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.

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.

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’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.

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).

This is hysterical. The only mouths (I think those were mouths) that are convicting the tea partiers of racism, religious bigotry and gun worship are those of the speakers at the convention. These folks are not worthy of any respect. I think we can go back to calling them teabaggers again.