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Conservatives Target Their Own Fringe
Taking aim at the movement's extremist elements
After months of struggling to harness the energy of newly engaged tea party activists, the conservative establishment - with critical midterm congressional elections on the horizon - is taking aim for the first time at the movement's extremist elements.
The move has been cast by some conservatives as a modern version of the
marginalization of the far-right anti-communist John
Birch Society during the reorganization of the conservative
movement spearheaded in the 1960s and 1970s by William
F. Buckley Jr.
"A similar effort will be required today of conservative political and intellectual leaders," former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote in his column in the Washington Post . "It will not be easy. Sometimes it takes courage to stand before a large crowd and proclaim that two plus two equals four."
But for Gerson and other conservatives, this is not just an intellectual exercise. They have a very specific political goal - to deprive Democrats and their allies a potentially potent weapon to use against the GOP in November.
"I don't believe we should be giving (extremists) a platform or empowering them to do anything based off their conspiracy theories," said Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, "because they give the left ammunition to try to define the tea party movement as crazy and fringy."
The attempt "to clean up our own house," as Erick Erickson, founder of the influential conservative blog RedState, puts it, is necessary " because traditional press outlets have decided to spotlight these fringe elements that get attracted to the movement, and focus on them as if they're a large part of this tea party movement. And I don't think they are."
Until recently, organizers and activists mostly seemed content to ignore, or in some cases tolerate, extremists in their ranks, confident they'd be drowned out by the hundreds of thousands of activists who took to congressional town halls and marches around the country to protest big-spending initiatives pushed by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress.
But inflammatory rhetoric such as former congressman Tom Tancredo's racially tinged speech at this month's tea party convention, reports of the involvement of right wing militia groups, and the continued propagation of conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama have sometimes cast the movement in an unfavorable light.
Erickson has advised new tea party organizers on how to avoid affiliations with extremists, and this month banned birthers - conservatives who believe that Obama was not born in the United States and is, therefore, ineligible to be President - from his blog (he has long blacklisted truthers, those who believe that the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks - a conspiracy theory with devotees across the political spectrum).
"At some point, you have to use the word ‘crazy,'" said Erickson.
Ryun's American Majority, a group that trains tea party activists and others around the country, has done much the same thing. Its website has moved to close its sessions to activists who identify themselves with the birther, truther or militia movements, or the John Birch Society.
Ryun conceded that extremists are involved in the tea party movement, but he said "it's just such a small percentage and it should not be portrayed as representative of the broader movement ."
The fringe-fighters' methods range from censuring signs at rallies or banishing unruly participants completely to challenging the media's focus on the fringe and highlighting the movement's diversity and tolerance.
They have gone out of their way, for example, to promote activists and movement-backed candidates of color, including tea party stars Marco Rubio and Allen West, running for U.S. Senate and House, respectively, in Florida, and Texas Senate candidate Michael Williams - all Republicans.
Ryan has another strategy. He has commissioned a poll that he thinks will show that tea partiers share a commitment to reducing taxation and government spending with independent voters and prove that the tea party movement is " very much mainstream."
But the tea party movement's decentralized structure, vaguely defined goals and anti-establishment tone makes it an attractive place to channel angry feelings. Mainstream media organizations such as the New York Times, which recently ran a 4.500 word story focusing on the infiltration of the movement by a militia-linked group called Oath Keepers, have recently focused on that aspect of the movement.
And, as tea party supporters such as Schultz have expected, liberals have been acutely attuned to any evidence of extremism.
Independent of their actual numbers, it's in both political parties' interests to inflate the influence of the other side's fringe, said Tom De Luca, a Fordham University political science professor who studies political movements and wrote the 2005 book "Liars! Cheaters! Evildoers! Demonization and the End of Civil Debate in American Politics."
"That creates this dynamic that seems to exaggerate the influence of the extremes," DeLuca said.
Much as conservatives have sought to link Democrats to environmental extremism or socialism, he said, it's an obvious countermove for the left to try to link Republicans with the more extreme elements that have gained traction around - and sometimes within - the tea parties.
