.....This “Tea Party” thing is complex. Clearly, many of the Tea party hoi polloi are foolish, ignorant, and even worrisome. Listening to some of these tea people sometimes, you'd swear they are anarchists. But they call themselves "patriots," and patriots are too busy waving the flag to be anarchists.
.....If Tea Partiers have a coherent philosophy, I sure don't know what it is. Most of 'em richly deserve to be called stupid.
.....But many of the pols who embrace the movement are anything but stupid.
.....They’re some kind of cynical. I guess.
.....How cynical are they? I just don’t know.
.....Our own trustee Don Wagner is among the Tea Party embracers. Back on April 28, we posted about his participation in an April 15 Tea Party event (Tea: the last beverage of scoundrels). According to Orange Juice blogger Larry Gilbert, Don Wagner was among the event speakers. I'm sure that's true.
.....Today, I came across an odd “neoconservative” blog called American Power. There, I found a couple of posts that referred to a Tea Party rally back in February (Feb. 13). Don Wagner participated in that event as well. The pics prove it.
.....Just what does it tell us about Don Wagner that he’s playin’ footsy with this odd collection of ignoramuses and (often) worrisomely loose cannons? He's no dolt. Sure, he's kinda mean and a bit ruthless. But surely he cringes when the Tea People shout, "No taxation without representation!"
.....He's cynical, right?
SEE Chuck DeVore Tea Party Rally! (Feb. 13)
Whistleblower lawsuit against for-profit education company unsealed
13 comments:
It is difficult to say what (politically) Wagner is exactly. In a way it is not important. He is simply an opportunistic, self aggrandizing cheeseball. He threw IVC a curveball with his "support" of the college's accreditation efforts, but his motives there were completly sub rosa. I'm not sure even he will admit to them. It must be obvious he will and has gotten into bed with anyone to advance his ambitions.
Sorry to be a stickler, Chunk. Were the Tea Partiers anarchists, they would be the oxymoronic (with emphasis on moronic) RIGHT-WING anarchists. There is another name for that group, and they wear brown shirts. So, no, they are neither communalist anarchos nor are they so-called libertarian anarchists. Obvious about the former I think, but they are not true libertarian anarchists either because, well, they support war and the power of wealth, and of course want to use law against plenty of other people, like teenage girls and immigrants and other mostly defenseless constituencies. Historically, they are perhaps closest to what was once called falangists. --- R.E.
oooh, I love it when Red talks like that.
Just look at their balloons.
Hey, Don's wearing a sticker with one word in Spanish! Speak american Don.
I'm puzzled by the term they bandy about: "We're going to take our country back." Is this back "from" something or back "to" somewhere?
My guess is that it's back "to" the middle ages.
BvT is coming at this from a philosopher's perspective: anarchism and political obligation. I suppose one could distinguish between "positive" and "negative" anarchism. A negative anarchist denies the existence of compelling grounds for political obligation or has an analysis of "the state" according to which it is an unjustified institution. BvT is thinking of negative anarchism. A positive anarchist shares with the negative anarchist an analysis of the state revealing it to be unjustified (or worse), but typically offers an account of what the state should be replaced with. Red appears to be thinking of positive anarchism. BvT was responding to that aspect of Tea Party rhetoric that condemns taxation and seems at times to view government as--to use Reagan's phrase--"the problem." That's negative anarchism. It ain't positive anarchism. There are, of course, Libertarians who are positive anarchists, and a few of them can be found these days among those usually labelled "libertarians." One senses that most Tea Partiers are no aware of such distinctions.
The aveage tea partier wouldn't understand anything you just said, except for the articles and conjunctions. For any one of them puzzled by those terms, we're talking about "a, an, and the" and "and or but."
It might be true that some tea party members don't know the difference between an, and, or but and butt. However, like most everyone they know when their getting screwed. The votes they cast, if nothing else, will create havoc. As the feds continue to screw people more tea party types will learn to vote. Unfortunately, many doing the screwing are calling themselves friends of the movement.
Maybe this isn't so bad.
Best case scenario: The tea partiers will drive the Republican party so far to the right that Republican party candidates coming out of the primaries will be unelectable--a la Barry Goldwater in 1964.
--100 miles
There is real and justified anger. They are dissenters too. The Tea Party people's flaw is their BLIND rage. Emphasis on Blind.
This anger opens them up to being used by opportunists such as Don and other cynical Politicians. I agree with one thing that Tea Party people say "We need to take back our government". I disagree with the anger they lash out at various groups such as hispanics, and the Unions.
I attended one of these meetings and saw a firefighter who was collecting signature for unplug the machine initiative. He was angry and did not realize that he was collecting signatures to lower his standard of living.
He was mad at something and had to let it out somehow I guess.
Sure, we need to take back our government, but that is no more true today than it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, etc.
I don't understand Tea Partiers' timing. Why no rage when we invaded Iraq in 2003? Why no rage over the Bush administration's numerous disastrous and unConstitutional policies and actions?
For most people, taxes are actually lower. And yet it is taxes that these people get furious about. Are they insane? Who can account for such curious blindness?
Because they're dim and esily led.
Nothing will happen, nothing at all, unless we go to public financing of elections. The Republican Supreme Court has taken care of that, though.
You may be right about public financing of elections (though that move will create obstacles for third and fourth parties). But, as you say, the Supremes have thrown a large obstacle onto that path.
The Tea Party movement is the latest indication--a powerful indication--that we as a society have reached a democratic nadir in which reason has faded dramatically into the background among the voting public. It is the era of the defiantly, proudly ignorant and selfish. No more arguments, just successful tears on Oprah.
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