In our lifetime?

T.L. Davis posted, on his blog TL Davis in Exile [correction: "TL in Exile"], that trying to motivate patriots in this country is like "Waiting for Godot", the play by Samuel Beckett (an Irish poet and playwright) where two men wait indefinitely - and pointlessly - for the arrival of "Godot". T.L. had tried in a number of ways, at significant cost to himself, to motivate patriots to act, even if such action is merely to gather on the steps of the Capitol Building to display our desire for a return to the principles this country was founded upon.

T.L. is a man of honor, and more courageous than 99.9% of those in the "patriot movement" - where there actually is no movement, other than the tapping of computer keyboards - just like mine right here. Yes, we can speak of the fact that we are trying to educate more people, trying to get folks to understand just how bad government has become, but we then have to admit that we haven't been very successful. Most of the people who read what we write are already of the same mindset, and have simply been cruising the Internet looking for like minds, and some validity for what they believe.

I have always been more of a pessimist than an optimist. As I like to tell people, "A pessimist is simply an optimist who is in possession of the facts." I prefer to think of myself as a realist, however, someone who is trying hard not to delude himself into believing what he would like to believe. (Which is why I was certain Obama would get re-elected, in spite of all the damage he has done and which will worsen over the next four or more years.)

So, in response to T.L.'s post "Waiting for Godot", I commented thusly:

"TL,

As you have come to realize, there will be no "uprising", no general movement against the obvious and overt theft of our liberty. Things just haven't gotten bad enough to move us out of our "comfort zone".

I'm becoming more and more convinced there will _not_ even be an actual economic collapse. I'm thinking we will see something more like Argentina, or the old USSR, where conditions are terrible, where the government continues, but here in our country becomes even more oppressive.

Perhaps when family members start "disappearing" (as in Argentina), or the detention of family and/or friends begins to occur in a widespread fashion, people will start to react.

I believe that, if and when we respond, it will be leaderless - and local. Hopefully, groups of family/friends will involve others whom they know in response to the oppression and it will "go viral" at some point. Beyond that, I just don't see it happening.

Until then, all of us patriots (and we are indeed patriots) who loudly proclaim it is time now to take up arms will continue to press computer keys rather than triggers. Maybe we are wrong, but they way things are right now, any gesture we made by "going active" would be silenced. You would not hear about it in the news, or we would be portrayed as backwoods fools, like the Hutaree. 

Frankly, if the deaths of women, children, and INFANTS at Waco didn't move us, I don't think anything will until the family or friends of patriots begin to be taken or disappear."

My lifetime will certainly not be as long as some of you few folks who read what I write. Nonetheless, I am going to guess that no real response to the loss of our liberty - to the loss of what America once was and what she stood for - will occur in my lifetime, and possibly not even in yours.

That doesn't mean I think that I will be able to finish my life in some kind of peace. I believe I will likely become a victim of the oppression when .Gov decides to begin enforcing some "laws" or regulations that I will refuse to comply with, such as disarming citizens of their firearms. When one of my personal "lines in the sand" are crossed, I will resist. Probably to the point of my death. As Dylan Thomas wrote:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.