So it was that liberals have demanded to know where Republicans stood on Obama's citizenship, or that last week found left and right debating which side had more in common with Andrew Joseph Stack III, the software developer who crashed his plane into the Austin, Tex., IRS offices.
The left seized on a comment by hard-line-conservative Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) reportedly expressing empathy for the pilot's anti-tax views. Rush Limbaugh retorted that Stack "sounds like he's blaming Bush and Reagan, asserting that he sounded "almost word-for-word for Nancy Pelosi. Almost word-for-word for Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama."
DeLuca predicted that another "Bill Buckley moment" will only occur when the political damage done by extremists outweighs the boost the tea party movement has provided to conservatives generally and the Republican Party specifically.
"My guess is their basic stance will be to try to juggle as long as they can," he said.
That approach - and its drawbacks - was on display at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of Washington's conservative establishment. It featured the John Birch Society as a co-sponsor. And, while conference organizers nixed a panel on Obama's citizenship, a birther contingent still made its presence felt, as did the Oath Keepers, who co-sponsored the conference.
After filming a brief segment at the conference, liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, a leading tea party antagonist, concluded on her show that "the conservative movement right now is really not afraid to let its freak flag fly ... They‘re happy to show off the ‘we want another revolutionary war,' ‘we think the black president is arrogant,' ‘we think the apocalypse is nice' side of themselves."
Liberal commentators similarly highlighted the extremism on display at this month's National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, which included a speech by WorldNetDaily Editor Joseph Farah questioning Obama's citizenship and one by Tancredo asserting Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."
A blogger on the liberal site Daily Kos asserted Tancredo's speech revealed the "REAL reason" tea partiers are upset: "A black man is President and their White Privelege (sic) is fading."
Tancredo's speech was not widely condemned by conservative intellectuals or media, but immediately after Farah delivered his, he was confronted in a hallway outside the convention hall by conservative media entrepreneur and fellow convention speaker Andrew Breitbart, who said it was disservice to the tea party movement to infer its activists are "all obsessed with the birth certificate, when it's not a winning issue."
Others cited the jeering of an anti-gay activist at CPAC who condemned organizers for inviting gay Republican group GOProud to participate. Conservative author and TownHall columnist Ashley Herzog said it was proof that "CPAC, and the conservative movement in general, isn't a haven for haters after all," and urged the left to view a video of the incident, which she said evidences "a lack of bigotry (that) must be painfully puzzling to liberals."
Conservatives similarly pushed back against a New York Times blog post that accused a CPAC speaker of ripping Obama "in racial tones," partly by affecting a "Chris Rock voice" to mock the president.
They noted that the speaker - like the comedian Rock - is from Brooklyn and speaks with a regional accent, demanding an apology.
And in a clever web video that went viral this week, the Dallas Tea Party called out MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who had mocked the mostly white make-up of the Nashville convention of what he called the "Tea Klux Klan, comparing its racially diverse leadership to MSNBC's mostly white host lineup.
Judson Phillips, the Nashville tea party activist who organized this month's convention, said it's incumbent on local tea party leaders across the country "to control the message and to prevent the tea party movement from being hijacked."
In the run-up to a July tea party convention he's planning in Las Vegas, Phillips said, he's planning on asking speakers "to stick to our message, which is unity headed into the fall."
82 Comments so far
Show AllThe fairest representation of the reality of this thing that I've seen.
"because traditional press outlets have decided to spotlight these fringe elements"
Of course they do, that makes good television. As pointed out in the article, the press does the same thing to the left, pointing out our fringe crazies.
Yellow "journalism" still sells.
Actually, neither yellow nor other journalism has sold well recently, though apparently the yellow has been selling better or at least selling more soap.
bardamu
HA!! You are correct. And not selling well, is well earned!
I stand corrected sir! :)
I think Olbermann has it right when he calls the tea baggers the " TEA KLUX KLAN". The tea baggers I have checked out are ALL WHITE and even though they are not all crazies and I actually ran into some intelligent people who are genuine and may not be racist, let me ask you: why very,very few or no African Americans at these tea bag rallies? At least I have not seen any!
Paul Revere
I've certainly seen blacks, Asians and Latinos in the videos I've seen on Tea Party meetings, but the predominant color is indeed white.
