- Sorry about the lateness of the post... had some non-bloggy related stuff come up since Saturday afternoon... hope it was worth the wait.
- I am a cranky leftist blogger and represented myself as such to the people I met, so I don't want to hear "he lied and infiltrated his way into our rally" etc... Yeah, I was there partly just to see the freak show, and it did not disappoint.
- I have a bit more patience for the Tea Party than a lot of other cranky lefty bloggers, so in that vein I also wanted to find someone to have an actual conversation with, and get a real sense of what their various issues/beefs are with the way the country is moving. And, somewhat to my surprise, I was not disappointed on that score either.
- See this Flickr set for some photos of the event...
The world is my expense / The cost of my desire
Jesus blessed me with its future / And I protect it with fire
– Sleep Now in the Fire, Rage Against the Machine
Sharron Angle, running against Harry Reid in Nevada for U.S. Senate (the people's seat as she erroneously called it) was delivering the usual tea party pablum:
- "Obamacare" is unconstitutional
- The Tea Party is "mainstream America."
- SB 1070 in Arizona is apparently a "10th Amendment stand on the border"
Here's an example of the meaningless rhetoric being spewed from the dais that had these people in near orgasmic paroxysms in support and agreement:
We understand our Constitution and that our Founding Fathers had it right they knew that the answer to the problem, the solution to the problem, was not the government, the government is not the solution, the government is the problem, it's we the people that are the solution. And that's why they gave us a constitution that allows we the people to say a few things about our laws; it allows us to make the law, we the people..."
Can someone tell me what this is even supposed to mean?
Yes, I'm not completely thick, I know she's trying to make the whole "rights reserved to the people" argument, even if she's doing it inelegantly. But a lot of the time, that argument sounds less like reasoned political discourse and more like a pissed off 6-year-old who didn't get the cookie they felt they were promised.
We don't need Elena Kagan, we need senators who will vote 'no' on activist judges..."
Allow me to translate: "We need senators who will only vote for conservative activist judges who meet the strict litmus test of the movement conservatives."
Once I got up to the main body of the rally, it took me less than a minute to find a heckler surrounded by a group of people shoving various recording instruments in his face and trying to argue with him.
Yeah, this is what I came here to see...
It quickly devolved into one of those "I know you are but what am I" and "I can totally kick you ass" arguments. (Although the guy who actually said he could kick the anti Tea Party heckler's ass, claimed he was not picking a fight: "That was just a declarative statement"... weak!)
The level of cowardice, dishonesty and fecklessness from some of the tea party people trying to argue with this guy was pretty stunning. They're essential argument with him was "shut up, that's why!"
So, I'm trying to get a reasonable question in and asking "Fine, take your country back and do what with it?"The answers, all shouted at me at once, ranged thusly:
- "Like we've always done for 200 years, freedom and the liberty."
- "Sound economy and fiscally responsible."
- "Take it back to the Constitution that we afforded from the... that our Founding Fathers...(illegible) and our rights, and not to manipulate it because it was based on principles not laws, It was based on principles and principles don't change although this government seems to think that's what they need to do, is change the Constitution."
All the while Sharron Angle was providing a opaque and rambling discourse on Obama, socialism, Harry Reid, we the people, the Constitution, etc...
The way people would jump from one point to the other on what was happening right there, often contradicting themselves in the process was stunning to watch. Frankly, these were folks on the edge trying to hold it together and not being at their rhetorical best.
As I listen to the recordings, the more I hear, the more I am convinced that at least some of these people are spoiling for a fight, and while they may not admit it at church, were fervently praying someone would do something they could willfully misconstrue as physical intimidation.
So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory cleanLet the floods cross the distance in your eyes
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide
– Linkin Park, New Divide
Oddly enough, the person who gave me the longest rambling bit about what she thought she was taking back ended up calming down a little bit and we actually had a pretty decent conversation about the Tea Party and her own personal journey "up the river" politically, as it were...
First, and I must stress this, she (who will only be identified as "Mrs. Tea," sorry, you refused to give your name, so I get to make one up...) was careful to say, several times that she was only speaking for herself and not for any of her colleagues, which was probably for the best, because at the end of the day, she was probably more moderate than a lot of people there...We spoke at some length about the defensive nature of the Tea Party. They feel put upon and dismissed by the news media and the political establishment at large. There may be many reasons for that, and I will let others speak to that.
But the truth is, a lot of these people feel bullied, or at least, I believe, would like to because being oppressed would certainly give more moral justification to their bunker mentality. However, this is at odds with Sharron Angle's assertion (also made by many other Tea Party folks, including Mrs. Tea herself) that the Tea Party is a mainstream American movement.
