I am a huge fan of Dune.
I read it for the first time when I was 12. My sig line is a Dune quote. It had a profound impact on me. I've always loved politics and here was a book drenched in politics, using the spice as a metaphor for oil, religion, money and control all rolled into an adventure. Above all, I happen to have loved the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. Fingers in everything, but controling nothing. And they have fantastic sayings.
I was looking for a different quote for a totally different diary I found this one and it struck me very much as to speaking about the Tea Party.
Some people never observe anything. Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.
- Mother Superior Taraza -
Heretics of Dune
I recall that one woman screaming about how after President Obama's election she wanted her country back. Back to what? The fact that a bi-racial man could be elected to the highest office in the land, he of the funny name and dark skin spoke to me of our better angels. Yet the anger felt by so many was frightening.
Rapid change can be frightening. Economic uncertainity adds stress to day to day lives. All kinds of factors, including Fox News telling people who is to blame, break that stability people crave. Fear is the mind killer and it has been played up several times.
Reflecting back on 2010, and the launch of the Tea Party in general, that quote crystalizes so much of what happened.
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I was going to write a diary based on the quote below, but that will have to wait for another day. It is one of my all time favorites though. And it was great advice when I needed it.
Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
Darwi Odrade -
Chapterhouse: Dune