My guess is its because the majority of our country is white, the majority of taxpayers are (and thats one of their gripes) and republicans and moderates of most stripes are white.
As to it being racist just because a gathering consists mostly of whites or all white, this is getting old.
When the NAACP or the Black Caucus, etc., meet and its exclusively or almost exclusively black, are they racist because of that?
When Latino's do the same or Asians, are they racist?
I think its time to be a bit more careful in playing the race card, I don't care to be associated with or listen to the Olbermann's or Tancredo's of this world.
How about a little Veritas... Obviously, you cannot compare Blacks, Women, and other disempowered groups as racist or sexist when they occasionally decide to conduct meetings or strategy away from their oppressors. I mean, do you think we should have rich people's liberation or a white male freedom movement... Can you even begin to consider Social Power in your commentary??
As to the Tea Party's racism... I find incredibly suspicious that this group arose at the exact moment that Obama took office---why not before? Perhaps race is not the only propelling motivation and cohesive factor, but it's right near the top
And as to this being a white country, true but there are around 110 million non-whites and a another 10-20 million un-counted ones, or close to 40%. Do the Tea faces correspond to this?
fxduffy
Of course I can. I don't see blacks or women as disempowered. Poor people are disempowered, but race and sex as disempowerment models are a bit past it.
You declare the Tea Party as racist. Just like that they are racist. I can't say for sure that you are wrong, but I can say for sure you don't know either. I don't believe for one minute it has anything to do with racism. Just my opinion.
"And as to this being a white country, true but there are around 110 million non-whites and a another 10-20 million un-counted ones, or close to 40%. Do the Tea faces correspond to this"
I don't equate racism with the make up of a group. Was blacks vote for Obama racist simply beecause 97% of them voted for him? Yes, but not in the manner you mean.
The poor old white male has been getting pounded for years, so perhaps we should get some consideration? Social power is generally construed by economic power. Much of what is mistaken as racism is nothing but classsism or economics.
Of course there are elements of your suggestions present. Always will be. But racism is not a great problem in our country anymore.
By the way, they arose when that idiot bush started bailing out his buddies and putting us into debt which Obama continues.
I voted for Obama, but I now oppose him in every way for his lies and betrayals. So am I a racist because I oppose what he is doing?
I don't even think the Tea Party is that important, only a million or so active, but they represent many millions of people that reject our present course.
Sorry, no, Veritas, the Baggers did not start before Obama. The Tea Party arose when CNBC put a futures-gambling-tout commentator on who whipped it up out of his own ass, about "the Obama bailouts of people losing their homes and do 'we' want to pay for those lowlife defaulters!" while holding up a teabag to symbolize a NO MORE TAXES revolt, AFTER the start of the Obama administration.
So CNBC even created the symbol, a little tea-bag, perhaps to indicate the size of Bagger brains. The first meetings were declared and publicized by CNBC and, of course the rest of the Right Wing Noise Machine, who PROMOTED THIS CORPORATE ASTROTURF-'grass-roots' movement.
And then the Faux-News Devotees ran with it. And somehow, from this weeks-old so-called "grass roots" nascent movement, they found the wherewithal to pay/bribe Sarah Palin $100,000 to talk to her hand? (And then they have the gall to howl about 'waste' in guvmint?)
It is an astroturfed corporate screen, these 'ordinary volk of the reich/right'- with which to hide the "cutting taxes" and "cutting socialist guvmint" and "more defense/war" agendas of the corporations and the rich. The corpo-fascists need a little sleight-of-hand to hide the magician's trick of their bald-faced massive looting from the government commons. Mis-direction is the key, and the Bagger-brains have been very effective in this regard, thanks to the corporate MSM promoting and over-covering the Baggers from Day One, when they were just some cranks yelling in a local town meeting room.
Yes, the Bagger idiots have proven quite useful. And yes, they MUST be called out as the idiots and fools they are, so others do not mistake them for an important movement. There must be no quarter with NeoCon Friedmanite Conservative Republican-backed Morons who are backed by every Right Wing Noisemaker there is- giving quarter and surrendering are what the Dimocrats are there for. The Baggers are merely the disposable Shock-Troops of the Republican Party, which is devoted to delivering Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine upon the United States.
