Listen, it’s not particularly popular to come to the defense of Glenn Beck’s 9/12ers around these parts, but while I was watching this video linked over at the Daily Dish I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “These folks are angry and on some level I get that anger”.
I mean, look, their anger is ill-defined and ill-directed and it is manifesting in some pretty aberrant and inappropriate manners, but the fact that they’re angry isn’t, to my mind, all that surprising. For a lot of people, and not just these folks, the shock of waking up to just how f*cked up your country is can’t provoke any other response than anger. And in many regards, rightly so.
It was at least somewhat telling to me when one woman commented, “I’m learning a lot about the Republicans today, too.” There is a dysfunction with the American political and economic system that has only really just come to the surface, ripping through the candy facade of euphemism that most people had accepted.
Perhaps those folks shouldn’t have accepted the story they were being told. Perhaps they should endevaour to be more informed, engaged, and effectual in terms of the socio-political process in which they are embedded, but in that regard they are hardly alone. Many of the time honoured institutions that they have come to trust and depend upon have been exposed as corrupt and fundamentally untrustworthy.
That’s a lot to process all at once, particularly when doing so in the midst of a complete economic melt down that threatens to ruin their lives and the lives of people they hold dear.
Were I American, I’d probably be pretty pissed right now, too. And while it is true that Barack Obama had little to do with the current state of affairs (the same certainly cannot be said for all Democrats), the expression of a general mistrust and antipathy towards “Washington” isn’t a wholly incomprehensible sentiment.
I’d like to say that with the right engagement they could be potent allies in building a momentum and urgency for change in Washington. Certainly it wouldn’t be the same kind of change that a lot of people with similar ambitions would like to see, but pressing the issue often requires a wide range of voices and perspectives.
That said, I just don’t see how that is possible at the moment, these folks are so consumed with their anger that the only people capable of harnessing them are the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs. I regard that as a shame insofar as Beck and Limbaugh appear intent upon channeling that anger in relatively unconstructive directions.
At the end of the day, I guess I’m just taking a couple of steps back from the kind of mocking of 9/12ers that seems to have become popular sport and looking to a point in time down the road when some of those folks might be regrounded enough to act as useful movers in terms of exposing some of the more entrenched hypocrisies of Washington and both parties, as well as enacting what remains pretty important change.
Perhaps I remain a stary-eyed dreamer.
Patrick Cahalan 
Cornelius 
wardsmith 
Tod Kelly 
Tom Van Dyke 
Murali 
James Hanley 
Jaybird 
Borat: “I do a picture, only small, of the Tishnik Masacre. Where many Uzbeks…crushed!”
Kindly Gray Hippie: “How did you feel when you drew this?”
Borat: “Very proud!”.
KGH: “I’m just listening with sadness…a little sadness for your people…?”
Borat: “Yes…no, it is not sad. It is us who do the kill!”
When in doubt,
{ 45 comments }
An H. Ross Perot would be an earthquake.
Very well said, Scott.
Scott -
I remember being about 5 years old and riding around in the car in the North End of Winnipeg during an election campaign. Almost every house – which each looked, to my eyes, nicer than the house I lived in – had an orange NDP sign. I asked my dad something like: “Do these people really vote for the NDP?” And his response: “Who else would you vote for if you lived in the North End? Do you think the Tories are going to look after people here?”
That the white people who were must hurt by the Republicans are the ones who hate Barack Obama the most is something I can’t understand (not understanding that probably means I’ll never be a real American, no matter how long I live here.)
There’s a lot of righteous anger there – I too find Obama’s kid glove treatment of the financial system pathetic – but it continues to amaze me that there are a huge number of people who hate the Wall Street bailout (perfectly understandable) *and* want the health insurance companies to keep ripping us off (incomprehensible.)
I read an interesting take sometime this week – the 9/12ers have turned into the pliable peasants of a 17th-century empire. The nobility (in our case, pick a corporation) takes everything they have, but they compliantly bow as the King’s carriage passes, and then compliantly attack whichever group of their fellow peasants (jews, turks, whoever) has been vilified by the King to deflect their anger.
