Noam Chomsky: How the Tea Partiers Are Getting Screwed by Their Own Ideology

[marmar]

via AlterNet:




In These Times / By Noam Chomsky

Chomsky: How the Tea Partiers Are Getting Screwed by Their Own Ideology
'We should not underestimate the depth of moral indignation that lies behind the furious, often self-destructive bitterness about government and business power."

May 13, 2010 |


On Feb. 18, Joe Stack, a 53-year-old computer engineer, crashed his small plane into a building in Austin, Texas, hitting an IRS office, committing suicide, killing one other person and injuring others.

Stack left an anti-government manifesto explaining his actions. The story begins when he was a teenager living on a pittance in Harrisburg, Pa., near the heart of what was once a great industrial center.

His neighbor, in her ’80s and surviving on cat food, was the “widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement.

“Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was Social Security to live on.” .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/146852/chomsky%3A_how_the_tea_partiers_are_getting_screwed_by_their_own_ideology/

[ShortnFiery]

1. Once again, Noam is right on the mark.

It's tragic how some of these people are being USED and ABUSED.

" ... a legal system in which “there are two `interpretations’ for every law, one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us.”

[southmost]

2. expecting much more of the same

what i don't understand is how to communicate to these people being misguided by the faux-populism of the tea party movement ... most of these tea partiers have bought into the demagoguery of all things labeled liberal and left-wing.. sadly, the reflex of getting people to fight among themselves is just too strong (on the plus side the mob mentality that the republican party is playing into is on the cusp of getting volatile and dangerous- and reeks of desperation)

[Demeter]

3. I am more worried about how to reach the REST of the Voting Public

They are the ones we need to win reforms.

[Uncle Joe]

4. 1. Empathize with them and their legitimate concerns.

2. Increase your own understanding of cause and effect, so you can more clearly articulate to them in a dispassionate manner as to what's happened.


3. Always maintain that position of unity with them as you enlighten them to the real culprits; pulling the strings.


4. Explain the commonalities between them and those people they hate or fear as a created product of divide and conquer.


5. Offer logical solutions to their problems so they're anger or energy can be directed toward a constructive purpose for them and you.


6. Be patient, when you meet a former brain washed "Prodigal Son or Daughter" don't trash them for their prior decisions, people come to understanding by different circumstances, especially those people separated by time, distance and culture.


7. You may not sway all of them but you will convert some.


Welcome to D.U.:hi:

[Uncle Joe]

5. Edited for clarification.

"4. Explain the commonalities between them and those people they hate or fear as a created product of divide and conquer."

Explain the commonalities between them and those people they hate or fear and how those negative emotions of fear and hatred; are a magnified product of a divide and conquer strategy being used against the middle class and poor by the corporate supremacists.

[MisterP]

6. they resemble other movements:

the half-baked half-right libertarians
the violent, right-populist Minutemen
the self-satisfied-yet-self-pitying, narrow-minded Pluggers