I can’t FIND it, but Pain sent me a list of the places he posted the Mantra yesterday and called it a slow day. A couple more people and a “slow days” like that can win us this war in the long run.

TWO commenters have already answered my request in “Second Step,” one by phone, and the other is already moving. This is not million-strong Nuremberg rally or a giant torchlight parade, but it thrills me, and I’ll tell you why:

ALL governments are oligarchies.

The trouble with giant rallies is the same as that with the moderate Republicans’ precious “minority vote.”

When Bush won his landslide victory for governor of Texas, he got a huge segment of the minority vote. He never got over it. Through all the years when Republicans were telling conservative white Democrats to go to hell and predicting they would get the ‘Negro vote” the next time around, they always pointed to the fact that in the landslide of 1952 Eisenhower got over forty percent of the Negro vote.

I was the ONLY person who pointed out, over and over and over, as usual, that Republicans got the minority ONLY when they didn’t NEED it. They NEVER got over ten percent of it when it made a DIFFERENCE in the OUTCOME. In every close election, Democrats got over ninety percent of that vote.

The same is true of giant rallies. In the pro-Confederate flag rally thousands showed up, but when the anti-flag rally took place, the city was choked with all the blacks and a few white toadies.

When this was pointed out to me, I said, “And how many SWING votes were in each rally?”

As usual, only I asked that.

Governor Beasley not only lost his bid for re-election, his political career was completely destroyed just as BOTH South Carolina senators were getting ready to retire. Not only that, but for once everyone admitted it was his switch on the Flag that ruined him.

The Nazi Party got 200,000 votes in 1928. After the war, a substantial proportion of those who marched in the 1933 victory parade and came to the Nuremberg rallies cheered as those same Party leaders were legally lynched.

ALL governments are oligarchies. “Victory has many fathers, defeat none.”

Never trust anybody who desn’t pronounce the “w” in the word dog.

I was reading a bok called Dogspeak some time back. I love dogs.

One thing I learned was that dogs are more social than people are. The author pointed out that, unlike what I had assumed, dogs do not resent leashes. That kind of worried me, snce leash laws, though necessary, keep them from running free. But the author said that to the dog, the leash means you are going to walk WITH him.

Also, I had read the conventional wisdom that puppies lick older dogs to get them to vomit them up some food, so a puppy’s lick is nt the wonderful thing we think. As always, anulterior motive makes the writer look smart. The vet said that was nonsense. When a dog licks your face, even a puppy, it means you are the greatest thing in the world to him.

I was happy to see that. Being licked by a puppy is one of the few honest, delightful expressions of love this tired old world has to offer.