And the Baggers are being used as the jerks they are, played for the fools they are. To hell with them all.
Oh, PS, the Baggers don't even know that the original tea party threw ONLY THE TEA OWNED BY THE TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION of the time (East India Co.) overboard. Because it WAS NOT TAXED! Unlike tea owned by American citizens, which was taxed, and therefore priced out of the market; thus it was politically unfair and economically bankrupting to the Americans- just like corporate rule is today. So the Baggers are totally twisted around, to boot. It is like Glenn Beck's toxic and repulsive warped renditions of the Constitution and Tom Paine- they are dangerously insane, they are wingnutty. And thanks to Big Money, they always have the floor. Damn them.
Thanks for that last tidbit. Funny how history never tells the tales you think it should.
Priceless!...thanx.
FVHorn: " Thanks to the corporate MSM over-coverning and promoting the Baggers from day one, when they were just some cranks yelling in a local town meeting room". Yeah, spot on! You know when the whore media devotes so much time to the Baggers something smells in Denmark! One has to wonder if the same MSM media coverage was given to the millions of us who protested the Iraq war, maybe the lies of the Bush administration would have been exposed and the shock doctrine and awe ful killing in Iraq could have been stopped.
"Poor old white males"? Are you hallucinating? Don't expect much sympathy!
"racism is not a great problem in our country anymore."
Ha! You better change your screen name!
Nah, the current screen name ought to be good for a few more weeks; then "veritas" will mysteriously fade away like its predecessors.
Maybe next time he'll opt for gender bending, e.g. a nym like "Amber Waves".
· Yr Obd't Servant
"My guess is its because the majority of our country is white..."
Time for a data check. Most recent data show the US population is:
Non-Hispanic white - 68%
Hispanic of any race - 14.5%
African - 12.5%
East Asian 5%
So, if the tea party was representative, almost one out of every three should of be non-Anglo/saxon/northern European appearance. Is this the case?
There is a precedent for this sort of thing in the history of extreme right wing political movements: The Night of the Long Knives, June 30, 1934, Germany.
It appears as if the corporate masters of the Tea Baggers have had quite enough of the rowdy low-ranking elements of their "movement" & have called in their own version of the Schutzstaffel to "clean up."
Apparently if one pays one half of the working class to kill the other, one must still pay little enough to keep them working.
I recall the old countess on a Virginia farm who recalled the revolt in 1917: Why did they have to break the plates and put their unwashed hands on all the bannisters?"
She suffered worse, and I wouldn't trivialize it, but she liked that distance and those serfs - unwashed, uneducated, and therefore outside of the house.
And if the little people wanted to celebrate there with their tea, just fine.
bardamu
Darned peasants! Just don't know their place.
What happens if both halves of that working class get together and decide its the "boss" thats the problem even if they don't agree on everything except that?
Ernst Rohm: "The SA is, and remains, Germany's destiny."
"Conservatives Target Their Own Fringe"
HA-HA-HA-AHA-HA-HYUCK-YUCK-HA-HOO-HAW!! Will Sarah Palin burst into tears, sprout caribou antlers and hire Trent Lott and Tom Delay to hunt her to death from a helicopter in her red jogging suit & matching sneakers when no one asks her to the RNC prom!!? Talk about a Kodak moment.
All these months of sensitive, earnest "independent," and "libertarian" trolls on this site telling us in hushed tones that we "better take the Tea-Partiers seriously," and "this is a genuine movement." Of what? Newt Gingrich's pork rind laden bowels? Another GOP fart in a trance with itself? That's all this white trash besmirched astro-turf McMoverment EVER was: A corporate PR ginned-up series of public temper tantrums for a few right-wingers who had barely enough sense to be angry at Rethuglicans & Dims who sold them out on the TARP bank giveaways and who are now being swaddled, suckled and petted back into the GOP sheep-fold with the election 9 months away--while the real psycho electoral tar babies are being pushed to the edge of the briar patch where they can fester like rabies.
