More About Demonstrations and A New Vision for Idaho

Ok - so most everyone wants to go out and protest and thinks I'm a lazy fraud for thinking demonstrating doesn't make a difference. Of course, they worded it very nicely so as not to offend and make an old lady feel worthless - and I thank them.

Then my buddy Mark, over in Spokane, comes along and gets all intellectual on me by bandying about words like "limbic" and phrases like "participatory republicanism" and "existential threat."  Honestly - who talks like that??  Good grief - participatory has at least six syllables.  Anything over three is showing off.

From the Combox:

Wow, that's a lot of Sunday reading that you posted -- thanks for keeping us up to date on the best of the bloggosphere. As for protesting, I think that it can be of some great utility in certain circumstances -- but it often is counter-productive or at most ineffective.

Better is the idea of people organizing for self-improvement, to share ideas, to have gathering -- like the Tea Parties. Not "community organizing" ala Barak Obama, but real, bottom up spontaneous groups forming not to vent but to reform the government through the democratic process and participatory republicanism.

The difference has a lot to do with how limbic the response is. Protests tend to be emotional, a response to something that is viewed as an existential threat, to something that pushes the "fight or flight" mechanisms in our brains. Productive gatherings are less limbic, more rational, more focused on long-term solutions to the problems that are facing us as a country.

Of course, limbic responses and futile gestures aren't simply the provenance of the Left -- I would argue that the Idaho legislature's efforts at nullifying ObamaCare fall into the same category of useless gestures.

Cheers!

Notice at the end of his comment he takes a jab at Idaho's attempt at nullification finishing up with his usual, "Cheers."   Oh yes - he couldn't resist twisting the knife in the backs of the people of Idaho innocently trying to farm their potatoes. 

Since I don't think nullification will work, I'm much more in favor of moving straight to secession and saving a sh*t load of time.  And not the entire state of Idaho either.  This will purely be a movement of North Idaho.

In the future, when North Idaho is it's own country, Spokanites will need a passport to slip across the border and buy their dishwashing soap (phosphates are banned in Washington so all their dishes are really dirty -it's  recommended that you use paper plates when you eat there.)  While they're here they grab some cheap smokes and fill up their gas tanks.   We could even charge them a small fee to cross the border and our country will prosper and our citizens will eat free potatoes.  Hot darn!  This is sounding better all the time. 

The bottom line here, if Mark wants to have a bottom up, spontaneous, productive and rational gathering with no limbics attending, I guess I'll be there (because he's a true buddy - even if he lives in Washington.) 

And speaking of demonstrators:

Police won't boot protesters from Wis. Capitol

The occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol by protesters fighting efforts to strip public workers of union bargaining rights carried on Sunday after police decided not to forcibly remove demonstrators and end a nearly two-week-long sit-in. read the rest

 Filthy vermin!