Andy, My only experience with a tea party'er was an old feisty, short and skinny retired teacher, from some NorCal Indian tribe, Gennie, by name, who was on the board of trustees for DQ and railing against what modern culture has wrought upon her people, brown and white.
She made some awful strong points about self-reliance and gumption, describing the contrasts between the world she grew up in, and the world today.I thought she made a lot of sense from a Pirsigian perspective, "the re-birth of gumption" was what she was mainly longing for. And I don't think you can seriously call a life-long teacher, "anti-academic". But I do think that is where a spread of new ideas into unlikely circles can be of help to the world. That's what I mean by "pruning" instead of trying to chop the tree down. It seems to me that the great opposing evil in this effort, is the media, which portrays the teaparty movement according to certain ideas and an interpretation that emphasizes the kookier aspects. Where actual tp'ers are much more mainstream and frustrated over the current dualism that gives spendthrift Republicans and War-mongering Democrats, both respective cover, operating under the false assumptions of reputation. But back to Gennie, what a pip that woman was. I remember her talking about some indian kid walking around with his pants hanging down, hip-hop fashion, and she wanted to just grab him by the ear and whack him with a ruler, "Pull your pants UP you idiot.". > The Tea Party that I saw originally was about the same social values > Pirsig saw in the Indians (native Americans) in Lila chapter 3: > opposed to Victorianism, opposed to Socialism, opposed to Fascism, > opposed to any overbearing social order, opposed to the remote, > centralized management of private affairs; preferring instead to > resist codifying an overbearing static social structure, to let social > values adapt to experience in real time, to allow people to get along > and live and die and be responsible for their own behavior. > > I'm not partisan myself. My political values are mostly antipolitical > so I can't value any political group highly enough to lend my effort. > They are all full of shit by nature, or soon will be made so by the > work of the enemy. > > If there were a party like the one I described above, it wouldn't last > a month. Its refusal to hold its values static results in a refusal to > hold its meta-values static; it can't hold onto the idea that ideas > must not be held onto. Any tendency for Dynamic Quality would be too > loosely held to withstand infiltration by other ruinous ideologies. > Ever thus to Parties. > > I do believe you are correct, sir. (Tho I use the "sir" advisedly cuz real guys don't send e-hugs - especially not to other guys) Ellul posits that the definition of Satan is "politics". And literally, it is. Satan means "divider". Personally I'd vote for a new regionalism - forcing people to deal with their own local issues, and disbanding the federal government enough to allow for the evolution of natural communities. But since that ain't gonna happen, I'll just do the next best thing and ignore the entire apparatus, and I guarantee that if I can successfully ignore it, it will go away. Take care, John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
