STARVE THE FEDS

You ever notice that most horror movies take place in some rural area in the middle of nowhere? You ever notice that these films are usually written by people who live in the big cities? I never really noticed that until family friends came over to visit and they got freaked out about being here. Every cricket chirp, every tree branch squeak, every squirrel stirring seemed to make our visitors jump. I exaggerate, of course, but not about the pitch darkness and the quiet at night. Every single time, I swear to you, some remark is made about “Children of the Corn”, or that Jason from “Friday the 13th” will come out from the woods and ax murder everyone indiscriminately.

It’s funny until it hit me why this kept happening. People are afraid of what they don’t know. They assume the worst when they have no prior experience to go by. I find it a little ironic that the stereotypical liberal that comes from a large city or suburb seem to stereotypically remark about how conservative rednecks from the countryside are quick to fear concepts that they don’t understand (like socialism!), yet they display the same fear themselves. I suppose it isn’t fair to overrely on stereotypes, but our fun visitors are guilty of the same crime every time they remark about how rarely come over to my place due to their fear of getting killed.

I don’t live out in the Wild West; I live in rural Ohio. There isn’t forty miles that separate me from my neighbors. It’s not like Wyoming where someone can go missing and no one would have a clue where to go look for the body. Neighbors are within shouting distance. When I went house hunting over four years ago, I found that there were no registered sex offenders within miles of this place, and crime was pretty much non-existent. People are statistically safer here than back where they live, yet they harbored some irrational fear every time they were in the safer place.

If you have fallen for this before, then hopefully you know firsthand how easily the mind is fooled by outside influences. If your environment repeats assertions at various times of your life, and you have no life experiences to contradict those assertions, then many in your situation will assume those assertions to be true. Those same assertions usually get repeated to friends during everyday conversation, in the form of “I heard that such-and-such….”, etc., you get the picture.

Now that we’re living in an age where the first instinct is to distrust the media’s presentation of news if we know what’s good for us, it takes some getting used to when we are apt to just casually make assumptions about what we’ve heard. In the past few years, I’ve been consciously making the effort to rely more on what I see rather than what I hear. Firsthand is better than secondhand, is it not?

Hence actions speak louder than words. Talk is cheap, yet we seem to hang on the words of authority during times of crisis. When we’re too busy or too lazy to do our own research, utilize our logic, and make our own estimates using our math skills, it seems to be the easier route to just accept what we hear; we blindly trust rather than verify. We’re all guilty of this; I don’t want to see any fingerpointing from either side.

It’s all part of the political game. Monopolize the airwaves. Get your message out. If the opposing side’s message makes you look bad, then contradict their message twice as hard, using twice the ammunition, twice the airtime. Lies, truth, it doesn’t seem to matter. Politics, as I’m learning, is the people giving permission to a select few to delegate power to them. That power intoxicates people; tempts them to play God. Are we a nation governed by laws, or a nation governed by men on their God-trip?

To dip our toes in the pool of politics means risk being swallowed by the inevitable whirlpool. Politics is only calm if you go with the flow, and the flow is not always the right path to take. The whirlpool consists of the constant babble of information, true or not, distorted or exaggerated, purposely flooding and confusing our brains to the threshold. At this point, any sane human being would want to opt out of politics, therefore giving in to the establishment. Others may get swallowed up in one particular side, and fight daily against the other side. Those who want to do the right thing sail through the stormy waters regardless. There is a place to go, and whirlpool or not, we need to get there, even if it means stepping on the powerful political parties to get there. Neither side has our interest at heart. The Democrats are floating their usual drivel and driving our country into the ground. The Republicans are talking the good talk; pandering, seizing upon Tea Party momentum to keep going with their country club lifestyle. Actions, words. What you see, what you hear. When I see that Mitt Romney and Jon Kasich come to Mansfield, Ohio, expecting $1,000.00 per ticket just to rub elbows with them, what does that do to what you see versus what you hear? When I receive emails asking for $50.00 “donations” to support a local Republican candidate for judge, what gives?

I’m hoping that the Richland County Republican Party sent a message to the Ohio Republican Party that the usual won’t be tolerated anymore. However, I know better. The Tea Party is not as prominent in Ohio as we would like it to be. We pale in comparison to states that seem to get it, like Arizona, Kentucky, Utah, Wyoming, Texas, and Alaska. To a lesser but still good extent: Montana, Nevada, South Carolina, North Dakota, and parts of California. Ohio is still wishy washy. We’re certainly not liberal New England or metropolitan NY or LA, but we’re not freedom loving enough just yet. 

I’ll say it right now: November is NOT a “gimme” for Republicans. They can still lose elections; not because the Democrats are waking up, because they aren’t. The reason is because there are Libertarian and Constitutionalist candidates that truly get it and are truly superior candidates to those that are more well funded. For every Rob Portman for U.S. Senate (Ohio), there is a breath of fresh air like Eric Deaton. Mr. Deaton will probably not win, but the D vs. R race seems to be close enough to where he can suck away votes from Portman. If that happens, the Republicans lose and they would deserve it. This is why I voted not to endorse Republican candidates in the central committee, because inferior candidates get what they deserve. It’s too bad America doesn’t get what they deserve as a result; but it would take a political party to wake up and become principled instead of pandering to the principled ones. That’s what Democrats do now – pretend to be moderate and conservative in order to pick up votes. It’s going to take time; too much time. Party politics excel; America suffers. We’re due to learn our lesson sooner or later.

Hopefully, sooner.