{"id":38110,"date":"2012-03-20T15:58:39","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T21:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=38110"},"modified":"2012-03-20T15:59:25","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T21:59:25","slug":"litmus-testing-the-fence-sitters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2012\/03\/litmus-testing-the-fence-sitters\/","title":{"rendered":"Litmus-testing the fence-sitters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Stephan<\/a>

Stephan Helgesen<\/p><\/div>\n

This high-pitched disagreement about what kind of America we want and the demonization of the opposition is eventually going to tear down the fence the undecideds are sitting on.<\/h4>\n

I\u2019m proud of the fact that I\u2019m politically engaged and fairly politically astute. Frankly, I don\u2019t understand those who don\u2019t care about politics or its effects on their lives. Don\u2019t they know that the only innocent thing about bystanders is their naivet\u00e9? Do they really think that by not taking sides they\u2019ll exempt themselves from the consequences of other people\u2019s actions?<\/p>\n

Ever seen the TV cameraman on the sidelines at a football game get mowed down by a wide receiver running dangerously close to the out-of-bounds line?<\/p>\n

Everything\u2019s going fine. He\u2019s capturing some great footage until he realizes that a mano a mano collision is about to take place and HE\u2019S one of the manos! Because he\u2019s spent all of his time looking through somebody else\u2019s lens he\u2019s missed an opportunity to positively affect his own situation and get the heck out of the way before this oncoming freight train of a man turns him into tapioca pudding.<\/p>\n

Anyone who stands at the sidelines of politics with his arms folded, dispassionately watching cataclysmic events take place, deserves to be hit by that wide receiver, and I for one have no sympathy for them. I guess it\u2019s because my skin has been toughened these last 20 years of the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations (not to mention the 20 Congresses that have come and gone and the really pathetic laws they\u2019ve turned out).<\/p>\n

I could no longer stand idly by and say, \u201cHmm, isn\u2019t that an interesting piece of legislation (like the Affordable Healthcare Act); I wonder how that will affect me?\u201d than I could say to the tax man, \u201cCould you please take a little more of my money? I was only going to leave it to my children anyway.\u201d Ya, right.<\/p>\n

\u2018A Texas no-brainer\u2019<\/h3>\n

A good friend of mine lives in Texas, and I was talking with him about these fence-sitters. He remonstrated against them in a typically Texan way. He said that, \u201cSuppose you\u2019re watchin\u2019 two 2,500-pound bulls fightin\u2019 in a corral. They\u2019ve been at it for an hour, knockin\u2019 themselves out with their repeated attacks, but now they\u2019ve kicked the fence boards loose, are tearin\u2019 up the corral and puttin\u2019 the rest of the herd in danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you do? Ignore \u2018em and hope they\u2019ll come to their senses before they destroy the place, or do you step in and get involved when you see the way things are goin\u2019? Brother, that\u2019s what we call a Texas no-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

True fence-sitters and real non-committals aren\u2019t the only casualties on the political battlefield, nor are they the only ones giving freedom a bad case of indigestion by their lack of participation. Political correctness seems to be pushing us and our opinions so far underground that we may need to start applying a litmus test to everybody so that their ideologies are visible to the naked eye and so that we know who we\u2019re talking to.<\/p>\n

For those of you who haven\u2019t thought about it for awhile, litmus is a coloring matter that comes from lichens and the litmus test helps identify two solutions. When litmus is added to acids it turns red, and when it\u2019s added to alkaline solutions it turns blue. \u00a0That is not a political comment, my friends (though it is an interesting thought). It\u2019s just chemistry.<\/p>\n

The litmus test<\/h3>\n

Our litmus test could be my friend\u2019s bull-in-the-corral situation. Here\u2019s what you do, when you\u2019re with someone whose political philosophy you\u2019re unsure of…<\/p>\n

You repeat that situation and wait for your conversation partner\u2019s answer. If he says he\u2019d wait until the bulls get tired so they fall over from exhaustion, he\u2019s probably a very doctrinaire, laissez-faire type who won\u2019t intervene no matter how serious the situation is.<\/p>\n

If he says he\u2019ll get a couple of the boys to jump over the fence and try to lasso the bulls and pull them apart, he\u2019s probably a theoretician and has never done this before. So, basically, he has no clue of the danger he would put himself and his pals in.<\/p>\n

If he says he\u2019ll pull out his Winchester and kill one of the bulls, chances are he\u2019s a doer, not a talker, but not necessarily a long-term thinker as he clearly hasn\u2019t thought about how the shot might stampede the rest of the herd AND send one of his best producers to the big stockyard in the sky.<\/p>\n

If you find someone who says he\u2019ll fix the fence boards first, sequester the exposed herd and saddle up his ranch hands on their horses so they can guide one of the bulls into an open chute, then you\u2019ve found a person who understands human nature as well as animal nature. My advice is, get him to run for public office.<\/p>\n

The fence will be torn down<\/h3>\n

We must start pulling people off the fences and making them aware that their voices count and that none of us can afford to just vote \u201cpresent\u201d while bad things happen to our blessed land.<\/p>\n

This high-pitched disagreement about what kind of America we want and the demonization of the opposition is eventually going to tear down the fence the undecideds are sitting on. They had better get ready and choose for themselves which side to come down on.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope for all our sakes that it\u2019s the side of commonsense, conversation and the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Stephan Helgesen is a former U.S. diplomat and former director of the N.M. Office of Science and Technology. He is currently the honorary German consul in New Mexico and heads up his own export consulting company. He can be reached at\u00a0helgesen@2ndopinionmarketing.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This high-pitched disagreement about what kind of America we want and the demonization of the opposition is going to tear down the fence the undecideds are sitting on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1672,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[116],"class_list":["post-38110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}