I think a lot of us old guys were 'on the wrong side' at one time or another when we were in our youth.
First of all, I don't believe in terms like 'the wrong side'. It's never the wrong side if it's your side. People change and their views change with them, and 'right' follows those changes for each of us.
I was once told that folks start out as young liberals, then acquire goods and responsibilities, and that those goods and responsibilities prompt them to move away from the FSA who have little or no goods or responsibilities. It followed that the FSA grows quickly to covet their neighbors' goods, eventually getting on the 'from each according to his ability to each according to his needs' commie brainwashing bandwagon which empowers the incompetent to share in the products of the competent, building a momentum for turning the government, our government, into a wealth redistribution mechanism with our side of the equation being plundered according by right of statute. We recognized correctly that our earnings and responsibilities have moved us directly into the crosshairs of the FSA, which is in turn the voting base of the exploiters. It's a big part of what destroyed the Roman civilization, and it's on track to do the same to ours. We are living at the crux of that collapse this very moment.
Such an arrangement, 'money for nuthin', can be very attractive to folks like the FSA, and even more attractive to politicians who recognize correctly that promises supporting such practices are a straight ride to power, that dragging out the process of fulfilling such promises can be more beneficial to their political success than a rapid resolution (a lesson that is also not wasted on advocacy groups, IMHO the NRA comes first to mind...), and that such derived authority empowers them to then dictate any and all manner of oppression and exploitation of 'outsiders'.
Ethnic voters are vulnerable to such promises, and are eventually the truest victims of such scams. Lifestyle identities only become a label when the exploiters seek to employ those labels to gain more power. Lifestyles are each person's own choice and own personal gift; labeling anyone and exploiting them is a cynical scam. Identity politics, not because the 'identified' are of any particular interest to the exploiters, but because when split off from a dwindling mainstream, can he be mobilized to further divide and weaken the 'mainstream', which correctly resents being the targets of unjust exploitation and oppression. Over the long term, the process of identity politics weakens the mainstream to the point where it becomes disenfranchised, and can no longer rely upon the political system to protect and support it and the values which are intended to include all in the benefits to be rightly derived from participating in representative government. It is at times like this that the second amendment's primary meaning becomes a most crucial necessity. When representation becomes artificially skewed, the vote no longer means anything, and other means of gaining enfranchisement, wisely provided by the founders, become a crucial necessity.
Identity politics is the tool of those who were taught from their that the most direct means of disrupting and co-opting power is to divide and conquer. It is the method of those who have vowed to bury us. They use it because they know that when we stand together, all of us together, we cannot be conquered. So stand together.
Am I gay? No, I'm not gay; but I'm not dismissive of gays either, for precisely the reason that I don't wish to be dismissed, either. What we put on the wheel will always come around back to us on that wheel; either to proft us, or to bite us on the ass. In either instance, we get what we deserve. The same goes for any of the other labels that identity politics strives to give unwarranted importance. A thing may be, a thing is, but when we let it drive us, that is a sure and certain proof that we are being manipulated. I don't like bring manipulated.
I would also say that when an organization must present itself as apolitical in order to obtain recruits, it has abandoned the political system. This is the true goal of marginalization, to encourage mainstream opposition (and yes, for as long as your goals can be respected, you are the mainstream) to veer away from the political process, abandoning it to those who would manipulate it to oppressive ends. In other words, this is where you play their game, whose rules are crafted solely to reinforce your disadvantage. Such a stance is also disingenuous; it reverses the roles, allowing the deceit of the manipulators to portray their opposition as the liars and cheats. Don't play their game; stand openly for who and what you are. To avoid such is to portray who and what you are as something which cannot be justified, when, in fact, who and what you are, who and what anyone is, should be the things by which you are to be embraced and revered. In a society where such cannot be sustained, that society is the direct manifestation of hypocrisy.
Do not be cowed by the Politically Correct. Throw their words right back in their faces immediately. Throw the BS flag and keep a spare one handy. Take the stand for what you know is right. Make it clear that their spew is not only unpopular, it is disgraceful at its very core. Do not be fooled into accepting that your stand needs defending, it is their stand which is indefensible. Back them into the corner, never allowing the subject to change away from justifying their own propaganda. Their accusations are without weight, they are only a smoke screen disguising the hollow and self serving nature of their core values.
Grow a pair and keep it handy. They've gotten as far as they have on sheer gall, time to take that back. Cowardice takes many forms, and the form that serves them best is the silent kind. Take the initiative every time one or more of them tries to commandeer the moral high ground, cede nothing, force them to earn their rectitude.
I'm an old guy. I've had my run, and I've kept my values. I've been reticent, and in so doing allowed myself to become a 'fellow traveler'. I can't do that anymore and still look in the mirror. If this costs me anything, even if it costs me everything, at my age just how much remaining is really going to be lost? I don't mind losing any of it if such is the price of liberty. I may disappear, but my children and grandchildren will still have to live in what's left in my wake.
What is good stands upon a foundation of sacrifice. If not now, I may not have all that much time remaining in which to take that stand. I think it's time to stand up and stay up.
These days, the nation is engaged in a battle of wills. Who waivers, loses. Such times are never easy, and always fraught with heavy consequences. The easy way is what got us to where are, and is the best way to ensure the other side conquers. Their conquest results in globalist oppression, socialist values gaining not the upper hand, but the only hand, and certifies the death of individual liberties. We can't allow that, and waiting for their side to make a mistake is taking the easy way.
This confrontation of wills is not about what happens in DC or the state capital. It's about what happens in the local community center, the local congregation, the local Veterans' Hall, the municipal assembly. They may well intend to stifle our participation, and buffalo us into acquiescence. We cannot set our own participation aside and depend on others to carry this ball. We drop it, they pick it up and do the running with it to their goal, not ours.
Stand up, stay up; don't be deflected, don't be steamrollered. Inaction is acquiescence.
Greg