This is the message I get from the 9/12ers – they hate some corporations and Obama’s apparent or imagined fealty to them – and they want to reward other corporations instead. It’s not a winning political philosophy.
Mark, on the whole agreed, certainly in regards to the winningness of their philosophy. All I’m really suggesting is that the base impetus for their anger, or at least some portion thereof, isn’t wholly incomprehensibke and that we might second guess ourselves from writing them off altogether over the long haul. Though, of course, I may well be wrong about that; however, I think it’s worth asking ourselves.
There’s righteous and justifiable anger – but it’s primarily rallied around the people who are responsible for their plight. That can’t succeed long-term.
One thing that always surprises me as a Canadian in the US – many, if not most, Americans really believe that the United States is the best at everything, regardless of the evidence. This is very much unlike Canadians, who aspire to be top ten and tend to have a pessimistic view of their own abilities. If someone told you that Canada’s health care system was the 7th-best in the world, that wouldn’t make you feel bad. But if you told an American 4 or 5 years ago that the US health care system was not the best in the world – even (shockingly) people on the left – they were incredulous. Having to admit that the Bush administration destroyed the economy and exposed the US as something less than the best in the world is impossible.
Shorter SHP: The angry right wing nuts have a point. If only I could channel that impotent rage to a constructive end, I’d be king of the world….
Shorter Kirk: I’m cool because I can faux boil people’s posts down to the tropes that most amuse me.
I only do that to posts that I fail to see that point to. I usually enjoy TLOOG posts, but this one could use some editing. Maybe if you’d articulate more clearly what potentiality you seen in the teabaggers it wouldn’t invite my sarcasm. Or not…
Well, Kirk, the three commenters before you seemed to find a point to the post. They might not all have agreed with the point, but they found the point with no help or editing from me. Perhaps you should try looking harder, let me know how that goes for you.
Maybe I’m misreading the other commentators, but all except the 2nd who said “Well said, Scott” seemed hostile. Maybe I’ve been a bit of an asshole, but I respect you enough to request an elaboration of what good political effects you hope to see from the Tea Partisans.
P.S. I’ve been a hostile critic. But I’ve meant well. Both sympathetic and hostile readers want to know: how will the Tea Partiers protests do good for the republic?
Kirk, I think my responses to Mark and Ed provide a bit more of a framework for, though, admittedly, they don’t adequately answer your specific question. I’m doing all of this on an iPhone, which ISA bit tiresome. I’ll be at a computer tomorrow or Sunday, where I’ll be more inclined to offer an in depth response. Suffice to say that I think it possible that some proportion ofthe tea baggers are sincerely angry about the failure of a system in which they believed and though that anger is being poorly expressed and directed, that it intuits a deeper problem with the American political system that is a sentiment that is not wholly foreign to many other critics and activists. That being the case, while there is unlikely to be any real cooperation due to largely unreconcilable differences on multiple fronts and while in the near term their degree of deranged anger at Obama makes them more liability than asset, there could be an unintended, but rough convergence of some larger goals vis-a-vis placing the requisite pressure on some elements of Washington for meaningful reform.
One could of course argue that I am far overestimating the 9/12ers, both in terms of their analysis and their potential and , indeed I may well be. But, my own anlysis such as it is, I would rather keep a skeptical door open than close it without asking myself those questions, first.
For the record, my post wasn’t hostile.
The argument that you are misreading the original post seems to have more footing given your misreading of my comment.
Let’s stop pretending all of this right-wing wackiness has nothing to do with the fact that there’s a Black Democrat in the White House. These people aren’t discovering that “the time honoured institutions that they have come to trust and depend upon have been exposed as corrupt and fundamentally untrustworthy,” they’re freaking out about the fact that someone they regard as fundamentally different, foreign, and deeply “other” is in charge.
