Parenting skills

[playing more catch-up on posts]

.... Don't work on adults any more than they work on 2 year olds. If I were Rep./Sen. Gopher, I would have a completely different tack on this civil disobedience at political "town halls". Admittedly, political couth or not, Frank gets my appreciation for calling a spade a spade.

When I taught chemistry to college students, one tool for regaining control of rowdy people's attentions was to simply stop talking. Step back, lean on the blackboard, cross my arms, and affect a posture of patient yet annoyed tolerance. It usually took a minute or two. And after the first time, the interested students would encourage silence. Only once or twice in two years did I ever throw a student out of the class room.

I wonder if the middle-aged not-conservatives who were rabidly protesting in the 60s with sit-ins and the wonders of modern civil disobedience are hesitating about their response to this version of it. Perhaps they're simply surprised that (as Agriculture-Dick @ MayDay would put it) Right Wing Lunatics would take a page out of their play book and use this form of political protest. Are the liberals thinking "hey, that's our system!"

Quite sincerely, I think this is the first play in the RNC's plan to re-create the Republican Party. The first step is to separate your members from the Others. [a fantastic discussion of the psycological function within political identity and the creation of "Elitist Liberals" by the Republicans was on MPR a couple weeks ago. I think this is it.] This provides a very appealing scenario about which everyone is passionate.