They should ALL have to go through the Yanomamo manhood initiation ceremony where they bring up a woven mat covered in hundreds of furious venomous hornets stuck to it by sap and then hold it against the young mens' chests until while the hornets sting them 30 or 50 times. In the Tea-Baggers' case, if they don't die, they're Republicans. If they die their McSouls fly to the same hell nitch occupied by the shade of long dead white supremacist J.B. Stoner where they will all be slowly covered in athlete's foot fungus & meth scabs and smell like the spring melt of the 9 foot thick frozen lake of Wermacht piss outside one of the bunkers at the siege of Stalingrad.
"No go away or I will taunt you for a second time." - John Cleese
I will tell you in unhushed tones I believe you are wrong. I believe this feeling crosses party lines. I don't even think the "Tea Part" is particularly important, but they do express the opinions and opposition many, many millions of people to the current spending, taxing trend.
If I'm mistaken, we will know in November. I see no way (if I read it right) that the democrats retain control of the House.
Nor will any Health Care bill that is anything pass. Cap and Trade will be dead.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"...they do express the opinions and opposition many, many millions of people to the current spending, taxing trend."
Using my best Scotty the Enterprise Engineer voice: "Aye, son, but the devil is always in the spending details, isn't it? It's the priorities that are all ass-backwards."
Cap and Trade dead -- thank the lord -- you didn't buy into that corporate scam did you?
Facilities that buy up such allowances (pollution credits) to pollute MORE, because other facilities are polluting less. They allow for certain parts of the country to become much more polluted. And mercury emissions tend to concentrate nearer their source than do some other air pollutants, the C&T program may result in harm to children in certain communities where high mercury emissions would be allowed to continue or to expand. C&T will yearly clamp down on emissions, as the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the Congressional Budget Office snapshot estimate of $28 per ton of carbon for the first year only. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers. In other words: a Main Street tax.
And even if they work -- and the evidence from the EU is mixed at best -- the reduction will not be nearly enough.
We need real legislation that cuts back on emissions with the cost coming out of polluters' profit pockets -- not American taxpayers. People are already strapped to pay for energy. Oh we will ultimately have to pay more for energy but we need to gradually increase the cost with a equal rise in wages. Green jobs for real.
Gary
“It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.”
-- Charles Kuralt
So everyone who disagrees with your bigoted rhetoric (white trash besmirched astro-turf McMoverment) is a troll? "Troll" itself is a bigoted term as it is a demonization of those with whom you disagree.
Your gross imagery also belies any claim of intelligent comment.
"White Trash" is a racist, classist and bigoted term.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Garsh! I must have touched your hypocritical Tea-Bagger nerve. Go tell your momma she want's you. No one is more sensitive to accusations of bigotry than a bigot like you and bigots like you reserve your strongest contempt for those you have wronged most in the past. I grew up in the Deep(ly Indoctrinated) South and I can smell you sheltered dripping tools a mile away.
The left should infiltrate the Tea Baggers.... that is what they are afraid of....
real socialists for a change.
Actually their top candidate, Ron PAUL, HAS GOT MORE BRAINS and insight on the real conspiracy than the Repubs or Dems who are afraid to "follow the Money".... like a ponzi scheme investigator would.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
And Ralph Nader has more brains than all of them combined including all the unreconstructed socialists.
But the nervous undercurrent to all this jittery Tea-Bagger, "independent" and "libertarian" flop sweat is that, at first subconsciously, but now increasingly consciously, a lot of these people are afraid of another 8 years under fiscally insane GOP neo-con war freaks like Bush & Cheney. They know those traitors initiated Lehman Brothers and the TARP give-away and millions of them lost their jobs and stocks and savings because of it. They don't quite TRUST them anymore. A few of the brighter ones still even have a few nagging questions about the way those World Trade Center Towers collapsed with such industrial perfection. But they STILL just can't admit to themselves that they and their ilk were wrong for the last 42 years: That they should have backed progressives to improve the domestic Welfare State with free university education, universal health coverage and forward looking, job and wealth-creating energy policies like the much more competitive EU instead of throwing everything to the dinosaur fossil fuel lobby and the run amok war pigs. OOPS!! They screwed that pooch.
