I saw this meme posted on Facebook and what follows is my response.
The meme seems to presuppose that people are either 100% real or 100% fake, when in actuality, we are a mixed bag—maybe 100% real about this, but not about that.
So we get this feeling we “belong” in this camp or that, when CERTAINLY there is no camp that is 100% real, either—-though we REALLY want to think of them that way.
It’s very imprecise thinking (about both self and camp), and it causes us a LOT of trouble. It makes it harder for us to change what needs changing. And it makes most people work harder to fit in than to change what needs changing.
Think about the first line: “The fake get in where they fit in.”
OK, let’s take that as true and test it against the two major political parties and against the churches. Where do terms like RINO and DINO come from, if not from people joining the camps without adhering fully to official camp doctrine? Yet is it not a STANDARD complaint that people like that are ruining the camp? Of course it is.
So, then, why do they get in there if it’s not where they belong? The party leadership WANTS them there, or else, they’d run them out. And so for the non-leaders; they could run them out, too, couldn’t they? Couldn’t they put their foot down and insist on some increased quality control measures from party headquarters? (Jesus insists on such measures in his ekklesia, by the way.)
So, the -INO people are welcomes in the wide-tent camps—-just as are the members who will complain about the -INO people. This is the racket that most never perceive. The insincere will presume their way in, while the sincere will be highly tempted to assume that the camp leadership is sincere and competent to run quality control. But very few camps (of any kind—political or religious or educational, etc.) run good quality control on membership.
Vying for majorities is quite a different game from vying for wisdom and righteousness. But too close to zero Americans understand this, and they get suckered into vying for majorities—-and into minimizing their efforts to train individual humans to be wise and righteous. When recruiting for their camps, they’ll take the warm bodies first, and just hope that if they’re not already good campers, they’ll BECOME good campers—-through magic, mostly, since almost NO camp has an excellent training program that regularly results in members becoming wise and righteous people.
The meme also runs the risk of being interpreted by some thus: “Well, I’m a strong (and wise and righteous) member of my camp, and I’m staying put, no matter how many -INOs are here.” The proud will like the idea of standing firm—and will be so inflated with that notion that they’ll miss the forest for the trees. That is, they won’t realize their in a corrupt organization that, regardless of its official platform, is routinely supporting bad actions and outcomes. They won’t follow the Churchill advice: “No matter how beautiful the strategy, one should occasionally check the results.” No, they’ll choose to develop a view of the camp that’s based more on its stated (or implied) INTENTIONS than on the quality of its actual work and outcomes.
As long as lots of people “fit in” with camps like that, camps like that will maintain a lot of control.
This is why it was so important that Democracy be rejected for the US, and a Constitutional Republic be selected instead—-where rule-followers in government could make the rest of the government obey the rules—with the clout of the citizenry behind them. But the citizens checked out in the first round, proving that they weren’t REALLY up to the task of overseeing a federal government after all. (For example, see the Judiciary Act of 1789, which is an egregious violation of the Constitution that has not been repealed since.)
How many Americans have reveled since in the glory of living in “a free country” since its composite States were commandeered by this unauthorized ceding of the States’ power to the SCOTUS? See what I mean? The boasting of camp rhetoric over the actuality of how we’re doing? (And Americans on BOTH sides wave those “free country” flags, do they not?—-just as they each laud their own camp’s successes without holding it accountable for its failures.)
We are a very messy people, indeed. And there is no viable movement afoot to change that. Most will simply assume that what this “two-party system” needs to finally right the ship of state is simply more time—another try—another go from Charlie Brown at kicking that football. But the system is rigged for the authentic Constitutionalists to fail while THINKING they’ve really got a shot at it without first making some colossal reforms as to how the average joe thinks and behaves about all this.
