Monday, March 23, 2009

More on the Tea Party Asshattery

tea bag, tea party, teabag, teabagging, conservative, liberal, obama, bush, spleenweasel, asshat, stupid,
The Washington Monthly as an excellent look at another part of the tea party silliness that has been bothering me: these spleenweasels weren't mailing anyone bags of Lipton when Bush was spending money and driving the US government into a deficit (not to mention taking away civil liberties, starting wars and ordering torture).

Now we're less than 3 months into the first black President's term and spending money is BAD! Taxes are BAD! Civil liberties are GOOD!

Seriously, bite me.

Outside the Beltway's Alex Knapp, a libertarian, took a look at some of these events and came up with some important observations. Knapp noted, for example, the fact that most "Tea Party" participants will get a tax cut from Obama, so it's kind of difficult to believe them when they say they feel put upon. For that matter, "Tea Party" cheerleaders didn't mind excessive government spending when it was going to an unnecessary war in Iraq. He concluded:
Let's call the "tea party" and "going Galt" nonsense what it is: unprincipled partisan hackery. If these were truly principled protests, they'd have been around all through the Bush and Republican-controlled Congress years, too.


Quite right. It's no doubt inconvenient for this crowd, but a Republican Congress and Republican White House worked together to increase the debt by $5 trillion, expand the size of government, increase spending, increase the tax burden on the middle class, and expand the powers of the executive to undermine civil liberties. The some people attending "Tea Parties" not only cheered these GOP policymakers on, but voted to keep them in office as long as possible. (Indeed, many condemned those who disagreed, accusing liberals of "treason" for failing to support elected leaders during a crisis..)

Literally just two months into a Democratic administration, far-right activists are now holding public protests? They're mad about deficits and a loss of "liberty"?

I almost feel sorry for the folks who get conned into believing this nonsense.

9 comments:

  1. Exactly! First off, these guys keep claiming this is a "grass roots" movement, and quite frankly if it is I'll be really really suprised. It's so orchastrated, it feels so false. These people are so damn pissed that they lost, they thought the republicans would stay in power forever, and this is the first legitimate outlet for that rage they could think of. It's retarted, and they know it, but since they aren't really protesting taxes or anything like that, they don't care. They're protesting Obama because he's black and he's president. How dare he! I think this is as close to a cross burning some of these people could come.

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  2. HE's BLACK! AND A TERRORIST! AND A MUSLIM! AND A WHITE-HATING CHRISTIAN! ALL OF THESE THINGS!

    Actually, there have been some fascinating articles about the spectacular fail of grassroots movements within the conservative sphere. Conservatives, and especially the GOP, cannot handle the formlessness of a grassroots movement, so generally their grassroots movements aren't, or they die.

    Look at the DNA. Supposedly, the DNA is an online grassroots antigaymarriage group, but now they have "Directors". They just can't handle the essential anarchy of the blogosphere.

    Atheist bloggers band together in the sense of our scarlet A and our blogrolls, but the DNA people have "Directors" and assignments, etc. Kinda misses the point of blogging and all that, really.

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  3. I don't really buy all the racism charges against him. There's some of that for sure, but this is far more in the realm of abject terror and panic, and a want to blame someone they already disliked from the outset. Its not justified, but I don't think the vast majority is racially motivated.

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  4. They just want to feel like they are making a point. They've been accusing of him of being the next Hitler, the antichrist, a socialist, a radical racist by proxy (due to affiliation with the Right-distorted Reverend Wright), a leftist terrorist by proxy (due to affiliation with terrorist-cum-college professor Ayers), and a Muslim by proxy (with a Muslim father he didn't live with) since before he was even elected. And he is now being blamed for a broken economy, since it is obviously only broken due to fear and dislike of Obama. You really gotta love these people...

    The idea of "going Galt" is kinda perturbing though. Because, as they say, "no man is an island", and these people didn't become rich in a vacuum, or by the sole merits of their incredible awesomeness. If they became wealthy off of the backs of people in this country and due to particular niches offered by us, and then decide to hightail it out of here with their cash as soon as tax rates go up by 3% for them because they are earning far more than they need to provide for their means of living, then good riddance to bad turncoats. The fact that this is only being brought up as one of many memes fueled by sheer contempt for Obama only makes it more ridiculous.

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  5. are they THAT afraid of non-white people?

    i keep hoping that they will take a step back and look at the fear, and question its roots, and try to work on getting rid of the fear - try to get rid of all the systematic ways in which they oppress people. because if they didn't oppress people, they wouldn't have to be afraid of those people gaining some freedoms! jesus fucking CHRIST, why is it so hard to grasp this notion?! slave owners used to be so fucking terrified of a "slave revolt", because they KNEW that the slaves would go after THEM for all the terrible things the slaveowners did to the slaves!

    i don't have anything useful. just rantyness. and that doesn't help at all.

    i guess all we can do is keep calling them on their bullshit, and hope that some of it gets through. at least you excel at this task :)

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  6. I think racism does play a part here, though it may be unconscious. There are people who have very negative views of blacks, or hispanics, or women, or gays, but don't really admit, even to themselves. Ask them outright if they hate blacks, and they'll deny it to the death. Give them certain types of tests designed to ferret out racism, and they fail every time.

    I really think this tea party meme is a combo of racism, the unnecessary "culture wars" and lookatme!ism. I don't know what else excuses that kind of stoopid.

    As for "going John Galt": please go! AIG's CEO is not worth 347x what I get paid. I could run that country into the ground and drag the economy with me for a mere 20x what I am making now.

    I'm a bargain!

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  7. also, it would be mice ro have 20x more, and i bet you wouldn't actually tuin the economy. hell, i'd bey you would run it better on 20x what *I* make, a mere not-quite 12k.

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  8. for a mere 3x what you make, i would cheerfully pull the entire country into the abyss- though i would want my bonus guaranteed first.

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