How can they be both oppressed political outsiders and simultaneously represent the American mainstream?
Not a rhetorical question. They do have an answer: It's the media. Now, to be honest, none dared call it conspiracy while I was there, but I don't know how many different ways there are to say it without using the C word."You can see how we're a little bit defensive, with the mainstream media for the last year and a half trying to manipulate and make it something that it's not," Mrs. Tea said.
Further, she was critical of the more extreme elements often found at Tea Party gatherings saying that these are not the people she would like to see in the movement and they are actually destroying the movement.
Another observation that kind of surprised me. There is an essential mistrust of all politicians. Sure they hoot and holler when they get on stage and say things people want to hear, but that does not confer any faith in these people whatsoever.The words "accountable" and "arrogance" came up several times. There is a belief that once candidates get elected, they catch the quickest ride out of town, get settled in the state capitol or D.C. and never look behind them, even just phoning in their re-elections because "hey, what're they gonna do, vote for the other guy?"
In this particular, they are little different from progressives who do share a belief that a certain arrogance and callousness has become the hallmark of many of our elected officials and institutions.
Moreover, Mrs. Tea expressed this in some very progressive terms (even if she didn't think she was being progressive). Warrantless searches and wiretapping, extrajudicial execution of American citizens, the Patriot Act... these things make her very uneasy about the direction of government.
Again, stressing she was only speaking for herself, she said that she came to her political awareness in fact during the late Bush/Vader years, and it was the movement towards suppression of civil liberties that was the beginning of her discontent.
What pushed her over the top was the concept of "no." She and several friends were observing that despite the "will of the people" government was often charting it's own course. The other phrase that seemed to come up quite a bit was "over-reaching government."
If you had to distill the Tea Party down to a single idea, as far as you can, I think it would be this. It's something I generally disagree with in most regards, but in general it's not a crazy or "out there" proposition.
A lot of people drawn to the Tea Party movement are scared that government is over-reaching it's bounds on American life.
Another surprise, not many people I spoke to seemed interested in make the Tea Party a national organization or institution like the Republican Party or other such group. Again there is a mistrust for large, top-down organizations and the concern that the less localized the Tea Parties become the more unaccountable and vulnerable to corruption they would become.Agenda 21
Look, I understand why they might feel defensive, and yet the Tea Party is the perfect example of the "unexamined life." At no point in any of the argument or debate did anyone seem to stop and think "what do I want to communicate with this slogan/sign/picture and what am I actually communicating?"
Not only is that question not being contemplated, it would seem like to even ask that question would be an anathema to the party line.
Moreover, they get angry when the extreme elements of the group get more media, but when their rhetoric of mistrust of government and distinguishing between the "patriotic, mainstream Americans" and the "others" without making a floor on how far down that can go or taking the responsibility upon themselves to police the movement, then you are going to get guys like the Agenda 21 guy.
This guy is going around informing people how the UN's Agenda 21 is a plan for eugenics in the United States and how Obama is a socialist UN tool bent on destruction of the Republic.
Here is an some example of written material being distributed:
From the Nick Popaditch for Congress camp: "Progressive is code for socialism... [The Congressional Progressive Caucus's] agenda has been Obama's agenda before Obama became Obama. A socialist state controlled society."
And they wonder how guys like Agenda 21 show up and give the party more of a radical bent than some people maybe really comfortable with? Sorry guys, you lie down with dogs you are going to get fleas. Trust me, I'm a Democrat, I should know...
And how about the almost unintelligible rhetoric coming from Chelene Nightingale, the anti-Meg Whitman conservative candidate for governor:
What can we do to change the system, we are telling them we don't want their socialism. The other thing we can do as a people, that I can do, is to encourage preventative medicine. The FDA has not been doing their job. They were supposed to protect our food, but instead they are battling raw milk? Raw milk are they serious? Raw milk is a crime? They're trying to put vitamin and alternative medicine industries out of business like that's a crime? But instead they allow (unintelligibile) and additives to our food that I can't even pronounce..."
Comedy gold. Sorry, but this lady is simply an ignorant boob who doesn't understand half the crap she rants about, and you wonder why people have a hard time taking the Tea Party seriously? Equating the FDA's push to keep bad dairy products, and snake oil fake medicine off shelves and ensuring the nutritional content of food is somehow with a concerted effort to kill American liberty is simply crazy.
Here's a simpler example. Mrs. Tea and I were discussing the Prop. 8 ruling discussed at some length here in previous posts. While she said she had not really read the ruling yet, her basic take was that a single judge was able to overrule the "will of the people."
Even understanding the need to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority, she nonetheless was against the ruling even after admitting that gay marriage did not effect my marriage.
