There are a number of techniques to disrupt a thread on any community board.

Why disrupt a thread deliberately, you may ask?

A few reasons are:

1) a political faction does not want a certain subject to be entertained (that Obama may not be an American citizen and is therefore not qualified to hold office)

2) a special interest group advantage will be lost if a certain subject becomes popular knowledge (gun ownership facts, for example)

3) a government shill is promoting a specific party line (communism - under the guise of "freedom and equality" [finally] for all)

Technique One

Two or more individuals, from seemingly diverse political stances from different areas of the country engage in constant bickering. They only do this after someone in the thread has made a significant comment. It immediately diverts attention from the valid and pertinent point into their, often humorous, arguing. They may do this on a number of other unrelated threads just to maintain the illusion that they have a long-standing feud. The effect is that most posters then give up on that thread and move on. Goal accomplished . . . oh yeah, and what was that point?

Technique Two

Someone's posts are so far to one side or the other that maintaining a conversation on the original topic is drowned out by the froth created by this extremity. That poster is often times rude, insulting and so outrageous that no one can get past the froth. Goal accomplished . . . what were we discussing again?

Technique Three

A group of people gang up on anyone with a dissenting view, usually with withering contempt, until the dissenter gives up. The thread then becomes a mutual masturbation society where they can all agree with each other that they are right.

You may have noticed that people who are confident in their stance do not need a "group" to feel confident. A good example of this is what the mainstream media is doing to Sarah Palin. How you feel about Palin is not the point here, just to be clear. But the mob-slander tactics being used against her and why.

By now you may be thinking - paranoid, conspiracy theorist, nut case.

However, a man by the name of Saul Alinsky not only developed these tactics, but instructed others in how to use them. One of his main protogees was Hillary Clinton. In fact, he asked her to take over for him as head of his program of "Community Organizing". Another of his best pupils at community organizing is Barack Hussein Obama.

Alinsky asserted that he was more concerned with the acquisition of power than anything else: "My aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it." This is not to be done with assistance to the poor, nor even by organizing the poor to demand assistance: "Even if all the low-income parts of our population were organized ... it would not be powerful enough to get significant, basic, needed changes."

Alinsky's rules include:

RULE 1: "Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear and retreat." (two people bickering off-topic)

RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don’t address the “real” issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.

RULE 3: "Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

RULE 4: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage." (withering contempt, personal attacks)

RULE 5: "The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself." (If we don't pass the global warming bill WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!)

RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” Empowered to be an asshole is fun!

RULE 7: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works. (Think Trent Lott and the success of name-calling used by the likes of Bill Clinton, Paul Begala, James Carville, Maxine Waters and others against conservatives and Republicans. Think of how Clinton "enemies" like Paula Jones or Linda Tripp were treated and now, Sarah Palin)

RULE 8: "One of the criteria for picking the target is the target's vulnerability ... the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract." (A former Klansman, Sen. Robert Byrd, got away with saying "nigger" on Fox News at least three times, and he still maintains his Senate seat and power.)

RULE 9: "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength." For examle, Democrats imply conservatives are racists or that Republicans want to kill senior citizens by limiting the growth of the Medicare system (of course, not a peep about Obama's comment that universal health care will deny aid to anyone over 65). These red-herring tactics work.

RULE 10: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”

A few of his other "ideas" -

• "In war, the ends justify almost any means."


• "In action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind."


• "Morality is merely a rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest."

The tenets of community organizing are right here at home folks. Anybody can do it. All you have to want is power - by any means you can get it.

Hillary Clinton notes that he was said to "rub raw the sentiments of the people." "Alinsky answers such criticism by reminding his critics that the difference between a 'liberal' and a 'radical' is that the liberal refuses to fight for the goals he professes," Clinton wrote in her thesis.

"Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul . . . " -Thomas Paine

"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins—or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer." -Saul Alinsky