Shark Tank

Conservatives must choose the battlefield this time.

Sometimes when I post, there are nuggets in there suggesting something more, suggesting to me that  haven’t thought about a subject deeply enough, haven’t spent enough time developing the idea I’m trying to communicate or that I just emotively dashed off something that, in the end, was incomplete.

Where the Hegelian Dialectic is thesis + antithesis = synthesis, the Smith Dialectic is thesis + more thesis = better synthesis.

Last night, I wrote:

“It is only hypocritical if you are of the mistaken belief that Democrats have any standards to violate. I can guarantee that not a single member of the Biden Administration sees anything remotely inconsistent in their positions.”

Today, when I posted the insane CNN piece claiming that the 44 hours the illegal aliens spent on Martha’s Vineyard were such an “enriching” experience for the residents, the little hamster in the back of my brain came off break, got back on the wheel and started running again.

I think it was the picture of the wealthy, middle aged white woman paired with the twitter post that did it. Beyond the caring smile, the hugs and concerned, emotional eyes, and here fashionable western style hat, I could see that her personal feelings were genuine. I could see that she had no awareness of anything other than what was contained in that moment, no cognizance of the larger picture, and she felt pretty good about herself and what she had done. In her eyes, she had just done something very, very good. The hunger of her value system had been well satisfied.

For some reason, I began to think of how like she was, on a very elemental level, of course, to another of nature’s creatures.

There is another that lives only to satisfy its hunger, free of all outside concern about right or wrong, emotions or reason, or vicissitudes of its environment. It never stops, gliding onward toward its future, its cold eyes remaining focused on a singular goal – that of survival.

My coarse words describe what is often termed as the world’s perfect predator, the shark.

Sharks don’t differentiate among their menu choices, they will eat anything that they can swallow. It could be fish, fowl, amphibian, sea carrion – or live humans, it doesn’t care because it can’t. It is incapable of caring for anything, whether rule, law, or social convention, it simply feeds because that is all it knows. Once the shark chooses its path, one cannot reason with it, dissuade it, or deviate it from its chosen path without violence or death.

It neither thinks, considers or reasons, it simply is.

I’m not saying that all Democrats are sharks, but it certainly seems when ideological affairs enter the equation, much as the shark is blind to its own nature, Democrats are similarly unaware of theirs. It isn’t that they are blind, it is that their ideology is equivalent to blinders. When they put them on, all they can see is what is straight ahead of them.

Therein lies our challenge.

How can one hope to win against the ideology of the perfect predator, one that feels no shame, no hypocrisy, no regrets, and no hesitation when the killing strike is to be delivered?

How is one to battle an adversary who has no loyalty to the truth and is singularly focused on not only survival, but maintaining their spot at the top of their food chain?

That is what we face.

The long and short of it is that we must fight on our own terms, never fearing the cold, black, unblinking eye of our opposition.

Remember that the rules both Abbott and DeSantis are using are those of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky crafted those rules as a bridge between their world and ours and as such, they are just as effective in our hands as theirs, especially when backed by facts, truth and reality.

We begin by understanding that while the shark is at the top of its food chain in the oceans, humans are at the top in our environs. While we are ill equipped to face a shark on equal terms in the ocean, it is even less prepared to face us in ours. While humans can propel our bodies in the oceans, the shark loses that ability on land. On land, the advantages designed into a shark’s body become serious liabilities.

The same happens when Democrats are forced to live in an environment where truth matters, where principles, logic and reason exist. Their ideology, shaped and tuned for another world, is useless in our world.

This is how we win. We take them out of the water.

DeSantis and Abbott have baited the hook.

Even Jaws lost.