We, the Tea Partiers
· We protest against a heavy-fisted form of government that seeks to further regulate private enterprise and hinder future profits (i.e., banking and energy industries…).
The writer goes on to protest cap and trade, which I also think is a bad idea, but not for the same reasons, obviously. But that other line — that is why the Tea Party “movement” is not a movement but a top-down manipulation, a misdirection.
These are people who’ve been gouged for years by the deregulated banking, mortgage lending, and commodities trading business, and when Obama sends down very weak, watered-down regulations to deal with those problems, they howl that he’s against “private enterprise” because that’s what they’ve been told to think by the Glenn Becks of the world.
Did you know that insider trading isn’t even illegal in the commodities trading business? Do you honestly think gas prices were high in 2008 because we weren’t drilling enough in the Gulf of Mexico?
You idiots are being used. Think for yourselves. If the Fox Network believes it so wholeheartedly, how could it possibly be in your interest? They’ll take your ratings, sure, so they can sell you Charmin and $5 footlongs. I mean, Jesus, how can you not see that? If you had real allies that powerful, don’t you think someone would have taken care of you by now?
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This live coverage of the Tea Party on C-Span is pretty interesting. It’s going to be difficult for them to claim they are anything other than a GOP splinter group of dissatisfied Republicans. Their speeches and Q&A’s are peppered with comments like, “sad to say, the Democrats are better at…” and “I was disappointed to find most of the articles were written by Democrats.”
Of course, any independent organization that truly believes Republicans and Democrats are both off track would not find anything sad or disappointing about Democrats doing something more or better than the Republicans. As a true independent, I want everyone to realize (and I think most already do) these Tea Partiers are not rebels, populists, or independents. Just Republicans who are frustrated voters noticed how poorly the GOP governed from 2000-2008 (or 2006).
The convention pretty much exposed them for what they really are.
I’ll be surprised if they gain any traction at all going forward.
And if Palin follows through, and speaks at this thing, she’s pretty much putting the nail in her own coffin (let’s hope she does it).
At the very least, once she speaks, there should be some great blog articles, late night jokes and SNL skits to look forward to.
In response to another comment. See in context »Jesus Matt, seen any black helicopters lately? There are so many things wrong with your rant er… slant that I don’t know where to begin. Maybe randomly would be good.
I don’t need Glenn Beck to tell me how to feel about government regulation and taxation, and neither should you.
I don’t need “allies” to “take care of me”.
Gas was high in 2008 because demand exceeded supply.
I do not fear Fox, or CNN, or any news channel for that matter because I am not an idiot.
Because I’m not an idiot I do not invest in commodities and I don’t care if insider trading is illegal because it makes no difference. If your buddy from Enron called you in the middle of the night and told you to bail would you?
Finally, I don’t know anyone who has ever been “gouged” by the banking, mortgage, or trading business. My friends pay their bills and take it in stride if they make a bad choice. Besides, the government is the last place I’d turn to protect me from those evil rotten gougers.
Grow up Matt.
I saw Sarah Palin’s “speech” and I couldn’t really understand it. Something about “getting the government’s hand off business and how she gave the revenues of the Alaska oil development back to the people and it’s a mistake to talk to your enemies?…something,something, that is, after all….”
That speech will be providing comedy material for decades.
Middle school English teachers have loads of new teaching material as well.
Move over, Bobby Jindal.
The Republicans use the Tea Partiers and Christian Conservatives the same way the Democrats appeal to and use the middle class, the uninsured, the unemployed. There are idiots being used by both parties…quite frankly, I feel like one of them myself but I think I’m on to them now! Their real constituents are really just corporations and lobbyists.
On the topic of Teapartiers, I’ll just quote Chomsky:
http://harvardcitizen.com/2010/02/11/citizen-conversation-withnoam-chomsky/
”
And at least — I’ve never seen a study of it — but the sense that I get is that these are people with real grievances, valid grievances. They’ve been treated very badly for 30 years. They are hard-working — they think of themselves as hard-working Americans, white, Christian, God-fearing, do all the right things, but for thirty years, they’ve been cast aside. Their incomes and wages have stagnated; such benefits as there were have declined. Their jobs are being sent abroad, schools are no good. Two members of the family have to work to put food on the table. Families are falling apart. Bad things have happened to them. It’s not like El Salvador where we slaughtered them, but it’s not nice, and they don’t understand why. They want an answer and they deserve an answer. Well they’re not getting an answer that says it’s because of the bipartisan decision in the 1970s to shift the structure of the economy towards financialization and emptying out of industrial production and towards the neoliberal policies that enrich a tiny sector and disregard everyone else — no one is telling them that….
And they do get an answer from Rush Limbaugh – a crazy answer but it’s an answer. And you know, McLaughlin and Michael Savage and the rest of them, the answer is it’s the rich liberals who own everything, who run the corporations, run the government, run the media. They want to take everything away from you and give it to the illegal immigrants and the shiftless blacks and so on….So you’re ordinary Americans? I’m one of you and we’re getting back at these rich elitists, who don’t care about us. Okay, that’s an answer. It’s not the right answer, but it’s an answer.
If you kind of suspend disbelief, you forget what you know about the world, and just try to get into that system of thought, it’s a coherent answer. It’s internally coherent. It’s logical. It has historical resonances. It’s rather similar to late Weimar Germany. That’s the way the Nazis organized, to an aggrieved population, giving them answers that were coherent — crazy but coherent — and I don’t have to tell you what happened after that. So I think it’s very important.
”
I think it’s better to hold empathy rather than resentment for the Teapartiers – they are too uneducated and brainwashed to be able to use their heads properly. What the US (and the whole world) needs are grass roots organizations capable of jump starting brains into logical thinking and awareness. Without enlightenment, democracy is just a charade.
Living in Coos County, OR these last six years, a rural hinterland of good ‘ole boyism still blaming the unions for the wood products conglomerate, Weyerhauser closing mills and taking jobs to China, I hear your frustration with the ‘tea party’. Why do these people consistently vote against their own interests?
Then, this week I started reading the 2006, Bageant book ‘Deer Hunting With Jesus’ and got a good glimpse of the why. Bageant doesn’t offer solutions (I am only half way through the book) but he makes an excellent point – we progressives don’t talk to, communicate with or speak in a language that means anything to the working class. The liberal elite don’t stand with the union and get bloodied, the Dems don’t really push for a living wage jobs bill as far as they can tell. Instead we go off on gun control and Iraq and Haliburton and marriage equality. But Bageant is right, I believe, progressives need the working class, we need to engage the working class, somehow, if we are going to get anywhere with bank regulation or something so simple as class equity.
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