As I said in my previous post, I attended my local basic political operating unit (BPOU) convention last night. Why would a man who despises politics, politicians, and the entire system of the state participate in such a thing? Because I would like to see Ron Paul get elected.
Unfortunately I left with my hatred of everything politics reaffirmed. You can never understand the idea of adults acting like children until you’ve attended a political convention. I felt as though I was in a kindergarden class full of unruly children who all wanted the same toy during recess.
I came as an alternate, which is a fancy way of saying a poor schmuck who becomes a voting delegate if the designated deletes from your caucus don’t show up. We had seven delegate seats available, two delegates and myself showed up meaning I got seated. When we registered delegates received blue name tags while alternates received red ones, after being officially seated we were told to go to the front to receive blue tags.
Although I’m poor with estimations I’d guess something like 1/4 to 1/3 of the room left to get new name tags, at which point a bunch of shit got rammed through because the chairperson knew it would be far easier to ram shit through with a good chunk of people missing. Yes, the people running the convention purposely put the alternates into a position where they would be forced to leave the room just so some shitty rules could be rammed through with less opposition.
From here things just went downhill. It demonstrated how corrupt party people are and how willing they were to toss the rules to the wind in order to get their way. My objections to the fact we were told to leave the room only to come back to rules being passed was entirely dismissed by the chair, in fact the chair lied by stating we were told not to leave the room. Yes, he just flat out lied in front of everybody and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it. I tried following the guidance of several members of the Paul campaign that came to help us fight against such party shenanigans but my attempt was only met with the threat of having me removed from the convention.
For those of you out there that hold any hope of reforming the Republican Party let me just say this: abandon all hope. The higher ups; or as I like to call them, the inner party; don’t want us involved in their political process. They want obedient automatons to tow the party line, people who won’t challenge the desires of the inner party. All their talk about wanting young people engaged in the party is complete bullshit. If the inner party had any decency they would tell the truth, they want people who won’t shake up the status quo. Members of the inner party don’t believe in liberty, limited government, or free enterprise; they only care about power.
Trying to reform the Republican Party is an act of lunacy when you think about what the plan entails. In order to reform the Republican Party from within one must play by the Republican Party rules, rules that are ignored of changed whenever it suits the inner party. Calling the inner party members out on their blatant disregard of the rules they put into place is a futile effort as well because the majority of people in the audience are mindless obedient automatons, they will shout you down because their masters in the inner party desire it. The combination of a power hungry inner party and followers unwilling to critically think leads everywhere but towards liberty.
Obedient automatons are members of what I call the outer party. These are the people who want power but don’t have the influence to obtain it. They exist on one hope, the hope that their service to the inner party will eventually be rewarded by inclusion in the inner party. What these people fail to realize is that the outer party are seen merely as trained monkeys to those in the inner party, trained monkeys who will continue doing what they’re told so long as a banana is thrown to them once in a great while. One does not move from the outer party to the inner party, hoping for such is futile but when you lack the ability to think critically you never come to understand this fact.
Everybody involved in politics has an agenda. My agenda is getting somebody into office who is actually liberty minded, really it’s self-defense against an ever more tyrannical state. Outer party members have varying agendas beyond simply moving into the inner party, they also want to use the state’s gun to force make people comply with their petty desires. Some outer party members want to ban gay marriage, others want to ban gambling, others desire war with Iran, etc. They see these conventions as a way to get Republican Party candidates to move these petty desires through the legislature, failing to realize the fact candidates don’t follow the party platform. In the end the outer party members spend hours debating something that is entirely pointless because it won’t lead to any changes. Finally inner party members continue with their agenda to gain more power for themselves.
Think of the ability to fulfill agendas as a toys and those trying to get their agendas fulfilled as children. The children fight over the toys. It’s not enough for each child to get the toy they really want, they also want every other toy because seeing their fellow children happy causes them great discomfort. This fighting over toys leads to some of the most ruthless non-physical combat you could ever witness. Nothing is off the table, every dirty trick is pulled out in the hopes it will allow one to achieve victory. Are the rules previously agreed to inconvenient to your hopes of getting all the toys? Ignore them, you’ll probably get away with it because other children also want to ignore the rules so they can get all the toys. Some of the children hope they can get the toys by forcing everybody to strictly adhere to the rules, a hope that is pointless because the other children were the ones who wrote the rules.
I’m shocked that the attendees of the BPOU convention weren’t throwing themselves to the floor screaming and crying. Their demeanor was literally that bad. Most of the people attending this convention pay lip service to the idea of party unity, but throw that idea to the wind the second something doesn’t go their way. “We’re all Republicans” they say (obviously they don’t know me), “we shouldn’t be fighting one another!” It sounds good but you only need wait two minutes to hear the same people denounce supposedly fellow Republicans.
The convention went from approximately 19:00 to 1:30, and in all those hours we had nothing to show for it. Some people were vote to move up to the state and congress ion district conventions where they would be forced to play the same game again, but nothing of actual value was accomplished. No experience is an absolute waste of time mind you, I feel my hatred of politics and politicians was strongly reaffirmed, but that’s it.
Hoping to reform the political process through the political process is akin to hoping for a rainbow farting unicorn. The system is rigged against reform, every rule is geared towards maintaining the power of the inner party. Those who walk in with hopes of changing things only have to options; realize the futility of the effort and leave or get sucked into the monster and become another cog in the political machine.
Abandon all hope ye who enter the political realm. There is nothing to gain and much to lose. Decades have been spent molding the system to ensure the power of the inner party. Members of the inner party are specialists, their specialty being the ability to maintain power. Those entering the carefully crafted system can’t hope to fathom a machine so large and complex, and that lack of understanding leads to defeat. Only the most devious mind could hope to understand a machine developed to be so convoluted, and those minds will tend towards the power of the inner party instead of the liberation of others.