The Coonridge Digest: New political party: Don’t Know Nothing and Don’t Care

Greetings from the Ridge.

It’s embarrassing but one of my dear friends is a terrorist. I suppose this will blow my cover and open me up to a CIA investigation but I just can’t hold it in any longer. She’s a genuine terrorist… more dangerous to our national well-being than any bomb-toting frequent flier.

I’ll call her Tina. Tina the Terrorist.

Tina doesn’t believe in politics. Oh, she never misses church, recites the Pledge of Allegiance louder than anyone in the room, and personally knitted her own American flag quilt with a cross embroidered through the stars, but she doesn’t do anything political. In her words, "They’re all godless crooks," and she seldom votes… certainly not in a primary or a mid-term election.

Of course she spends a great many of her waking hours complaining about how the country’s run, but since it’s not run to suit her she refuses to take part. When the local League of Women Voters hosts a candidates’ forum, Tina refuses to attend… especially if the Cardinals are playing on the same evening. Tina won’t allow any politician to put up a sign in her yard even though she may personally believe in everything the candidate stands for. The campaign signs are usually of such garish colors that it ruins the décor of her landscaping.

If you so much as broach the subject of the political process Tina will bring up her hands, wave you off like you’d just offered her Playboy centerfold, and announce, "You know I have nothing to do with that stuff!"

What does Tina believe in? The Bible, I guess. At least that’s what she quotes me most often whenever I try to discuss anything like immigration, lifestyles, stem cell research or taxes. "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s!" she’ll say. When I answer with, "But can’t we at least talk about what Caesar is doing with our sheckles?" she’ll give me the brush off wave, signaling that she’s again refused to in any way take part in this thing called democracy.

Tina won’t even vote on local issues. I once asked her if refusing to vote for a new sewer ordinance wasn’t stretching the biblical injunction to have nothing to do with things of this world. I got the same old, "Be not conformed to this world!" I said, "You mean you don’t use the bathroom?"

"Give unto Caesar!" she spouted, leaving me to wonder if the Roman emperor really wanted to get into the septic tank business.

A lone terrorist can inflict a good deal of damage, but when she’s a member of a terrorist network then I start to get mightily worried. You see, Tina’s not alone in her American Al Quada. She’s a member of a growing non-party who believe that government is not only incapable of doing anything for the common good, but it is actually a part of the bad. By refusing to take part in the political process she somehow figures that things will magically improve. Of course the good news is that every time Tina refuses to vote, discuss, or study the issues, my vote suddenly doubles in value. The bad news is that Tina’s negativism also increases the power of every nut who enters the voting booth.

Still… I wish the woman would change her nihilistic ways. The 1850’s saw the rise of a party called the Know Nothings. Tina was born too late. She’s a member of the Don’t Know Nothing and Don’t Care’s. Tina’s a terrorist.

By refusing to take part… by declining to search for the facts… by taking herself out of the process, she’s opened herself and the rest of us up to a weapon more terrifying than any shoe bomb or New York-bound suicide mission. Tina’s opened the door for the very thing that’s brought down more kingdoms and civilizations than any weapon of war: apathy. The refusal to simply hang in there and try to make things better.

When I travel in large cities I watch my back. When I board a plane I carefully eye my fellow passengers. I sometimes turn on the nightly news with a slight wince, afraid of what the day’s wrap-up might bring, but nothing… nothing scares me like Tina’s indifferent brand of terrorism.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.