Ed, of course, I have a hard time disagreeing with you that this is part if what us animating some of the folks in question, hence my description of much of their anger as “aberrant” and “inappropriate”. But I think it is probably an overstatement to say that every single person involved in this phenomenon is merely freaking out about Obama’s perceived “otherness”. Neither do I think it particularly helpful to dismiss the larger context in which the phenomenon is ocurring, whether one likes or agrees with the participants of that phenomenon or not.
Sorry Ed, that meme don’t fly. In a survey, only 12 per cent of the people felt that opposition to Obamacare was based on the fact that the President identifies with his black half. Don’t you think that adding 50,000,000 people to the healthcare roll without training more doctors and building more hospitals will negatively affect the quality of healthcare we recieve now? Maybe, that is why people are opposed to it.
Wow…..you seriously think people check yes on the racist box on surveys?
Where did you go to school? Oral Roberts?
I find it difficult to feel forgiving or empathetic towards deliberately stupid people who have a perfect chance to educate themselves, and instead choose to descent even further into deliberate stupidity.
The fact that there were not similar demonstrations against nearly identical policies when they were advanced by a different party (and a leader with different skin color) makes be quite a bit more pessimistic, even if I embraced your ultimate goal, which I don’t. Call me an irreconcilable, but I have no interest in making common political cause with those whom I saw on the Mall last Saturday for any reason whatever short of stopping a new ill-advised war.
If these folks were truly motivated by an economic populism of only mildly partisan directionality, that could be very different. But then they would be marching under a banner with that message rather than under the vulgar 912 standard, and the dates of their demonstrations would not be picked by Glenn Beck or FreedomWorks.
Michael, not a surprising sentiment and not unwarranted crticisms. I should note that my proposal doesn’t require you to make common cause with the 9/12ers, but merely not write them off entirely over the long haul, which, itself, may be too much to ask of you.
No, that’s fair enough. No one obviously knows enough about all the individuals to be able to write them all off. I feel pretty comfortable writing off the African-lion-lyin’-African lady, for example, but I’m not out to let her determine my view of everyone there. But the thing that is of note here are not the individual sentiments and perspectives and people, most of which are usually at some level maleable and reconcilable. Rather it’s the fact of a mass demonstration around some distillation of those sentiments (which all goes back to the discussions had here around the Tea Parties about whether their program was more or less inscrutable to outside observers, or whether it was merely somewhat obscured in a similar way to which Mumia demonstrators ostensibly partially obscured the purpose of anti-war protesting.)
I’m guessing you would agree with me that there has been a perceptible uptick in the racial and cultural signaling going on in these protests as compared with the first-generation teabagging. In the interim separately, we had the introduction of firearms (as a physical reality not a policy issue) to the debate around health care.
I don’t want to go all xenophobe on you, I really think that’s lame, but political expression really does have to be placed in cultural and historical context, and in the U.S. we have a very particular context that really cannot be ignored here. And it’s not just about race.
When you add up all that’s in the zeitgeist at the moment, the picture when placed in U.S. historical context does not suggest a very likely possibility of ultimate reconciliation around shared concerns. Yes, many of the economic and political views on the lips of 912 protesters have the potential to be at least engaged by populists of other stripes if they were sustained in a movement committed to such a critique. But — and maybe I’m too cynical here — I have my doubts that those concerns, while I grant they are in fact sincerely and passionately held, are in fact what provided the true impetus for enough people to physically transport themselves to the capital in numbers great enough to be of note last Saturday. The response to the hysteria of Beck, the previous toting of firearms (not at the event, but the spirit was there on t-shirts and posters), the racially explicit and/or suggestive signage displayed by some protesters unmolested by the group, the general message not just of opposition (though of course opposition abounded), but of the refusal to accept the legitimacy of the government’s actions and indeed of parts of the government itself — these to me fatally compromise the notion that what we have here is a constructive civic impulse engaged with substance that can be allied to other movements and currents in the polity. In my view this is something else, it comes from someplace else, and to understand what it is and where it’s from, I believe we have to look at history in this country. I may be wrong, and if I am I would regret if this view sells short the character of those who assembled last weekend (and regardless, God love them for the fact of their assembly, their choice to participate — for that they cannot be criticized). Hope springs eternal. But I don’t think I am wrong.
