Maggie's Farm

That quote reminds me of the old liberal chestnut, "the personal is political". At some point I realized that the motto wasn't really descriptive, it was aspirational. The folks saying it wanted to make the personal political; they wanted every facet of your life subject to their politics. And they had big plans.

A year or so ago I was trying to explain to a liberal friend where the Tea Party folks had come from and why they were so upset. It occurred to me that, whatever the budgetary reasons, the root of it was that they felt they had to protest at all. They were, by and large, people who were perfectly content living their lives ignoring politics and interacting with any kind of government as little as possible.

What they saw coming at them was a government they couldn't ignore, that was going to get in their face. Which meant they had to become politically active to push government back, which in and of itself was irksome because they would rather be doing just about anything else: flying kites, you name it. And they would organize and protest on weekends and make a huge, focused fuss just so in the future they didn't have to spend their weekends at some damn political rally.

It ain't the whole picture, but it's a big part, and boy do I sympathize!!