers because you go to probation status when you start a new job, not just because you're a new hire - is Illegal.
We all know this, but we aren’t getting the message out.
We need to say "That's another unlawful illegal order" It's a violation of his constitutional duty to see "that the laws are faithfully followed." It’s not Trump’s job to create or recreate laws.
But people won't say that because they're afraid that his Wing-nut SCOTUS will ratify this insane BS. We need to make that idea acid-bath toxic so they would never even consider it. It would only embarrass them.
This is where we have an advantage. Trump is behaving exactly like we predicted, perhaps even worse. We need to hang this around his neck like a dead albatross.
I want him to keep doing this shit.
I don’t want people hurt but I absolutely do want him fucking up with his delusional overreach and then keep getting buttfucked in court. I want Americans to feel personally how horrible his policies are because apparently terrible shit happening to other people doesn't matter to them -— so yes, I want them to lose their jobs, I want them to lose their farms and businesses because of USAID and Infrastructure Act cuts, I want them to lose their friends and relatives because their VISA were canceled and they were yanked out of their cars by the ICE-Gestapo and shoved into a Gulug in Florida, or Cuba or El Salvador — but for them not to be permanent. Hopefully, this will only be temporary because he’s not actually changing the laws. Most of these things the courts will reverse. Sadly, not all, but most.
Unfortunately, If they don’t have any empathy for everyone else, at least they just might finally get the point when it happens to them and their friends and family. This man is toxic.
As he keeps it up, he's slowly being hemmed in by the courts, in one area after another. He shipped migrants to a concentration camp in El Salvador and a judge immediately blocked him from doing it again. Yay. He's snatched college students off the street and detained them without due process and a judge is going to slap them down for that too and stop them. Eventually, he'll run out of stupid shit to do - and he'll finally start thinking about trying to change the laws in Congress.
And I don’t believe that the SCOTUS will save his ass here, they’ve shown that even they aren’t that far gone. So far.
THAT's when Democrats can have an impact by shutting all that crap down in the Senate with filibusters.
This process will probably take about a year — maybe a year and a half — and then we run on all the illegal chaos Trump has caused during the midterms and take back Congress.
We all need to understand the game plan, let him fuck up — then shove it in his face. Take Congress, take the Senate, take the White House and start cleaning this mess up.
We need people to learn how fucked up all this shit is. We already know, we already warned them. They didn't listen - so now they have to learn the hard way, and we need to HAMMER them that they caused all this shit to happen. They need to have it rubbed in their face and then they need to understand that ALL this shit is one big giant failure. They need to understand that we can't have this crap, Ever. Again.
When the bad stuff happens, and it will happen, the MAGAs are going to go into denial mode. Some of it already has happened, starving children are dying — mothers with HIV and transferring it to their babies in utero. Other pregnant women are bleeding out from miscarriages in parking lots. LGBTQ teens are being bullied into suicide. They’re going to lie and twist the facts. They’re going to deflect blame and point fingers all over the place. They’re going to aggressively downplay the damage that they’ve done. They won’t accept any responsibility at all.
We can’t let them get away with that shit. It can’t happen.
All of this Right-Wing MAGA Confederate garbage has to be made political poison. Anyone who tries to push this shit on us again has to be shunned and shamed like a serial-killing puppy murderer. Ok, well, even worse than Kristi Noem but you get the idea. All this bullshit is Fascism.
During this upcoming year, we need to do our part by blasting them with totally shaming memes about their incompetence and inhumanity.
We need to boil these down to simple messages and memes. Anything we can fit on a Sign, T-Shirt, Coffee Mug, or a Tweet. Like...
These are just a few ideas of mine — I’m sure we have the minds here to do even better. Yesterday, I posted all these on BlueSky and Twitter. Copy, repost, repeat. Fly be free.
People are slowly, bit by bit, realizing the truth that Trump is a Criminal. You can see this on the Paul Glickman’s “Leaving Maga” channel. Nearly everything he does is a crime in plain sight. He’s a convict, an adjudicated fraud, a rapist and an insurrectionist. He’s a liar, he’s a con man, he’s a fucking fascist bigot, he’s incompetent and so are the deluded sycophants he has working for him. He’s showing them who he is and they’re gradually starting to believe it.
We need to help them come to their senses. We need to give them the last push off the cliff.
We need to start pumping these out constantly. Not just those of us on Kos, but every Democrat. We need these ideas boiled down into bite-sized pieces and turned up the Eleven! We need to meme like mad dogs.
Quick. Simple. Devastating.
Rinse. Repeat.
Make it hurt.
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