*The xenophobia being as relates to yours and my differing nationalities, although there’s every good reason to be aware of the possibility that xenophobia affects my view of my own coutrymen and women engaged in practices I don’t fully understand, I admit.
Lots to consider here, Michael, and it’s late (and I have to work tomorrow, sadly). As always, I appreciate yr thoughtful response and will endeavour to respond in kind when time allows.
I enjoyed writing that; thanks for the platform. I’m sorry you have to work tomorrow, that sucks. Incidentally, my own appeals to “history” prod me to perhaps try to get an idea of what it is exactly I’m referring to. Perhaps we can reconvene at some point. Cheers.
My pleasure and so resolved. Bon nuit!
Scott, it isn’t all about racism….it is the old populist problem of do you get fair representation for the left side of the bellcurve when they don’t have the substrate to represent themselves.
The Framers set us up to elect a populist approximation of a philosopher king.
Now the country wasn’t really ready yet for Obama….the electorate is still pretty much half white conservative.
But the combination of Horrorshow Bush, the Econopalypse, and the unappealing alternative leadership of Sick Grandpa with Backup Dimbo lead to an EC vote of 365 to 173….. >2:1
So a good chunk of the country, which has been being culturally disenfranchised for the past 20 years, was suddenly politically disenfranchised as well.
Now, over the next 20 years, white conservatives will also become demographically disenfranchised……so ……yeah…..they are pretty angry.
This is their last stand….if healthcare could be Obama’s Waterloo if it can be stopped…..this is definitely their Alamo.
And it can’t be stopped.
No one gets out alive.
Just a quick update,
Frank Rich (probably not thought of as an authority around here, but quite familiar with the context of which I wrote above) comes down somewhat in the middle here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20rich.html?ref=opinion), saying that a justified populist rage is clearly rising in the country, but also questioning the origins of the particular folks on the Mall last week.
Here are two quotes demonstrating his dual reaction:
and
It’s clearly the case that conditions are ripe for a broad-based populist movement to take a major role in politics over the coming months. (I myself tend to lean toward skepticism of populism, but its power when it comes to the fore is formidanble no matter anyone’s opinion of it.) As I said, I don’t doubt the sincerity of the populist impulses on display last week. But there were clearly other things to see there too. I don’t think that crowd, then or in the future, represent the decisive thumb on the scale that would tip us into a real populist moment at this time. If such a thing occurs it would be a result of much broader forces of which the folks we we saw last week would just be a colorful component. If it does not, I remain doubtful that as the novelty of this president and the acute anger at his policies wear off, they’ll remain engaged in significant numbers with a larger populist agenda that can be joined where intersections can be found by populists of distinctly different sentiment. But of course I could very well be wrong about that.
While I appreciate that you’re trying to humanize what we’ve come to charicature, I think there’s a fundamental discontinuity between what motivates these people and what you’re trying to accomplish.
Given how common the sentiment appears to be “I want my country back” without any clear definition, this movement and sentiment is largely reactionary. Reactionary movements are not prone to produce good outcomes, however they’re harnessed.
Frankly calling this a failure of the institutions is fundamentally wrong. The institutions are only as corrupt as the people who elect the officials allow them to be, and these “angry” people? The ones who claim they’re riling against something? They’re the exact people who let it happen. They’re theo nes, through their visceral, ignorant anger keep allowing demagogues to take control of the political process, who scorn dialogue and dismiss as weakness or elitism any attempt to talk about substantive issues rather than try to think for a moment that they’re partly to blame.
That they’re willing to simply follow someone else’s blame game is precisely the reason these people don’t deserve any benefit of the doubt. They woke up at some moment seeing what possibly is the result of many years of their apathy and disinterest and what do they do? Immediately divest themselves of blame and go screaming about someone else. Not only is this ultimately futile int he long run, it’s also something we can’t possibly fix. At their very core, these people are incapable of examining their own actions.
