KPFA

Right, so KQED (our local NPR station) is currently in its second week of soliciting donations. As you may imagine, I find myself surfing the radio in search of replacement programming. Recently, I've been listening to KPFA a lot, and I have a tip for them I'd like to share:

Instead of saying "In order to support globalization, you need a trained military to put down the masses, and the School of the Americas trains people to do that," say "Colonel Juan Bautista of the Guatemalan army graduated from the School of the Americas where he was supposed to have learned how to foster democracy; instead, he oversaw the use of excessive force on a crowd of unarmed farm protesters." Trust me, your message will reach farther.

This is one of the glaring weaknesses of the far left: they just can't let the rhetoric drop long enough to level coherent charges. If you're writing a manifesto, sweeping generalizations are fine. If you want to energize a mob to march with you to lynch the politicos who have seized control of the means of production, level specific charges against them.

Trust me, the cause you save could be your own.