A lesson from the Brits.
I live in a community that went down the rabbit hole in the nineties. Logic and rationale were checked at the door because neither had a place in a community that used a backroom society to pull the strings. It was a time when we had two leaders running our HOA. The "properly" elected president, and the good ole boy with direct connections to the backroom culture and the city. Access is everything in these kind of communities.
I can tell you from experience, that having two different societies working side by side is a losing proposition. If you don't have the law willing to stand up and stop the nonsense it's like living with parasites. The damage the good buddies create hiding under the cover of the nether world, is enduring. And it will continue to get worse, unless society wakes up and uses the arm of the law to stop them. And don't bring up lawyers. The shock troops in the community will gaslight you by spouting out legal tomes you know they don't believe like "He's a lawyer. He won't break his legal code by lying to us." My experiences suggest otherwise.
So, point is, I never quite understood how to deal with these gaslighters. I would hold up documents and tell them what I was reading, and they would respond in the same manner. Someone would say something incredibly stupid, and the room would respond by either laughing at me, or mocking me. Then, things would always get worse. We would go deeper down the rabbit hole, because the good buddies and their supporters were convinced that the community was hampered from taking action. Inaction from us was a sign to continue pilfering the community goodwill.
This happened in the nineties. And now, we're all in the same boat with the Republicans. I know it would have been helpful if there was something I could have said that would have awaken the decent people in the community. But then, I tell myself, it wouldn't have changed anything in my case. Most that did figure it out, moved out.
But, as the years have slipped by I've listened for those comments that might have made a difference. And the only thing I've heard that sounds like a line in the sand was being drawn to differentiate truly heinous and unacceptable behavior from rational expectations, came from across the pond.
That was when Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, responded to Boris Johnson's claims that he didn't know he was at a party, boozing it up during a Covid lockdown, with the comment: “so ridiculous that it is actually offensive to the British public.”
"...actually offensive to the British public." As if the British public takes a lot of abuse, but this one thing is beyond even expecting them to take in.
We need that kind of talk. We need someone to draw a line in the sand to show just how irrational and unacceptable the Republicans are. And I say this knowing there are people in the Republican party that would rather die, than wake up to see what they're doing to this country. And as good Americans, we just have to let them. It's the one thing that our inaction is good for.
But, for the others, a light might come on. So, here is to the wordsmiths out there. Find a way to find the high ground.
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