The ebbs and flows of the Tea Party ferment are hardly uniform. It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure. Not everyone flocking to the Tea Party movement is worried about dictatorship. Some have a basic aversion to big government, or Mr. Obama, or progressives in general. What’s more, some Tea Party groups are essentially appendages of the local Republican Party."Whom to blame" is of course Obama. Blaming the banks, the Republicans, the multi-trillion dollar wars, the defense contractors, the real causes of our problems...well, that would be cause for inner reflection at how the American people were duped and cheated. Nobody likes to admit they were played for fools bu Bush and company.
But most are not. They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.
That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance, they explored the Federalist Papers, exposés on the Federal Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to constitutional seminars. Online, they discovered radical critiques of Washington on Web sites like ResistNet.com (“Home of the Patriotic Resistance”) and Infowars.com (“Because there is a war on for your mind.”).
Many describe emerging from their research as if reborn to a new reality. Some have gone so far as to stock up on ammunition, gold and survival food in anticipation of the worst. For others, though, transformation seems to amount to trying on a new ideological outfit — embracing the rhetoric and buying the books.
It's much easier to blame the black guy for destroying the country. It becomes even easier when the Right Wing Noise Machine is on-call 24 hours a day to justify the hatred for Obama, too. It's been so bloody effective that we have people seriously contemplating the next US Civil War.
They want to be on the "winning side" now, you see. In 2010, a black man is President. The backlash from that couldn't have been timed any better for the Republican party to ride that wave of hate. And these guys will be with us for a very, very long time.
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3 comments:
God, this is scary! For people who have been paying attention the warnings and patterns have clearly indicated who is responsible for our recession and current financial climate. In the opinion of people who read and author this blog it's obviously the end result of 30 years of conservatism.
For this moment in time to be hijacked by ignorant anti-intellectuals is both depressing and expected. People naturally gravitate to the easy explanation, or perceived quick fix. Instead of taking the bold steps to remake our country and endure the pain that it would entail, we (the village) have decided to just throw all of the bums out in favor of something that packages neatly into one sound bite.
"The government is the problem."
Progressive vs. Conservatives is one issue, but our future confrontations look to be headed toward a "Science & Reason" vs "Faith and 'Some People Say'". It's a lot easier for people to say, "I believe in creation 'cause the bible said so." Instead of actually understanding biology, geology, history, and hundreds of other subjects required to make a well rounded human being. It's natural for people to believe in a simple concept, they have to be taught otherwise.
The problem is compounded because we end up having to give a civics lesson to someone who thinks they are a model citizen. It's not "THE" government, it's "OUR" government - the one WE THE PEOPLE give taxes to, to run all the stuff that doesn't run well for US THE PEOPLE if profit is involved.
Imagive an america where every road is a toll road. Where police only work for the highest bidder. Where fireman won't start putting out the fire until you've paid them. We've learned these lessons over centuries. That's where OUR government has come from. WE either continue to make it work, or we model our country on one without a government - and those are typically called third world countries.
So, emphatically NO, the government is not the problem. The problem is the problem, be it jobs, health care, whatever. We need to solve the problem. People who say "the government is the problem" need to grow the hell up.
Tom, you hit the nail on the head, Government is NOT the problem. Fighting that idea is going to be very difficult. We have been hammered with anti-government rhetoric for over 30 years, starting when Reagan uttered his famous line about the government being here to help. I live and work in Eastern Washington. I would guess that 95% of the people here consider the government to be evil. How in the world are these people ever going to see the light?!
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