Thread by @TheLastRefuge2

Very well articulated thoughts, by John Hayward.

1.) For many people and politicians "avoidance" has become a survival mechanism. This has been the essence of my opposition to the GOPe for 15 years.

This current political status was predictable.

https://twitter.com/Doc_0/status/1389935634832314372

2. It’s more along the lines of “I see what’s happening, but it’s scary and complicated and confusing, and if I admit that I see it, I will become responsible in a way that I am not if I keep pretending I can’t see it or hear it or maybe I don’t understand it.”

3. Our Republic has become Kitty Genovese screaming in the darkness, being assaulted repeatedly and viciously, while onlookers sitting in the darkness startle onto their feet–some trying to reach for phones or light switches...

4. ...while others try to hush them, accusing them of exaggerated reactions.

5. The screams reach some homes where the residents look nervously and silently at one another, really hoping that someone else will call the cops, because obviously something really bad is happening out there.

6. Now, like then, most, like those people in New York, look around and say well someone is going to do something about this usurpation of power and unconstitutional action.

7. So they pull the comfy blankies of historical public leadership reference over their head, cover their ears, block out the sights and the sounds, and do nothing.

8. The GOP doesn’t even accept the fact a woman, Lady Liberty, our republic, is being repeatedly stabbed, carved up and her flesh torn from her body. She is bleeding on the grass and her bloody hand prints are on the trees and sidewalks of DC. They know it, yet they lie there.

9. Remember the visual illusions on big cards, (Rorschach tests) just black & white splotches that required you to “stare just right”– and when you did, you could see the ink-drawn cow in a snow drift? That’s the one we grew up with–yours might have palm trees or something else.

10. But you stared hard, knowing that eventually you would see a clear picture —ah! There it is! For just a minute, but you saw it there–for just a minute.

11. How many are sitting in the midst of this implosion still believing that if they stare hard enough at the national mess they will still see a Constitutional government and a Representative Republic?

12. Well, stare as long as you want. The details of a Constitutional Representative Republic will no longer come into focus because it turns out that the Republic was apparently stitched together with dissolvable thread like the surgeons use.

13. There are patriots who some might say resemble one of those slightly mad orchestra conductors who keep yelling, “More trumpet! More TRUMPET!” Many of you are such slightly mad orchestra leaders. Don’t be alarmed by some of the strange looks you are getting these days.

14. What is the source of this passive willingness that accepts illegal activity behind phrases like “they wouldn’t do that….” when they obviously are doing it?

15. In 1974, Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She lay in a California closet in her wet and smell for days that turned into weeks.

16. Finally, it made sense in what was left of her 19 year old mind to pick up an M-1 carbine and carry it into a bank to assist the SLA with an armed robbery.

17. Passive willingness, no matter how troubled underneath, is a choice: there’s something that’s being purchased by the passivity –and something that’s being traded away for it. Transactions are happening.

18. Why do republicans get swept into accepting these somewhat silent transactions that result in their cooperation with those who care nothing for our Constitutional Republic?

19. Be sure of this–they really don’t mind if we disagree, if we vent, if we vote, even if we organize…as long as they get to keep doing what they are doing. They really don’t mind us. At all. Isn’t that obvious by now?

20. Why do the silent transactions happen? Perhaps because the alternative to passive willingness is active refusal–and there it is: the price tag for active refusal may actually be quite high–and will often be perceived of as just being too high–and besides that, is an unknown.

21. There’s a deep deception involved with survival instinct that prevents a true comparison from being made between what’s being gained and what’s being lost as judgments are made (often by default) in the midst of confusing and threatening events.

22. Patty Hearst’s M-1 probably bought her a momentary sense of safety in her personal world gone crazy.

23. Those whose hold on power depends on deception are always able to find an audience of those willing to be deceived.

24. Now the audience of those willing to be deceived is a flexible group in terms of numbers and identities. Even those who have been in that audience for some time may one day walk away from it. What is it that makes folks stay in that audience?

25. What price are they afraid of paying?

What deception are they unwilling to let go of?

26. While we we use the word passive to describe this “willingness to continue in deception,” this is not an experience shaded in peaceful lavenders, mint greens and dappled sunlight.

27. This is the deadly passivity of muscles that no longer fire; tiny electrical charges that no longer leap from one synapse to the next.

28. This is as passivity says: “I won’t begin resisting, because I know that once begun, I must continue. Rather than assert myself and perhaps fail (or get really scared), I will sustain myself where I am trapped.

29. This is a passivity that says: "I will muffle my moans so as not to risk exposure and I will call it self-control. Winston Churchill would have called it cowardice but I will call it pragmatic caution.”

30. It’s desperately necessary for our survival that we become disillusioned–and quickly.

Yeah, …It’s desperately necessary for our survival that we become disillusioned–and quickly.

31. Think about that word: Dis-illusioned. Having illusions exposed and removing them from the decision-making process.

32. It’s important, because illusions that are defended and protected and argued for, instead of being exposed, will always take us to default decisions that are inherently based on unreality.

33. Isaac Newton said that passivity in objects was predictable. Perhaps passivity in troubled humans is predictable as well. He said it this way with regard to objects:

"An object that is at rest will stay at rest unless an unbalanced force acts upon it."

34. So–it appears that we need an unbalanced force to act upon these passively willing objects that are content to remain at rest.

35. Speaking now only of our relationship to the State….are we suffering under the illusion that we can indefinitely resist by way of “standing for” conservative ideals and Constitutional truths without being troubled by the need for active resistance?

36. Republican politicians and their proclaimed support of what’s left of our Republic, and their bleats of dismay at what’s being done to our Constitution in broad daylight are not changing what’s actually happening.

37. There is a disconnect between what we need to do, and what is actually being done.

38. And yes, to all you haters who want to trash President Trump now, his lack of political experience did leave President Trump vulnerable to the incredible depth and breadth of duplicity and evil in D.C.

39. He stood alone in the face of all of that and most of you stood there expecting him, one single man, to fix your problems without any action from you. He was a warrior commander rallying the troops.

40. The troops were busy with their beer and popcorn. Now they sit around and talk about how he failed them. While they have their beer and popcorn. Oh yeah, and bitch about the lack of "free speech."

Speech?...

SPEECH?!

41. If the vast majority of President Trump’s voters had turned their enthusiasm and support into local, on the ground *ACTION*, we might have a chance at a country well on the way to being restored and revitalized.

/END