Now it's too effing late. DLC corporatist Dim incompetence will throw the next two elections to the GOP Big Money Fascist mainline. There are no Republican moderates left and some of these "conservative, independent and libertarian centrists" are worried under their itchy crawly skins about their fringe nut relations and their bedfellow militias on the rural side and all those hundreds of thousands of psychologically brutalized & brutal war vets returning home to unemployment--that when all the neo-con koolaid drinkers, and warped vets in the police & military along with privatized mercenary SS (SchwartzwaSSer) come to purge the rabble SA and consolidate Ein Reich, Ein Land, Ein Partei, then they and their "conservative centrist" larvae might end up in a forced prison labor camps or worse--a country filled with spotty gruesome small and medium-sized genocides like the Balkans in the mid-1990s. Poor little fascist-lite suckers. What WILL happen to them when their ammunition runs out? The whole lot of them and all the even loonier tens of millions to the right of them are an irredeemable international and historical disgrace second only to their capitalist owners' Nazi heroes.
Yep them old Nazis have always been a problem and them new ones is the worst...
We would be better off if Nader AND Paul (and the like) were running things because I bet they would work together to do something for the American people.
"the tea party movement's decentralized structure, vaguely defined goals and anti-establishment tone makes it an attractive place to channel angry feelings. "
Sounds a lot like al Qaeda...
i think i don't have too much of a problem with anyone who is at least involved and trying to pay attention to what is going on, even if they are "truthers" or "birthers"
the process of moving forward with some real change can begin when people are involved and willing to discuss things.
the biggest problem i see are those who are purposefully, unapologetically, and proudly 100% ignorant of anything important going on politically in the USA, even if they are good people. they are too busy at work and watching television, or sports, or video games, or getting drunk, or doing drugs...
like MLK said, well have to repent for the silence of the good people in our generation.
i guess that was a few generations ago but i think it still applies.
The right wing is very much in tune with core american values of greed, militarism, whacko religion and racism which pervades the airwaves and the hearts of the new America now dominated by the conservative movement. The teabaggers are just a small part of this god fearing family of nitwits, thieves and sociopaths that we call the republican party.
The left is secretly jealous of the Tea Bagger Movement, the right is allegedly embarrassed by them, and we're still discussing them like they matter.
And Sarah Palin has Rupert Murdoch to thank and give homage to, the emperor media enabler of all things corporate. What is that about?
Gee....I was thinking about joining the Tea Party, but now that I realize they think that anyone (including 1000 plus Architects and Engineers, NYC first responder fire fighters, pilots, academia etc.) who questions the "official" version of what happened on 9/11 are "crazy" I guess I'll just have to look elsewhere for a political home.
(I'm actually being a little snarky.....obviously. I would NEVER align myself with any political movement that would invite Sarah Palin to their event).
Only self-important, intellectually insecure or deficient imbeciles crisply and matter-of-factly rely upon pejorative ambiguities like "conspiracy theorist", typically to denounce "conspiracy theories".
The Buzzword Syndrome is a major part of corporate media, but most Amerikans encounter it in the workplace. Broadly speaking, there are those who instantly see through and despise such rhetorical gimmickry-- and those few who cultivate it instead.
I'm sure Gerson, Erickson, Ryun, and the rest of that depraved cohort will strive to be PRO-ACTIVE in weeding out counterproductive elements.
· Yr Obd't Servant
The attempt "to clean up our own house," as Erick Erickson, founder of the influential conservative blog RedState, puts it, is necessary " because traditional press outlets have decided to spotlight these fringe elements that get attracted to the movement, and focus on them as if they're a large part of this tea party movement. And I don't think they are."
Oh, yes they are, Herr MoFo. The entire Republican party, whether it's the Blackshirt or Brownshirt factions being discussed, is fascist.
MariafromBaltimore
The Repubs and architects of that party's spin can blather all they want about how the tea partiers aren't racist wackos bent on power for themselves and complete disenfranchisement for the rest of us - but - it just won't fly. These people are bigoted mouth-foamers and no amount of "rebranding" and bs by their talking heads can change that fact.
