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The Tea Partiers Are Anti-Reaganists
Why are the Democratic party and MoveOn not all over this? How stupid are they? Shouldn't they be at Tea Party rallies, speaking, leafletting, rushing the people -- mostly laid-off boomers, apparently, who are losing their houses and their jobs, without any real chance ever of working again? These are the ice floe candidates. If you've ever been to a Medicaid old folks home, or stood behind an old person in the grocery store buying a can of cat food, a can opener, an onion and a fork, you will comprehend their fear. They are rightfully distressed.
[Jeff McQueen, 50, laid-off auto parts salesman] blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”
He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/politics/28teaparty.html?scp=1&sq=jeff%20mcqueen&st=cse
It's always driven me crazy that the poor people should have been swept away by the anti-health care bill arguments which are, bottom line, the tool of the man. I think also there's a significant degree of racism operating here as a black president seems to be machinating these changes. The nigs have raised our taxes, as one of my former neighbors put it before leaving D.C. for more salubrious venues (in his case, I think it was North Carolina).
This piece in the NYT suggests, quite rightly, that the Tea Partiers are not the monolithic flash mob whiteys the Gotcha freaks in the blogosphere would have you believe. They are a flash mob, they are white, but their politics are by no means a foregone conclusion. The Dems are wasting a huge opportunrity by not proselytizing at these gatherings. There should be truth squads, caseworkers from the Dems' offices offering assistance with the mortgages, etc..
God, they're stupid. I can't get over it.
[Jeff McQueen, 50, laid-off auto parts salesman] blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”
He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/politics/28teaparty.html?scp=1&sq=jeff%20mcqueen&st=cse
It's always driven me crazy that the poor people should have been swept away by the anti-health care bill arguments which are, bottom line, the tool of the man. I think also there's a significant degree of racism operating here as a black president seems to be machinating these changes. The nigs have raised our taxes, as one of my former neighbors put it before leaving D.C. for more salubrious venues (in his case, I think it was North Carolina).
This piece in the NYT suggests, quite rightly, that the Tea Partiers are not the monolithic flash mob whiteys the Gotcha freaks in the blogosphere would have you believe. They are a flash mob, they are white, but their politics are by no means a foregone conclusion. The Dems are wasting a huge opportunrity by not proselytizing at these gatherings. There should be truth squads, caseworkers from the Dems' offices offering assistance with the mortgages, etc..
God, they're stupid. I can't get over it.
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It is, as you note, a puzzling phenomenon when the Democrats can win over the CEO but not the guy who works in the laundry room.
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Their "movement" arose from a corporate PR marketing scheme - it was a former junk bond trader at CNBC who introduced and then promoted the term.
Their dynamic is more akin to pop culture fandom than actual politics. One might find various motives and interpretations within it, but just as a trekkie is defined by finding identity in being someone watching a tv show, so TeaBigots are defined by an investment in being an angry selfish mob. To persuade them otherwise is to ask them to be come an ex-member.
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this is really dangerous, and they must be engaged with. to write them off as bigots is -- you know i love you, l'il buddy -- a truly, truly dangerous and also petulant response.
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Little_Rock_integration_protest.jpg
It tells you everything you need to know about the folks screaming communism and fascism over "Obamacare".
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treated with respect, any crazyass freak can be persuaded to stop screaming BABYKILLER at 17 year old girls. i've done it scores of times.
the only people who got pissed off were my colleagues and fellow escorts, who thought i should not be engaging them in conversation, but rather screaming anti-catholic obloquys into the ears of peacefully praying nuns. any sign that i was talking to the 400 lb. really scary evangelist huntin' and fishin' pastor about planting tomatoes instead of telling him he was a motherfucker enraged my colleagues -- all of whom had, as required, taken oaths of non-violence at the quaker HQ of clinic defense along with me. and, let me tell you, a 400 lb. angry white man who is talking about tomatoes with little old me is not running 17 year old patients away from the clinic.
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I think it's human to have an angry mean side, but that does not mean one has to accomodate or respect those flaws, or let it be used to control the frame. Zealots play upon a common decency to avoid direct discussion of their goals and tactics as offensive.
One can't point out an alternate political path without some idea the current path is wrong. If one takes extreme offense at all dissent, accomodation is impossible. It's like an angry drunk saying any reaction validates their fight. One should refrain from swinging and be willing to engage if they sober up, but until one doesn't have to be nice about kicking them out.
Pro-lifers can make polite conversation to pass the time and in hopes of conversions, but they're goal is still to bully people into leaving. Momentary civility helps them pretend they are merely decent people despite deliberate intimidation, invective and tacit or open support of the more violent among them.
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and, i believe i have already conceded that my pro-choice colleagues were just as loathsome, if not more so -- because they took an oath of non-violence -- than the pro-lifers, many of whom have sincere spiritual positions the diversity of which, in a democracy, is sacrosanct.
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i think there's a lot of class war arrogance in the demonization of the tea baggers, and that is yet another suicidal liberal attitude.
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I again question this idea people didn't try to engage the teabaggers with civility when Obama and every person who held a town hall meeting did until the made such things impossible by escalating their behavior. At some point you must acknowldege the screamers have an unshakable agenda an protect yourself.
Recognize those pro-lifers were polite out of self-preservation, as they were more at risk of being arrested if they weren't. If they really were such people of good conscience, there would be no need for clinic defense. It's easier to harass people with a facade of civility.
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"many of whom have sincere spiritual positions the diversity of which, in a democracy, is sacrosanct." In a Democracy, you have to keep your religion to yourself. Using violence and threats to force others to follow your beliefs is loathsome.
"i don't think they're bad people pretending to be good" It's not about judging bad/good people, but actions. Screaming "babykiller" in an attempt to force your religion on someone else is a bad act.
Lying about death panels is a bad act. Embracing violent rhetoric and bigotry, sympathizing with the urge to crash plane into the IRS is invalidates yourself.
"i have already conceded that my pro-choice colleagues were just as loathsome" They weren't loathsome. They weren't going to operation rescue's headquarters screaming invectives and trying to stop people from entering, posting anti-choicer's home addresses, using demonizing rhetoric which encourages the fringe to consider them fair game. They were human in a passing moment of weakness in response to people who use constant harassment as policy. It's hardly even violating non-violence.
Refusing to call injustice for what it is in hopes of winning the actors over makes no sense. To quote someone else: "Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
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because i talk to people as if they were human, you're now accusing me of multiple crimes.
it is the only way to keep them from pulling your house down, little man.
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bigotry needs to be confronted and stopped. it's really important. for the dems or anyone else to be putting their heads in the sand while economically distressed people are flash-mobbed and hate-radioed into racial and gender crimes against humanity is -- well, a bad scenario in which hundreds of millions of lives were lost in the 20th century.
we need to be standing up to them and not writing them off as demon assholes.
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This is true. There's going to be a huge reckoning for the economics of the past few decades and both parties' complicity in them.