I’d like to think people are capable of realizing their fault, but the main problem I have here is their lack of self-reflection. There’s no humility here, only anger.
Nob, again, in the interests of fairness, the kind failures to which I’m referring are pretty clearly systemic and were enabled, or at least allowed to occur, by individuals elected by representatives if the “tea bagger” phenomenon, conservatives who do not identify with that phenomenon, as well as centrists/moderates, liberals, and progressives. There is plenty of blame to go around here, suggesting that it only accrues to the tea baggers seems a bit too pat.
I’m not saying that the blame accrues entirely upon them. I’m saying this movement seems convinced that they’re entirely blameless and there’s always going to be a scapegoat to blame.
I think that’s a fair contention, Nob. At some point I have to acknowledge that I’m assessing the TBers-9/12ers from a distance and that my anlysis can only be so accurate/fair. I think you’ve got something here, but, at this point, I’m at a loss to really confirm or disconfirm your suggestion writ large given that I haven’t and am not likely to have a chance to interact with very many TBers-9/12ers face-to-face.
In terms of demonstrators, the ‘tea-baggers’ are the most polite, calm, and educated, when compared to the drunk, drugged, and diseased anti-war crowd of the 60′s. However, the anti-Waste Technology group that protested the construction of the world’s largest hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio for twenty years were the best!
I couldn’t even get them to chant: “One, two, three, four
we don’t want your f*ucking war, Obama!
Scott, old palsy, your description of them comes up just a little short. I believe that 1.) They ain’t stupid, and 2) Obama and the socialist screw(ed) up when they insult them.
I’m guessing these people will damn well effect change, and it’s going to be along the lines of some sort of a toilet flushing and a return to republican principles…I sure wouldn’t want to be a commie-democrat in anything but the hood in the next election.
How deep and broad the ‘change’ is and please keep in mind the irony that it was His Magnificence’s “hope and change’ that triggered the phenomenon, I just don’t know….we’ll see. But my hope is that the punditry across America continue to insult and deride the ‘tea-baggers’, that’s like adding fuel to the fire.
Scott, old palsy, your description of them comes up just a little short. I believe that 1.) They ain’t stupid, and 2) Obama and the socialist screw(ed) up when they insult them.
Bob, friend-o-mine, in response:
1.) Calling elements of the TBers anger ill-defined, ill-directed, abberant, and inappropriate is not calling them stupid, which I would contend that I have not.
2.) Part of this post is about offering an aletrnative to precisely the insulting to which you point, from Obama (he hasn’t been “nice”, but I don’t know that I would call his approach “insulting”, unless ye be harkening back to the “guns and religion” comment, which is a conversatin unto itself.
Scott, my Canadian son, I do apologize for generalizing way too much and my charge of insulting comments refers to the general tone of the conversation where the Marxists work assiduously with the state sponsored media to attempt to make tber’s look stoopid, thus my allegation (2).
Actually, your overview of the issue doesn’t raise my blood pressure at all. I’m watching ND and MSU…!
Yes, let’s not go around insulting any civically engaged citizens who are after all merely exercising their First Amendment rights! Of course, when they are as a matter of simple fact “diseased,” it’s obviously right and proper to make the corresponding factual statement.
I read this with great interest as we’ve had several groups of tea baggers protesting outside my office (Hi, I’m from the state government and I’m here to help you). I too appreciate your effort to humanize the movement, Scott, and I agree with Bob that mocking them just adds “fuel to the fire.” But surely one can criticize the movement without being derisive, especially if one thinks the movement will ultimately cause more harm than good to conservative and libertarian causes?
As for me, more than being angry at the systemic failure that most of them quietly acquiesced too during the last administration, I find most frustrating the level of intellectual discourse this kind of shouting has reduced the Republican party to, mostly due to a lack of curiosity about the issues, a lack of understanding of American history and government, and really, a lack of courage to act and do anything to bring about a government based on tea bag principles.
