Thursday, January 17, 2013

Guest Blog: The Tea Party Challenge

Guest blogs do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Insider staff, guest pieces are published as a courtesy for readers.
The TEA Party Challenge
By Tim Lenox, RUV

There have been posts in Facebook groups asking, “Why do the American People tolerate …?” or “Why do the American People accept …?” or “Why don’t the American People do something about …?” or even just “Why doesn’t anyone do anything about …?”

I have something of an answer and it presents a challenge for all those who want more people to become involved in politics. It came from a veterinary receptionist back in 2009.

We would enjoy chatting whenever I brought my cats in, but she never wanted to hear about politics. During one of my last visits before relocating, I finally decided to challenge her.

I related what some have said about how more people vote for American Idol than President. Regardless of whether this is accurate or not, the sentiment is what is important. I mentioned that she can ignore politics as much as she wants but politics is not going to ignore her. Then I asked her how bad her life has to get before she decides to start paying attention to what her government is doing to her. The answer she gave me stuck with me and has become more relevant every year.

“The problem is that the worse my life gets the more I would rather watch American Idol because at least I feel my vote counts there.”

This is the nature of the problem. In an article published in the Middletown Insider last year, I mentioned the tendency of people to become more parochial and focus on their own lives as they feel less control over the larger issues facing the nation.

They feel that they have no power or control over the government at any level, so they try to focus on what they feel they can control to have at least some control. At the time, I thought that this indicated the solution of change at the local level rising up to change at larger levels.

But what if the parochial attitude is a slippery slope? If people feel unable to change anything, they stop trying. Separating themselves from the rest of the world, they hope the world will not notice them. Ironically, they relinquish ever more control of their lives to those who want to control them. They then feel even less in control of their lives and thus allow more control of their lives to be taken. This is a spiral into abject slavery that the slave feels powerless to stop.

Here in Connecticut especially, most people feel that they don’t even have a voice in their own political party. This is why the number of Unaffiliated Voters has been increasing.

The Connecticut State Republican Party has a major problem coming up next year. The number of delegates a state party gets to send to the national convention depends on who votes in the state gubernatorial election. For those of you in Rio Linda, that means the election of the Governor.

Continued:



Unfortunately, some in the party leadership have been making it quite clear that they do not want just anyone in the party. However they will accept anyone’s votes and donations. They have been succeeding in disenfranchising so many people that those who want the party to become an exclusive club are getting their wish. The Republican Party in the State of Connecticut is heading rapidly toward Third Party status.

What they do to maintain relevance is up to them. The disdain of some Republicans for anything related to the TEA Party movement is isolating them from the only support they had left. The TEA Party challenge for the Republican Party is this: If you spit on the people who have tried to support you, how can you ask for anyone’s support?

However, this article is not addressed to the Republican Party. My challenge in this article is to the TEA Party.

The Challenge is this:
How do you get people to be more involved when they feel that their involvement is futile?

In Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals, he talks about making life so uncomfortable for people that they have to get up off the couch and get involved. What if that works in the opposite direction where the worse things get the less people want to get involved?

The knee-jerk reaction I hear most often is that people need to know that they CAN make changes. But if you look at Connecticut, you will see the opposite. So many people have relinquished so much for so long that the Ruling Class has almost absolute power and authority. Quislings and collaborators in both political parties make it next to impossible for the average person to see any hope. So the slavery spiral continues.

The Republican Party made an attempt at one point to have a big meeting where they laid out the party platform and defined what they stood for. See my last article to see what happened to that platform. *link below signature*

The TEA Party, on the other hand, has been so desperate to grow in numbers that they have welcomed people who have been more destructive than productive.

Both groups ignored my very public warning at that big meeting:

“As long as we remain Divided, we shall remain Conquered.”

For those who thought my voice had been silenced when I publicly declared myself “Gone Galt”, guess again. I have been resting up. There is more to come and I will continue to voice my opinions until someone is willing to pay me to stop. If someone else is willing to pay me to continue, then let the competition begin.

In the meantime, meditate upon the Conundrum I have presented to you.

How do you stop the Slavery Spiral?

How do you get more people involved after discouraging those who did?

How do you convince people that their voices and votes matter when you have demonstrated that they do not?

How do you unite people after so successfully dividing them?

Where do we go from here?

Quo Vadis, Patriots?

---Tim Lenox, R.U.V.
(Registered Unaffiliated Voter)
Lone Wolf Patriots

*link to previous article mentioning the Republican Party’s Amazing Disappearing Platform:

http://www.middletowninsider.com/2013/01/guest-blog-prediction-time-2013.html

2 comments:

  1. The Democrats are united because the politicians and their supporters share a common vision of a large centralized government ruling over their lives, doling out entitlements. The democratic voters do not see the dangers inherent in their reliance on these authoritarian institutions they regard as benign. In contrast, with the Republican party a natural tension exists between the conservatives who send the representatives to DC to reign in spending and cut the size of government and the respective politicians who almost always succumb to the personal power that comes from excessive government spending. Hence, the Republican voters have been betrayed by their chosen representatives time and time again while the Democrats and their representatives remain united. Sadly for the country, the more popular vision of an all pervasive nanny state prevails in the low information pop culture, dooming our economy to inevitable collapse.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The author nails it; the low information voters and their pop culture fascination spell the end for our constitutional republic.

    ReplyDelete

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