Now instead of taking those positions and maybe evolving politically, there was another, easier way to keep the paradigm in tact.
Gays and lesbians are being used in an attack on Christian religious life in America. The object here, apparently, once gay marriage is legalized, is to force churches to marry gays and lesbians at the point of a law suit, thereby making teaching anti-gay theology prohibited in the United States.
[/crickets]
Even trying to convince her with a legal argument that such a lawsuit, if it were ever to be filed, would find no purchase in any court in America, much less survive any kind of constitutional challenge was not accepted. It comes down to a matter of belief, based more, I think, on fear, than any kind of sound reasoning.
"Us" versus "Them"
Nick Popaditch is running for Congress, and boy is he steamed. Complaining about the greed factor in American health care and having the government take an active role in stemming that is tantamount to dissing on the corpsmen who saved his life after being shot in the head by an RPG in Iraq.
Obama is out to take away our freedom and out to create socialized medical care.
And this from a guy who's got socialized medicine, in the TriCare and VA system he was so proud of and of whose people he was so praising.
And here's where we get to the point, if any Tea Partiers present want to know: I'm just going to say that I disagree with Popaditch; his honorable service to his country notwithstanding, his experience neither confers moral force or factual impetus to his statements.
Yet, he ended several statements about what he didn't like about the Obama administration with "not in my country."
Question, Gunny: what about my country? What about the country of the millions of people who voted for Obama, with a clear understanding that he was going to be liberal, or at least more liberal than you are comfortable with?
Whether you mean to or not, when you say things like "not in my country" you are implying that by disagreeing with you, I am no longer, in your eyes, a part of this country, and you hold my citizenship less than people who agree with you.
The turgid rhetoric about "us" vs. "them" is what most people focus on, especially when you have such a difficult time actually describing real policies. Moreover, when someone points that out, then instead of a little self examination, the easier thing to do is to claim they are out to get you.
They want respect, but absolutely refuse to treat their political opponents with any, and the best reason many of them can come up with is "well, they started it..."
The world view is one of large institutions beyond their control that are simply out to rule their lives for their own greedy and nefarious ends. And yet, oddly, this distrust doesn't see to translate to large corporations, but we've already discussed that in another post.
This is what happens when you get half-thought out conspiracies and fear of the unknown altogether. It makes a fertile ground for people with easy answers as to why they can't seem to get ahead in life.
Like it or not Tea Party, you play right into the fringe of the patriot/NWO conspiracy movement, a bizarro otherwhere whence UFOs, 9/11, Nazi Alien Grays, Black Helicopters, the Vatican, the Freemasons, et al. all come together in a search for a kind of grand unified field theory of conspiracy.
You see there are the four forces of conspiracy: the Left Force, the Right Force, the Rich Force and the Alien Force. There is also a suspected fifth force called the God Force, although it is suspected that it's really just an extra dimensional extension of the Alien Force; like the Alien Force with extra Lie Groups... The problem is that the conspiracies of the very small (Whitewater, Cannibis suppression) can not be made to fit with the conspiracies of the very large (Orion Reptilloids creation, shepherding, and ultimate plans for Humanity). Sites like the afore-linked are kind of the Large Hadron Colliders of conspiracy theory.
They seek to take disparate conspiracy particles and smack them together at relativistic speeds in the hope of creating new conspiracy theory particles that will be the final piece to the standard conspiracy model puzzle.
And without anything to replace it, these kinds of conspiracies become very easy to believe and accept, unless you ware willing to come out of your own ideological bubble, which is nearly impossible for hard core activists/believers of any stripe to do.
Final thoughts...
So what did I take away from this today? Well, first, let me say that I understand the basic premise of many of the people there: an ossified and callous government is over-reaching their bounds and threatening their liberty as Americans.
Got it.
I don't necessarily agree, but I understand. As Mrs. Tea said: "We disagree, it doesn't make you wrong, it doesn't make me wrong..."
But this...
...isn't helping your cause.
The sarcastic, dismissive, racially charged (and yes, a lot of the stuff you see at the Tea Party rallies is racially charged), even violent rhetoric is a turn off.
Mrs. Tea had even hinted at one point that I was being brave in representing myself as what I was since some people there might be moved to unpleasantness if I tried to talk to them.
And whether you believe it is justified or not, until the Tea Party folks who claim to be mainstream want to be taken seriously, then you have got to police your team and dial down the stupid. That's assuming that the majority of the mainstream Tea Party movement don't really buy into the extreme rhetoric.
After being at this rally, I'm not taking that bet...Sorry Mrs. Tea, you seem pretty reasonable, even if we disagree on stuff, but I remain unconvinced of the rest...
mojo sends