There were several people in the video who are upset at the number of czars that Obama has appointed and they are upset because they don’t understand what kind of authority the czars have. That in of itself is a perfectly good question. However, none of them could be arsed to find what a simple Google search would turn up: that GWB had more czars than Obama, that we’ve had czars since FDR (where the term comes from), and that they really serve an advisory capacity and we have never voted on every. single. presidential advisor. I get being angry — I’m angry about the corruption in Washington too, but doesn’t it make sense to figure out what you’re angry about and potential better courses of action rather than blindly publicly protest something?
Secondly, I’m astounded by the lack of a basic understanding of civics and American history. The tea baggers are constantly calling on the memory of the founding fathers. But the founders were protesting a government they had absolutely no say in — they were being taxed without *any* elected representation. That is not the same thing as losing an election, a fact most of the tea baggers can’t seem to understand. If your movement lost an election, why not channel that energy into getting new candidates and new support so you can retake Washington? Purging the party to a vociferous but minuscule righteous remnant doesn’t win elections. And I have a feeling the midterm elections in 2010 will bear that out.
The final thing that really blows my mind about the whole movement is their lack of courage. As Americans we have a really generous free speech right. If you and your friends want to gather in front of my office and hold signs protesting the government’s tax scheme and entitlement programs go for it. No one is going to chase you away, and as long as you’re peaceful no one is going to throw you in jail. It really doesn’t take that much courage to stand in a group and hold a sign. But each and every one of those tea baggers who came to my office April 15th bearing signs, torches and pitchforks, wailing loudly about the size of the government and threatening a revolution went dutifully home and filled out their 1040 for the year and monetarily supported the large government they profess to hate so much. Civil disobedience isn’t just holding a sign or writing an angry letter. Civil disobedience has consequences and they are often uncomfortable. If you’re going to invoke the founding fathers, for the love of God, consider the true risk they put themselves in — it went far beyond embarrassment in the town square.
So while I appreciate the basic small government and anti-corruption leaning of the tea baggers — a position I generally share, by the way — it’s incredibly frustrating to see the implosive effect of this group on the Republican party. The party of thinkers has now become the party of feelers. How on earth did that happen?
C. esq., dude, a fed/state apparatchik, heh!
Hell of a pension!
Overall I think you critiques of the TBer’s is accurate. Where I think you may be derailing is not in considering the question of time. First, we gotta get off the couch. Second, we gotta focus on the gummint, in this case His Magnificence, our first or second, or third Marxist Democrat. Third, we gotta make signs, find out where you work, and actually go down there and be very polite to you and your staff.
Have you considered that once these very same people have missed a meal or two, been swept off their feet by fire hoses, or blasted with stun grenades, the next meeting you have with them might be just a little more raucous?
It’s all about the progression of events, and much of that is in the hands of the authorities, “papers, pleazzze!”
Having served time for “civil disobedience” I can assure you once you’ve experienced these things it ‘s just a question of taking the next step, and why you will or will not take that step! What the gummint doesn’t want to do is make these people believe they have no other choice, that’s when you’ll see Mussolini and his mistress hanging upside down.
The 9/12ers are the tiny slice of America that’s easily persuaded by Rush/Hannity/Beck but not too lazy or too busy to do anything about it. I think it’s a population that’s always going to be there if someone with a national profile invests enough time and money to bring them out. And certainly it would’ve been possible to gin up an even larger army of people cloaking themselves in revolutionary rhetoric against Bush (whether the cause was honest or not) if there was the same level of investment.
We see in this video as well as the video of Al Franken talking to some hecklers that, given a capable messenger, some of them can be persuaded with, you know, facts. But I don’t really see the point of dedicating an outsized effort to winning over a fraction of a percent of the population when you’d be much better served targeting people who are on the fence to start with.
At least half of this phenomenon is a cult of personality built up around Glen Beck, whose rhetorical success largely results from racism (race-baiting if we’re insisting on not calling racists racist) and conspiracy theories. A large majority of the imagery I see at these protests comes directly from his show; so did the town hall questions last month. Winning them over would require flipping Glen Beck (possible), co-opting the racist message (shameful), or convincing them that Mexicans aren’t scary and Blacks don’t want all their money (impossible).
