Pete C. makes a fair point, commenting to my “Apathy’s a rot, not just something you (don’t) do on election day” post, saying, “it’s not really fair to blame us [conservatives] for the lack of competent candidates.”  Our side just doesn’t have the infrastructure to fund the civic minded, and the other side has made politics and government a downright vocation.

It’s not just, as Pete writes, that “Liberals view political office as a sacrament.”  It’s also that they view it as a cash cow.  Open the paper on any given day.  This is from today’s Providence Journal Political Scene:

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras has hired Andrew Caruolo, the 28-year-old son of one of his key political advisers, former House Majority Leader George Caruolo , to lobby for the city at the State House, once the new legislative session gets under way in January.

For the liberals and Democrats in our state’s ruling caste, what goes around comes around, and what goes around is our tax money.

Here’s one thing that’s become increasingly clear to me, the more time I’ve managed to devote to research and analysis of politics and policies: We conservatives believe what we believe because, well, it’s correct.  It’s common sense.  It’s intelligent and fundamentally altruistic.  For those reasons, when we successfully articulate our views — with the obvious handicap of political interests and biased media doing their best to distort what we say (often because they just don’t understand it) — we win the public over.

Think, for a case study, of how the Tea Party continues to be maligned in the media on a daily basis even as it is being proven absolutely correct in the concerns it expressed about the Affordable Care Act [ACA, aka ObamaCare].  It must keep ruling-class liberals awake at night thinking about what could happen if the majority of marginally involved and minimally informed Americans were to realize that they have much more in common with the evil Tea Party than with them.

Rhode Island is very much at the bleeding edge of the damage that bad political theory can cause.  It also exemplifies the principle that bad political theory only succeeds where the people have been made to disengage from politics and government.  Central to fostering that disengagement is the artificial feeling among the general public that — for mysterious reasons that only the aforementioned ruling caste can understand — the things that just make sense simply cannot be done.

Having observed Rhode Island for some years, now, I’d propose that the single most important message that can be brought to work-a-day Rhode Islanders is a contradiction of that feeling.

That being the case, I’d respond to Pete by saying that the odds aren’t so bad as he suggests.  We don’t have to develop a full state’s worth of alternative candidates (although that’d be fantastic), and more importantly, our choice isn’t between passive despondence and all-in sacrifice of our lives.  The task for us is to be as far along the spectrum of engagement as we’re inclined to be, and to get other people somewhere on the path.

Here are the stages, as I see them:

1. Carry the message. Specifically: Rhode Island’s government needs to start putting the people first and itself and its own interests second, and Rhode Islanders have the right to change their government and its policies in dramatic ways.  This isn’t a request to proselytize, but simply to remind one’s self daily of these two points and to tell them to other people whenever the opportunity arises in conversation.
2. Create a community.  Take just a little bit of time to make your presence known.  Online, this is easy.  Give the Current-Anchor a quick skim every day.  Subscribe to newsletters from RI Taxpayers, OSTPA, and the RI Tea Party.  Where there are comment sections, like on the Current-Anchor, start conversations, whether you agree or disagree.  (Don’t take anything personally; it’s just a bunch of us hanging out talking about things.)  Recommend them to other people.  The goal, here, is to encourage those who donate their time and to keep us all from falling prey to the false sense that we’re on our own, or even in a minority.
3. Have fun together.  Among the most important steps that I haven’t been able to find a way to organize is to be social.  We have to start getting better about doing things for fun, whether we organize them or just announce that we’re going to do them and then anybody who’s interested has the option to join us.  Why can’t the Tea Party go to a concert?  Why can’t taxpayers have a day at one of Rhode Island’s galleries?
4. Attend events.  Don’t feel obligated to go to every official activity of every group that’s right of center, but maybe give the possibility of attending events an extra bit of thought whenever you hear of one.
5. Get involved with others’ groups.  This is where time and money starts to come into play. Give some time and some money to a group or multiple groups working to move your town or the state in the right direction.  This could also include political candidates, but at this point, things are in such disarray that building the network should take higher priority.
6. Run.  Pick some government office or body and run for it… whatever suits your interest, whether the local planning board or state senator.  For one thing, this populates government with people who have common sense.  For another, if we do this as a matter of course, those of us who start to come to the decision to run for a more prominent office will have some background and some sense of what campaigning and acting within government is like.

Many folks have heard the saying that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince people that he doesn’t exist.  Well, in Rhode Island, the greatest trick that the establishment has pulled is to convince Rhode Islanders that they are alone and powerless.

Any little thing you can do in contravention of that message would be subversive and, therefore, both righteous and fun.