This op-ed in GoLocalProv, by Providence firefighter Tom Kenney, is absolutely fascinating.  If you haven’t read it, go do so before reading on because what follows may spoil the effect; for maximum impact, as you read, skip the third paragraph (beginning “In this day and age”) and read that after you’ve read the whole thing.

Though it remains a puzzle to solve, Kenney’s piece may contain the key to the antidote that we must find to save Rhode Island (and the United States).  It’s fascinating to contemplate the larger narrative that his argument requires.  How does he come around to joining within the Democrat Party the influence of “fiscally conservative types,” about whom he complains, with “the entitlement grabbing, life-long and generational government assistance takers,” about whom he also complains?  When he works his views on specific issues down to a worldview, how does he reconcile those two?

More importantly: How can he be made to see that they cannot be reconciled?

On some level, he must know that.  In fact, he goes on to argue that Democrats can safely ignore the “governmental supported, non-working voters,” because they’ll never vote Republican, because “Republicans know how to say no!”  What he doesn’t seem to see is that this is exactly the reason he doesn’t want to support Republicans.

To understand why, one need only read in his bio paragraph that he is “a 34 year firefighter… and a 40 year union member.”

The puzzle is how he could be unaware that the labor unions are a driving force in the progressive movement.  His union reps and all of the platoon leaders in the labor division of the statist army are in on the game.  Because their revenue streams are largely guaranteed by government, and collected directly from taxpayers, they are a major funder of progressive activism.  That’s one of their roles in the Left’s collection of special interests.

The other is in locking in members as perpetual foot soldiers and voters for causes they’d otherwise have nothing to do with.  The union benefits are the mechanism that locks Tom Kenney and his coworkers into the special interest horse trade.

In previous eras, perhaps, those Americans who made up the labor union special interest group were able to benefit from that membership while not having to sacrifice their states, their countries, and everything in which they believed.  Those days are over.  There’s no more water in the rock.

So when it comes down to it, will folks like Kenney choose to change allegiances and support those who are trying to do the things that they agree are necessary to turn our state and country around (in large part by saying, “no”), or will they continue trying to preserve as much of their own personal interests as they can?  And how do we get them to understand that the former is the only option, in the long term, that doesn’t lose both?

Rhode Island’s experience proves that when an aristocracy of people who ostensibly represent this or that “community” (the minority community, the gay and lesbian community, the business community, the labor community) are confident that they’ve got the system locked up, they stop seeing it as their job to bring the interests of their members to the power-player table.  Rather, they become the nobility to whom members of those communities must come with bended knee for their slice of the pie or some semblance of justice.