On TL Davis' "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?"

From TL Davis' recent post "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio:"

 "I don't know what it takes to motivate people. Beyond the Tea Parties, there seems to be no opposition to these actions."

The Tea Party is the just the beginning of the productive class arising from its slumber.

We patriot/constitutional conservative/threepers/tenthers/State's Rights/2A bloggers represent the proactive and hyper-aware.  

The Tea Party folks are just beginning to understand the basic ideas of redistribution of their income and the extra constitutionality of the actions of the Congress and the Executive.  Their faith in government is shaken, but not shattered.  Some only think Progressives are the problem.  Some are beginning to realize that both the Democrats and the Republicans (Statists) are to blame.  Not many of them have grown out of neocon roots;  those are susceptible  for co-option by Statist Republicans.  Some have become libertarian, whether or not they know the label.  

What will motivate people?  

Desperation.  

Some will wake up when it costs them $80 or $100 to fill up their gas tank.  Some will wake up when their benefits are cut, salaries contract, and they start defaulting on their bills, despite working hard.  They know that their situation is through no fault of their own.
Some will wake up when they are really hungry for the first time in their lives.

Even after they "wake up", they still have to go through a thought process that may take a while for them to get to the proactive stage.


Americans, while upset at the actions of their so-called "representatives", are still way too comfortable day to day to be roused in the manner for which you hope.  


Sure, warnings to the public at large have been issued, seeds have been planted for conflict.  The information is out there for anyone who looks.

The productive class, whom I sometimes call the competent class, will eventually fight to keep what is theirs. But they first must realize they are not in a tunnel with a light at the end;  they must realize they are actually falling into a black hole with lava at the bottom.  They need to lose hope that things will take care of themselves, as they have every time since they were born.


This will all happen, and will happen soon, but not imminently.  When inflation or hyperinflation hits in the near future, more and more working Americans will snap away from their Dancing with the Stars and American Idol, and they will be surfing the internet looking for answers. 


The framers and the generation that lived at the time of the founding knew that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."


But people have to raise families, work hard to put bread on the table.  They may or may not be complacent about their government, but within a generation after the American Revolution, Americans became too preoccupied to leave hearth and home to go fight for their rights.  

For most, it takes a "clear and present danger" to get a man to leave his routine to protest or take up arms: 

Only a small percentage of the colonials fought against the king;  the rebellion started in Massachusetts when British soldiers, already blockading Boston, marched to confiscate the arms and ammunition of the Lexington militia. 

Impressment of American citizens on Royal Navy ships, and later a British invasion motivated Americans in 1812.

Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to invade the Southern states motivated many Southerners to support secession and leave home to fight.  

In other words, an imminent threat has to be perceived by a critical mass of citizens for a real revolutionary rising of the people to occur.

In our day, it will take the combination of decreasing Liberty through enaction of more and more ridiculous unconstitutional laws (and enforcing them) and an ever increasingly desperate economic situation to "raise the Shire".

“‘Raise the Shire!’, said Merry. ‘Now! Wake all our people! They hate all this, you can see: all of them except perhaps one or two rascals, and a few fools that want to be important, but don’t at all understand what is really going on. But Shire-folk have been so comfortable so long they don’t know what to do. They just want a match, though, and they’ll go up in fire. The Chief’s Men must know that. They’ll try to stamp on us and put us out quick. We’ve only got a very short time.’”  -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

TL, all of your motivations, inclinations, and goals are laudable and correct;  however, you are way ahead of the curve.