Lurk, fellow lurkers, lurk
<http://obitur-dictum.blogspot.com/2010/06/lurk-fellow-lurkers-lurk.html>
You guys are discovering what I did years ago and warned you to expect.
Note that people do attend tea parties in large (but dwindling) numbers.
It is useful to understand why they will attend those events and not our
meetups. The answer, in large part, for the greater "success" of the tea
parties is that they don't ask participants to think or to commit to
personal courses of action. They also allow participants to hide in a
crowd and not take a prominent position in front of the pack.
I first observed this in the 1970s when I managed fundraising mailouts
for various causes. I found a consistent pattern: A fundraising letter
might be successful (bring in at least 5% more than it cost) if it only
raised concern about a problem (say, cancer), but would almost certainly
lose money if the letter mentioned support for a particular solution
(say, a new vaccine).
It goes back to the ways human brains are organized. We have a primitive
area of the brain that activates a fight or flight response that can be
aroused by presentation of a threat (problem), but less so by
presentation of a response (solution).
It makes one wonder how our forefathers ever managed to fight the
American Revolution.
The answer is that people then, as now, looked to leadership from their
leading citizens, not from others of their own social status.
So who are our leaders today. Interestingly, they are mostly not
political figures. The people perceived as "alphas" by most people today
are celebrities in other than politics, such as entertainment. Indeed,
politics has become just another kind of entertainment or sporting event
for most people.
The Roman emperors discovered the same principle. From Caesar onward,
power was based on entertainment of the masses. Even wars were an
entertainment.
We are more like the early Christians, who lurked in the shadows of the
Roman Empire until one emperor had a vision and suddenly imposed
Christianity on everyone, and created a Church that then went on to
suppress everyone who disagreed with it.
So lurk, fellow lurkers. Lurk until it is our time, until events crush
the people into turning to us in desperation. That time is near.
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the
citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a
double-edged sword.
It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the
drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with
hate and the
mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights
of the
citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by
patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and
gladly so. How do
I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." (Julius Caesar)
--
----------------------------------------------------------
Constitution Society http://constitution.org
2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322 Austin, TX 78757
512/299-5001 [email protected]
----------------------------------------------------------
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