I was at Sen. Ben Cardin's "town hall" meeting last August and every one of the approximately 3,000 bussed in tea partiers was blood-pulsing angry, screaming, ranting and they were a mob intent on making sure that there was no discussion about health care and that none of us who arrived early (but not 3 hours early like them) would be able to get into the town hall. I have been to many demonstrations and spent time in jail for nonviolent direct action, but this was the first one where I was actually afraid to be in that mob of my allegedly fellow Americans - they were that viscerally angry. I saw in my face how people you would meet on the street and talk with could be part of a mob that, if they could, would have physically attacked some of us. In fact, some of them came close. And yes, the signs and placards were uniformly racist and ugly. The arrogant screaming epithets coming out of their mouths was a real eye-opener as well. Patriots? "Real" Americans? I think not. Angry and utterly ignorant of the real reasons they're so angry? Out of control? Manipulated? You betcha.
We ignore this mob and those who control them (Dick Armey, the Repug leaders and their corporate masters, the Chamber of Commerce, etc. etc.) at our peril. Make no mistake - they are dangerous to our way of life. Think Weimar Germany and then realize that it's people and groups like them that step into the breach - which we now have here - and our values and our freedom to dissent and all we hold precious will be gone before we know it. We must fight the corporate control of our lives, our government and our country. Inverted totalitarianism is alive and well right here. Democracy is a shell, a facade to provide the cover for those who have dismantled it.
Thank you for tryin.
Tea Baggers, meet triangulation. The Democrats have been doing it to progressives since 1992. It's your turn. You've been drafted into a bloc, and will have just three of your issues addressed, and no other candidate with a chance of winning from any other party to vote for. You can be certain that part of the process will include the Republicans choosing to elect a half-dozen near-extremists (the Republican equivalent of Kucinich) who will be too few and far between to influence roll call votes, but just enough to make you think there's hope for YOUR vote if you vote Republican.
You're free to form your own party that gives both its ideological and organizational extremists free rein, and then you'll be the right wing Greens, and thereby be just as irrelevant to actual governmental outcomes as you would be if you allowed yourself to be triangulated into voting Republican.
The corporate political loop is closed. It will remain so until the ability to conduct business with 300 million docile and compliant consumers is interrupted. You don't have to be up for civil disobedience to do your share to make this happen. Just stop buying stuff. Even at Christmas time.
"The corporate political loop is closed. It will remain so until the ability to conduct business with 300 million docile and compliant consumers is interrupted. You don't have to be up for civil disobedience to do your share to make this happen. Just stop buying stuff. Even at Christmas time."
Excellent point, well stated. As a Grandma, I see that the enjoyment of Christmas for children is based on a lot of toys and stuff, the more the better. Parents aim for a frenzy of ripping wrapping. Obviously this is heavily promoted in the media. We tried a "green Christmas" two years ago with good results. But I am still appalled at all the garbage the kids received from the other side of the family: things that won't work without batteries but don't actually come with batteries, plastic dollar store crap that breaks even before you use it, "kits" that come with so many tiny pieces that an adult can't even figure them out, toys with directions in some other language that's not English, and and then you end up with a mountain of packaging for a small pile of mostly useless toys.
I can't tell you how much I would love to get away from this. But then you are made to feel like you are some kind of Grinch if you don't. One of the things we do is to buy food, like cookie mix or snack bars as gifts. But just the other day my littlest granddaughter said "You bought Sissy Captain Crunch for Christmas because you didn't want to buy her a real present." She's only six and already locked into the consumer culture. We fight it, but it's an uphill battle.
"The mind of a child is were the revolution begins ."
- Immortal Techniqe
People forget that we empower big business with our spending, stop giving them your hard earned cash and, they will lose that power( MIC is except , but thats apart of our economy thats been arround since WW2)
Bring America Back !!!!
****These ham and eggers needed the leftist fringe to get their "thing" goin'==they had to pretend to have a certain leftist inclusion. Thus the tea party of 2009 !!
****Now that they have their 'Palin' and FOX TV war cheerleaders in line, and their O'Reilly Klan marchin', they need to eject the Leftys who are most likely to object to the Massive War Spending as they are to Massive Healthcare Funding of Big Insurance.
