Tom Tancredo has latched on to the Tea Party movement after being ousted from office by his constituents, in part because he needs to believe he wasn't rejected by his real constituents, but by an undesirable element who shouldn't be allowed to vote. That this disjointed movement contains many people who believe this is a Protestant white man's country and that others should feel grateful just to be allowed here and should not vote or be otherwise uppity is obvious. Hence when Tancredo told the Tea Party Thursday that President Obama was elected only because
"we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country,"it fell on grateful ears.
Mr. Obama's educational and intellectual capabilities and achievements are an obvious irritation to the sort of people Tancredo hopes to ingratiate himself with and when Tancredo allows them to feel warmly supported in their belief that the Harvard Scholar is stupid (he's black after all) and his success due to the stupidity of voters, their inhibitions melt away. They can tell themselves that they've been right all along for opposing civil rights for anyone but true (WASP) Americans and that the success of the civil rights movement has meant disaster for America. Not of course, the disaster of insidious economic policy, corruption, contrived and unnecessary wars and upside down tax structure, but the disaster of having a black president.
Ironically, so far only the darkness of Mr. Obama's complexion and the ability to speak clearly make him stand out among the presidents of the last century, but it's progress -- the idea of progress itself that motivates the snarling in the street. The golden era of laissez faire, white man's paradise they long for exists only in that nebulous Disneyland of the Conservative mind, where we didn't have wild, whipsaw boom-bust cycles, 40% poverty levels, massive social injustice, violence and all the rest of the real world long since buried under snowdrifts of revisionist rhetoric. In that world, black men don't vote, black people can't be trusted to vote, because they're stupider than the crackers and red-necks and bigots and reactionaries who carry signs and dream about a world that is friendly to their sociopathology and acknowledges their privilege and entitlement.
Does it say anything important about Tancredo's argument that the election was swayed by a host of illiterates if in the real world, Obama was heavily favored by educated people? Does it say anything about the real agenda of the Tancredo conservatives if he isn't hooted off the stage for wanting to bring back a shameful era? Sure it does, and that's why one should be forced to flunk a civics and literacy examination if not an IQ test in order to join the party.
The fact that the American voting population with higher degrees than a BA or BS overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Obama seems to have escaped the demagoguery of Tancredo. He, like Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity, appeal to willfully uninformed people. And you have perfectly illustrated the reasons for this absurdity.
ReplyDeleteIt's the educated and intelligent that the Baggers resent and are so scared of. They are inadequate and for once they know it.
ReplyDeleteThe Teabaggers and their handlers are under the delusion that they represent the majority of Americans just because they get together and make a lot of noise. But they number in the thousands while the United States as a whole has a population of over 300 million. I'm not sure how many of those are of voting age but I'm guessing we are talking in the millions.
ReplyDeleteAnd the majority spoke for itself back in Nov of 2008. And I certainly don't need some ignorant, ill-educated bigot to speak for me.
But in 2010 the Teabag movement will be the leading voice in the election and even though they are a minority and a very small one at that they are 'the spoilers' and unless a populist movement sprout up on the left they will force all politicians to tilt to the right...
ReplyDeleteThey did a great job of taking credit for electing a moderate Republican in Massachusetts.
They killed healthcare reform.
I don't know, TAO. I think big pharma and big insurance killed healthcare reform.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Mass. vote, while they are taking credit for it, the real reason for the Dem loss was the arrogance of the candidate and people's displeasure with what is happening in Congress.
I do agree that we need a populist movement with a new slate of candidates.
Perhaps this will be the Year of the Independents. We need to shake up Washington at their very foundation. The Dems in Congress have been a huge disappointment.
As for the Teabaggers, I think you give them too much credit - there is infighting and jockeying for control and as much as they say there is no leaders, those for profit organizers look a lot like handlers to me. And you know there are hidden brains behind this "movement" somewhere.
Myself, I intend to look at who is running in my area and I'll be actively campaigning this year locally. I intend to fight fear-mongering and hate with accurate information and passionate concern.
Do these people EVER watch themselves on youtube reruns to see and hear themselves? You know, like the football players do? If not, then they need to start because it's dumb, dumber and dumbest day in and day out anymore!
ReplyDeleteI dread watching or reading the news because I cringe! We are being run by a bunch of nut jobs! Lunatics who think America is filled with stupid Citizens.
Rocky,
ReplyDeleteIts not the size of a movement that matters. Its the incessent pounding of a message...
Look at what MLK did with a few thousand marchers in the street.
How big was the anti-war movement in its heyday?
So, the general public gets the news everyday about the Teabaggers day after day, and guess what? That starts to influence everyone.
Most of what the majority see of the world they get from television. I live in Bowling Green Kentucky, an hour from Nashville and the home of Rand Paul....everything I know about the teabag convention comes from Television and the two campaign stops that Rand Paul made in town that I participated in had less than a hundred participants...and he is leading the race!
Someplace and somehow Liberals are going to HAVE to promote themselves and their beliefs, after they develop a world view, and then get it out in the streets....
Get in on the news.
Having been to numerous conferences at the Opryland I can tell you that the Teabag Convention was not a sold out affair....it wasn't packed!
But you would never know that from watching the news...
Look around the blogosphere....conservative blogs sprout up every day and they outnumber liberal blogs at a rate of at least 100 to 1....not bad for a minority that represents less than 20% of the population.
With a President that was elected on a landslide, and a super majority in the house and the senate look at how the minority has been able to freeze the government....
