Glenn@103:
“No one in Fly Over country will realize that Obama is piece by piece tearing down America to drive us ‘down a peg or two.’”
As taanstafl said, the tea parties are all about people in flyover country paying attention and not liking what they are seeing. There are a lot of us paying attention…but we’re not a large percentage of the population out here.
The tea parties are a reflection of the strategy of the rabidly anti-war leftists, in a way. The antiwar folks are/were also a small minority, but they got headlines by being loud and obnoxious (and having the media on their side didn’t hurt.) The tea party is doing the same thing.
Thing is, I believe that while the tea party is a small minority in that they’re actually paying attention, they are in the majority (at least in flyover country) in their take on DC and the various shenanigans that have been going on.
I mentioned upthread that my friends don’t pay attention to national and world politics much. That is not because they’re stupid or ignorant. In most cases, quite the opposite is true. It’s because they are very focused on their work, their families, and in general just living their life. Out here, there has been very little from DC or elsewhere that materially impacts our lives in perceptible ways…and people here are nothing if not practical. Why worry about some nebulous bill working its way through congress when there’s wheat rust on the back 40, or you have to get ready to fix the potholes on 5th street, or you’ve got to ramp up sales of speedboats or tractors?
The elite have been using this inward focus of ours for a long time…we’re the frog in their pot, and they’ve been slowly turning up the heat for some time now. Obama has gained a lot of hubris through that history of us not really reacting, and now he’s “transforming” America. The big changes haven’t hit us yet, but they will soon. And the moment that they do is the one I’m afraid of.
Because it will be too late then to turn back the clock, and the legal framework has already been laid. People out here are used to living their own lives without a lot of government interference. When that interference starts to be enforced…that’s when we’re going to see fireworks. Because while many–maybe even most–will bow to government authority, there are at least a large plurality of people out here who won’t stand for it. I personally know several who are even now on a hair-trigger.
These are people out here who (correctly, in my view) view the second amendment not as a guarantee that they’ll be able to hunt or even necessarily as something that will protect their right to defend themselves against lawbreakers, but as the point of law that legitimizes their right to fight back against the government when it ceases to be recognizable as a legitimate governing authority.
More than usual there are people around where I am, watching what happens with the Arizona illegal immigrant thing. I’ve filled some of them in on the back story. More than once I’ve been asked “what about the term ‘illegal’ don’t they understand?” People here aren’t against immigration. They’re against ILLEGAL immigration. Yet time after time, in the MSM they leave out the ILLEGAL part.
Why don’t they streamline the stupid paperwork that has been in the system for decades? If these people, the vast majority of which are harmless, just want work…why is it so hard that they will pay coyotes to get them here? THAT is the real scandal. It should be a matter of a few questions at the border, and they let them through (after checking their luggage or whatever). What drives these people to break the law?
