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Displaying all 6 Forum Posts for the Thread:

Confused About the Misdirected Rage of the Tea Baggers

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2009-10-13 04:09 PM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 841

The Tea Party Patriots stand for fiscal responsibility, reduced government spending and taxation, limited government, and free markets. Fair enough. But when I watched the Tea Bagger parties and read their signs such as: Obama Plan, White Slavery; the American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Ovens; Barack Hussein Obama - the New face of Hitler; Barack Obama supports Abortion, Socialism, Sodomy, and a New World Order; Obama for President of Kenya; and several others with the words Nazi, socialist, and fascist, government takeovers, death panels, etc. I scratch my head in wonder. What exactly did Obama do to deserve this disrespect.

Well let's see. He inherited one of the worst recessions in history and possibly averted a depression, he reduced taxes for all Americans with his stimulus package, and put many Americans back to work. He did increase taxes for cigarette smokers to pay for healthcare for children. And yes he has proposed increasing taxes on the wealthy...those making more than $250,000 a year, but how many of those protesters make more than $250,000 a year? He has proposed health care reform and is pushing for a public option, which would essentially be "Medicare for all". I didn't see any senior Tea Bagger signs saying "Take Back my Medicare". Nor did I see any signs saying "Stop Government Takeover of Healthcare - Support Your Insurance Company Death Panel"

I also wonder why the outrage now and not in the last eight years of the Bush administration. Where were the tea baggers when budget deficits were the norm, increasing every year, and the national debt doubled. Obama inherited a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion. It was not his making. But Dick Cheney is on record as telling Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter." And for the Bush administration, deficits indeed did not matter...and future tea baggers remained silent.

One of mission goals of the Tea Party Patriots is to "educate" their fellow citizens. I suggest they start with this Crooks and Liars website, Ten Lessons for Tea Baggers. The Tea Bagger Patriots seem to be off message in their attempts to educate, if that is indeed their true message. They have their work cut out for them.

2010-09-17 08:03 AM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 841

I posted this forum opinion almost a year ago, and I note little has changed. However, we do know a little more about the Tea Party than we did a year ago. Adele Stan in this excellent Alternet article, 5 Ways the Tea Party Agenda Screws Tea Party Supporters, has hit the nail on the head. Everyone should read it, but I'll highlight a few points early in the article made by Stan:

In their quest to save the country from liberals, Tea Partiers signed on to an agenda that will cause them untold pain while granting unlimited powers to corporations. If people could be counted on to vote in their own best interests, there would be no Tea Party movement, for if the economic agenda embraced by Tea Partiers -- a vastly pro-corporation, government-killing plan -- Tea Partiers would find themselves among the people most hurt by it.

The resentment of Tea Partiers toward liberals, East Coast elites, the poor and people who don't look like them has been effectively marshaled in service of a "free market" ideology cleverly packaged as "freedom." Never mind that free markets are anything but free for ordinary people. The packaging strikes the necessary emotional and moral chords: Free markets = freedom = liberty = endowed by the Creator, as written in the Declaration of Independence by the founders. It's the perfect exploitation of the worldview of conservative middle-class white people -- all in the service of enriching the super-rich at the expense of their unwitting, patriotic ground troops.

Casting themselves as an organic uprising in opposition to a federal government they see as the greatest threat to their freedom, Tea Party supporters conveniently look past the likely consequences of the no-holds-barred, anti-regulatory aims of Rupert Murdoch and David Koch, the billionaires whose dollars grease the skids on which the Tea Party movement rides.

Stan goes on to advance 5 positions by the Tea Partiers and how they they themselves would be screwed (I prefer a more vulgar word) by the implementation of these positions: Ending Social Security, Ending Medicare, Opposition to Net Neutrality, Opposition to Wall Street Reform and Financial Reform, and Failure of Logic, Rule of Emotion. Hey this is classic fascism thinking led by Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin. It's how the billionaires are able to control their minds. Please read Stan's article.

2010-09-17 04:19 PM

EL PREZIDENTE KABOOM
Dallas, TX
Posts: 694

Now we know what the Glenn Beck rally was really about.......giving the movement a chill-pill.

Look, the King Lizard Beasts aren't stupid...they know that their radical rhetoric is a sword that cuts both ways. Sure, it may rile up a few yahoos, but it also turns a lot of people off. Optimally, they would like to raise the easy yahoo vote, without turning off the moderates, who's vote they must actually win with appeals to reason, instead of emotions. And in many ways they've adopted a classic, say one thing to one group and another to another group strategy.

And the wild ones have been trained well.....the movement's storm troopers have been trained to behave in front of the cameras. Whatever one's opinions in the Tea Party, there is an understanding that they are all playing a game with the media, and that they have an interest in curtailing what they really want to really say for appropriate media-speak, suited to what serves the best interests of the Tea Party, instead of giving the media more ammo to be used against it. In short, there is an internal reform movement within the movement, that is currently policing, restricting, and removing those from leadership positions, who publicly demonstrate bigotry and wild omens of hate.

Glenn Beck trying to bring God back into the movement is an obvious attempt at leveling off the revanchism that he has cultivated across the country. Obviously, it's his way of distancing himself from being associated with violent acts committed by listeners or followers. 'Hey look,' he can say, 'I said turn to God, not violence.' And I'm willing to bet there is some concern on his own part, that he might influence someone to do something crazy...the Red, White, and God Rally was all about endorsing a religious revolution, instead of an armed one, at least for the time being. It's his way of stayin ahead of the media blame game. Now being that I'm all for non-violence, I say good, but I still notice the deception.

2010-09-19 01:26 PM

Preston W. Harrington
Iowa, LA
Posts: 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCIvJ3YT9xU

2010-10-16 08:12 AM

Jekyll Island
Dallas, TX
Posts: 5

Can either of you chuckle heads offer any proof that the Tea Party or its members have comitted one act of violence?

2010-10-16 08:54 AM

EL PREZIDENTE KABOOM
Dallas, TX
Posts: 694

See the "Progressive Hunter"

Don't worry about me though. I am a card-carrying member of the NRA, and I am armed to the teeth.
This Hippie ain't going down without a fight.

Displaying all 6 Forum Posts for the Thread:

Confused About the Misdirected Rage of the Tea Baggers

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