What’s depressing about the Tea-Folk is how ahistorical they seem – in spite of all the Revolutionary War paraphernalia and symbolism, a lot of what I hear coming from them could only be the result of nearly total ignorance of American history, economics, and just about everything else. Can’t say that I blame Americans of all persuasions for being upset at how things are going, but frustration has to be directed intelligently if it is to avoid becoming merely destructive.
ReplyDeleteA contradiction at the heart of modern American conservatism, in my view and allowing for some exceptions, is that the right almost invariably opposes any assertion of authority on the government’s part if it’s meant to help anybody, but they almost invariably support all assertions of authority on the government’s part so long as that authority is directed against the people. Provided that the feds are wiretapping or torturing or clandestinely imprisoning, they should be able to do it without having to deal with annoying chatter about rights or freedoms, but let them propose to improve access to ordinary citizens’ health care, and that’s a big-government projectile aimed at the heart our precious liberties. This contradiction renders much of what comes from the American right as incoherent in its articulation as it is pernicious and cruel in its tendencies.
It’s a mistake to suppose that any idea has ever been truly consigned to the ash-heap of history: there’s always a new crop of people whose heads are as empty as a dry teapot and who are therefore easily duped by the same old nonsense – in this case, the Randian myth of the absolute individual, the blockheaded assertion that all government is inherently evil and unnecessary, or the myth of the pure free market. There’s always a new group ready to believe such notions are the simple answers to our problems. I recall reading the local newspaper regularly when I was a kid – their constant line went something like, “if it weren’t for the government, this or that problem could be solved almost at once.” Didn’t much matter what the issue was—that was their response to it. Evidently, the same stale, tired rhetoric works on millions today since it hits them with the force of a newly articulated idea.
Finally, nothing could be more revealing about the true quality of the Tea-Types than speaker Sarah’s use at the Convention of a line I think all of us have come to associate with Trollerei: “So how’s that hope and change thing workin’ out for ya?” Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn’t that a close paraphrase of a sound-byte from the speech she gave?
"they are 'the spoilers'"
ReplyDelete"Its not the size of a movement that matters. Its the incessent pounding of a message...
Look at what MLK did with a few thousand marchers in the street. "
I have to agree and I think they're very dangerous. Look at what Hitler did with a few marchers in the street and a few bar brawls.
"the result of nearly total ignorance of American history, economics, and just about everything else."
Absolutely - and also a firm belief in bogus history and psychotic theories of government.
Making fun of hope has got to be the final stage of our country's collapse.
Dino and Capt. 'n all, Palin did one better -- she used the words "hope-y, change-y," further belittling not only the Obama's efforts at recovery, as open to criticisms as they may be, but also, as Capt. notes, the ideas, the values, of hope and change, without which, after all, we may all just sit down and wait for death.
ReplyDeleteThe woman is a dangerous idiot (and I don't use the idiot term lightly).
She can say:
I am so proud to be an American. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Do you love your freedom?
in almost the same breath with:
This was all part of that hope and change and transparency. Now, a year later, I gotta ask the supporters of all that, 'How's that hopey, changey stuff working out?
(source)
The really awful part is that, unfortunately, our President and Dems have given her and people like her several easy reasons to use such dreadful rhetoric (e.g., in case of Obama, by breaking his campaign promises).
BTW, Dino, I think your excellent comment is worthy of a separate new post.
Tao asks:
ReplyDelete"How big was the anti-war movement in its heyday?"
If you mean Vietnam, we could turn out thousands of people at multiple sites across the country on a day or two's notice. We could regularly get hundreds of thousands to Washington.
If you mean the anti-Iraq period, I was at a Washington march a few years ago which had 3-400,000 people, and which was virtually ignored by the press. What coverage they did give the event generally gave equal time to a "counterdemonstration" featuring less than a hundred bussed in wingnuts. On the other hand, they devote endless coverage to tea parties that cannot attract more than a couple of hundred people, and a teabag national convention with a grand total of 600 registered attendees, many of them from the likes of World Net Daily and other synthetic right wing propaganda mills.
I still remember the Terry Schiavo protests. I have looked at dozens of pictures of those events and I have never seen a single one with more than thirty or forty people in it, and yet the press gave them endless coverage.
I could go on to cite more examples, such as the last couple of failed teabag marches on Washington, or the utter collapse of the January 20th Tea Party general strike, which the press has utterly erased from America's conscience (most people have never even heard about that one,) but I guess you get the idea.
The tea bag movement began as an Astroturf event, and the reason behind the current lack of leadership is that once the original objectives were achieved, the organizers moved on.
ReplyDeleteWhat remains of the tea baggers is more ad hoc, a grassroots movement looking for new leadership and direction.
In a way, I sympathize with them. There is hardly a person in America right now who is not pissed off about something, and I think we can generally agree: The system is broken.
If you strip away the bigots, racists, and homophobes from the movement, there are scared and angry people who simply wish to make a statement and are being exploited by the reactionary rightwing. I wish some of them were on our side … and some way to convince them where their true economic self-interest lies. There is no-one on our side willing to talk to them, and that will be our loss.
If you strip away the bigots, racists, and homophobes from the movement, there are scared and angry people who simply wish to make a statement and are being exploited by the reactionary rightwing.
ReplyDeleteYep. Arianna Huffington has a good post on Tea Partiers, which expands on this theme (and I very much agree with it):
The Tea Party 600: Canaries in the Political Coal Mine?
Thanks to Elizabeth re my comment.
ReplyDelete