Preoccupation

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, a bunch of ordinary people, much like you and me, took a look around at the world.  Politics were intense, the economy was bad, and as they looked,  they realized something; it sucked.

Most of these people had never been politically active before.  They might have voted, maybe read some pamphlets at election time, but politics had never seemed all that important until that moment when, for the first time, they felt a dawning realization of how broken the system was, how it was never going to get around to fixing itself, how without significant changes, things were going to get worse and worse, until these ordinary people had nothing left.  They’d be broken under the heels of the greedy other, the slavering, malicious people too stupid, or selfish to see that they were absconding with things to which they were not entitled, and asking for more.

The ordinary people started a movement.

At first it was little.  Only people in the know paid it any real attention, and a lot of them scoffed.  These ordinary people were all angry, sure, and they had a nebulous group they felt like they could blame, but they weren’t organized.  They didn’t have a platform.  They’d never accomplish anything.

As the movement grew it started to get media attention.  Local groups organized around the country, networking with each other to talk about the issues and educate others on the things that had gone wrong while nobody was looking.  Some of the media supported them.  A lot of it took pleasure in picking out the ridiculous, the absurd, the offensive.

But the average guys in the group kept at it.  They reached out to the people who had the experience and the know-how, taking what seemed useful from them.  These angry, disaffected people became a movement, and they had an impact.

You think I’m talking about Occupy Wall Street?

I’m talking about the Tea Party.