****The Neocons want to keep their Big Gov Tea Party but cannot afford to lose their King George War Efforts, thus they need to hone down members of their own little party tables to their lockstep Repubby longjohns !!!
And what of the reality that this entire T-bagger effort
is GOP/right wing financed -- FreedomWorks???
Not grass roots, but astroturf?
Well, we didn't bother much about the GOP-sponsored fascist rally which
stopped the vote counting in 2000 mandated by the Florida State Supreme
Court so why worry about this?
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
conscience, regarding: "According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
That's why the men invented religion.
Has everyone forgotten that Barack H Obama is half WHITE.
He was raised by his WHITE Mother and Grandmother.
He didn't even know his father, or since he was a small child or whatever.
He is just as WHITE as he is black, except for the pigmentation of his skin.
NO ONE CARES WHAT COLOR HE IS (okay, maybe a few people, but not many)
continuing to drag the race issue around is what is keeping it alive.
So the LEFT is as responsible for the racial thing too, just by always paying it lip service.
You are GUILTY of continuing this racial B.S.
Barack Obama is definitely not the same kind of African American black person that was brought here in the horrific days of slavery. He is NOT a descendant of black slaves.
His father is from where, Kenya and his mother is what? WHITE.
Lets get over this retarded issue already.
Lets focus on the LIES. The WARS. The Economical Crisis this country is facing. The Nuclear power plants that Barry supports. The NUCLEAR WARHEADS that Barry wants to update. The escalation of soldiers in Afghanistan. The use of private MERCENARIES in the Middle Eastern WARS, that get paid like $75,000 TAX Dollars a Year, to MURDER Middle Eastern Children and Grown Up Civilians as well, the Tax Dollars that WE Pay, that Pays these EVIL Criminals, that Barry OBAMA hires to fight HIS WARS.
Enough with the childish bickering, the name calling, "tea-baggers" lets deal with the REAL Problems and Issues, like our out of control corrupt government, the military industrial complex, the federal reserve, the WARS (the ENDLESS WARS if we keep these people in power).
Come on people, grow the hell up already.
peace. love. anarchy
"The fringe-fighters' methods range from censuring signs at rallies or banishing unruly participants completely ".
Let freedom ring!
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. Eric Hoffer
Freedom Works and Dick Armey -- he loves socialized medicine as long as it's just for him and himself alone. It doesn't seem to bother the tea partiers about him either.
This isn't grassroots, it's corporate funded.
When is a reporter going to dig up exactly what kind of health care plan these folks have, and what their incomes are?
Especially the clown in that mask with a sign about "Muslim Marxists"? I want to know what he does for a living, how much he makes, what tax bracket he's in (that makes him so upset), what his health care plan is, his monthly premiums, his deductible, and so on. Who pays for it.
When am I going to read an article that tells me exactly this kind of information about these idiots?
So we can stop endlessly speculating on what makes their insanity tick?
harvey wasserman:
always remember that today's right wingers would HATE the actual founders if they met them. ben franklin was the ultimate libertine/liberal. jefferson had 7 children with his african-american slave. adams was a unitarian/deist, as were jefferson, madison and monroe. tom paine attacked the church and was a true radical, both politically and in terms of religion. even hamilton, the original corporate conservative, admitted in public to having an extra-marital affair. washington occasionally read his bible but was a firm believer in religious liberty. all of the ones with even an acre of land raised hemp. all would be HORRIFIED to hear this talk of a the US as a "christian nation" and would have viewed the campaign in afghanistan as the sheerest of folly.
most importantly, the grassroots farmers & sailors & urban workers believed in no established church and a town-meeting style democracy that today's corporate right would stamp out at the first opportunity.
so when glenn beck/limbaugh and the rest of them conjure up "the Founders" just think of ben franklin and laugh.
Well, perhaps. But , when thinking of Franklin, one should also remember this was a man who refused to give his wife a nickle for new clothes, even when her wardrobe was so threadbare she was too embarrassed to leave the house.
Warts and flaws, we all got 'em.