Scrubbing Bubbles

I was reading an article online, in which the author, a black conservative, was remarking that the rhetoric of the Tea Party movement, vis-a-vis African-Americans was turning them off, rather than attracting them. The specific example he cited was a black Tea Party member denouncing those African-Americans that wouldn't join as being "'hypnotized' by President Barack Obama." (I wasn't aware of this at first, but the idea that President Obama is capable of literally hypnotizing people with his words has been around for some time. Well, for those of us that wear tinfoil hats, anyway.) Race aside, flat-out telling people: "The fact that you aren't one of us proves that you can't think for yourself," has NEVER been a winning recruitment strategy for any organization that I can think of. (Neither, for that matter, is "The fact that we're right is more important than the fact that we're always calling you stupid.")

It seems to be a common tactic, on all sides of the political spectrum, to write off people that it takes some real work to reach, and then blame them for their unwillingness to see things in the way that they're "supposed to." It's time to put this moronic idea to rest, if for no other reason than it makes your and your ideas seem weak. Convincing people that your point of view is correct isn't, and shouldn't be, trivial. It takes work, and sometimes quite a lot of it. And sometimes, you put a lot of work into it, and it doesn't pay off. Adopting a position that other people have some sort of obligation to understand the correctness of your position, or that a person's stance on any given issue can be taken to be evidence (or counter-evidence) of their intellect or thoughtfulness, is a cop-out. And a blatantly obvious cop-out at that. So why do we still see it?