Yet this last month or so I have witnessed someone very close to me suffer excruciating pain caused by Sciatica, Pain like a rat gnawing at them, non-stop, down to the bone, crying but it hurts so bad that tears escape them. Brutal unforgiving, merciless pain. What is worse is that not even the strongest narcotics seem to have an effect.
I seldom leave their side because the pain prevents them from doing the simplest of things and I am there to help. But today I took leave of them for about two hours to attend a meeting of the High Desert Tea Party. You see this week there was all the controversy about racism and the NAACP and the Tea Party Movement. Now I first became aware of them during Tax season last year and remember seeing the crowds line the streets holding signs and talking about “Don't Tread On Me!” and “No Taxation Without Representation!” I mean they weren't hating on Obama or Congress and I saw Black, White, Latino, Asian, a veritable cornucopia of race protesting all for the same ideals.
I don't know when the liberal and conservative entered into it all but I was curious about it. (I know you must be wondering where the Pain comes into this – bear with me) So when I heard there was going to be a meeting nearby I wanted to see it for myself.
I grew up in the sixties and seventies and what I remember about that time was the trust. Trust in our government, trust in flagship corporations, trust in doctors and lawyers and newspapers and television news anchors, trust in banks, in the stock market, in real estate, trust in elections, trust in our neighbors, trust in 'One Nation, Under God....” We believed in freedom, liberty, truth, justice and the rule of law. Free Speech, The right to peacefully assemble, to bear arms – Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness.
It seems to me that trust has gone by the wayside. No one has trust in anything these days. The message I got initially from the Tea Party was that they believed in the system, in the core fundamentals of our great society and want to use the means within the law to take back the institutions we once believed in, we once trusted in. Think about it, regardless of where you fall, conservative or liberal how can you trust a congress that passes a 2000 page bill without ever reading it? That is surely a road to self destruction if ever there was one.
So I went and saw for myself and was truly impressed. I was the lone black marble in a sea of white but I was not stared at like a freak, I did not feel as though I didn't belong. I was welcomed not effusively but on par with everyone else who had been there for the first time. Actually my only disappointment was to see how few young people were there. While I was there I got to thinking about the pain the country is in, the collective Sciatica, the national pain and how we arrived at such a place.
Years ago I heard a story that took place during the Gold Rush days. It was about a man and his dog. They lived in a wood frame one room shack with a fireplace and the miners would all come to the shack and warm themselves by the fire, reading the week old newspapers, smoking their cigars and drinking moonshine.
One of the miners noticed the old hound dog hardly ever moved from the spot where he laid except to occasionally rise to go out and relieve himself. On one of these rare instances the miner noticed a long nail sticking up out of the floorboard where the dog had been laying. When the dog returned he came back to his spot circled over the nail and slowly let himself down with a slight moan. The miner said to the owner of the shack, “Why does he lay on the nail when he could just move over and lay on the smooth floor?” The man replied, “He has grown accustomed to the pain and is too old and tired to change.”
I think the Tea Party has the right idea. You see it is a response to pain. Pain we have grown accustomed to. As a society we have become lackadaisical about everything it seems. Unwilling to take the time, energy or effort to fight for our way of life, to allow others to do for us what we should do for ourselves – not trusting yet hoping they would do what is right. We have become the “Dog On The Nail”
The Tea Party is not perfect. It is grass roots on a national scale but still disjointed and unrefined. That it continues to grow in numbers and influence is a testament to the ideals that are mutually shared by its members, state to state, city to city town to town and soon those who are ready to move off the nail will get it together and begin to restore to our great nation the hope, the trust, the dream that was once this great land. But before that happens I predict PAIN!