I do think that the people in these videos are generally good and could be persuaded to listen to reason, but it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. In terms of accomplishing the changes that they’re currently opposing, it’s probably more worthwhile to keep them where they are as a tiny slice of the population that draws a caricature of anyone opposing reform.
Zach, as I’ve said above, I’m not really motioning towards “winning these folks over” especially not currently – I agree that’s a fool’s errand for everyone involved. All I’m really suggesting is that we ough to consider not writing them off altogether. Doing so costs basically nothing in terms of either time or resources.
Gotcha. Like I said, most of them are good people and many of them are intelligent ones at that; I’ve got a few in my family. I actually think it is possible but not worthwhile to win a decent fraction of them over. For example, a decent subset of this crowd probably supported Mike Huckabee in the primaries, and pre-Iowa Huckabee wasn’t all that different from Obama. You’ll never get the fraction that supported Ron Paul or the fraction that just listens to Sean Hannity, though.
Win them over to what, though? And from what?
Trying to think through this, Scott, I’m realizing I don’t quite know just what you mean by writing them off or not writing them off. Could you expand on that?
I will say this: it’s much more important that we look closely here and see this for what it is, whether that results in an embrace of some sort or a rejection, than that we rush by instinct to one of those alternatives, missing the opportunity to learn something about our society today (or the one next door) from it. There is a lot to take away here.
There’s a post up in RCP today providing another perspective:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/20/its_the_liberty_stupid_98387.html
I think that the TB thing has been taken over by the crazies but there is legitimate opposition to be had. With the increase in independents and the withering of the Republicans I think it short sighted to say these people supported the policies of Shrub or that they are hypocritical in their protest. With the disappointment that Obama has been to the left and the long standing distrust of government on the right, we are ripe for a third party option, perhaps even looking at fundamentally changing the system we’ve created.
People are using the distributive power of the Internet to effect change. An example is Van Jones. He is a Communist and a Troofer. He was also an advisor to the President. The New York Times failed to inform it’s readers about Jones’ background. The new paradigm treated the NYTimes like a damaged web site and routed the information around it. The end result was that Jones was forced to resign. The new paradigm is non-hierarchical. There is no leadership. The people just do things. I went to a tea party protest before I knew who Glen Beck was. Glen Beck is just channeling into the zeitgeist. In the Old paradigm, you went to a powerful figure like George Soros and to ask for money. If he liked what you wanted to do, he gave you the money. The Internet has lowered the cost barrier to entry for political action. An example is ACORN. For years, the Republicans have tried to defund it to no avail. Now, ACORN is in trouble. What brought them down? Answer: Two twenty-something guerilla videographers who spent a grand total of $1300 on the project.
The tea party movement is not a Republican phenominon. It is anti-incumbent. There just happens to be more Democrat incumbents than Republican. We are disillusioned with President Bush. He let the Democrats write the stimulus package. He used TARP money to bailout the automakers. He slapped a tarriff on imported steel. He did not veto McCain-Feingold. He tried to pass amnesty for illegal aliens. All these actions were unpopular with the Republican base. The Republican party does not have a lock on my vote. I will vote Democrat before I vote for McCain.
Now, I ask, if you vote Democrat, how do you feel about Nancy Pelosi? She became speaker on a wave of indignation over the war. The last time I checked, we were still fighting. She funded an unpopular war for an unpopular president of an unpopular party. She either lied to you or she is incompetent. Are you going to vote for her? If you do, don’t blame the people who voted for Bush because you are just as guilty. Vote Peace and Freedom or Green or American Independent or Constitution party. Just don’t send her back to Congress. If this is too radical for you, then demand that she not seek another term as Speaker of the House. Heck Dennis Kucinich would make a better Speaker because he would not abandon his principles.
Join us as we kick out the incumbents.
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