A Right-winger Hits the Nail on the Head about the "Tea Party"

[David__77]

This poster on a Washington Post article, though through a racist, right-wing lens, has very accurately described the nature of the "Tea Party" and it fated demise:



The Tea Party isn't a political governance movement. It is a White traditionalist reactionary protest movement. They have plenty to protest about. The end of the White majority is coming at a time when liberal Humanist academics have been assaulting the White race, its history, character and traditions. Since Whites aren't allowed to defend their race without charges of bigotry, the Tea Party has been inarticulate about the matter and often appear racist. No other race would be expected to bear in silence the left wing assault on their culture or having their childhood historical heroes dragged through the gutter.

"The future of most members of the Tea Party has faded considerably in recent years. They have many legitimate grievances and issues.

"Still, they are a temporary movement. They are at maximum growth. The country is losing older White people faster than she is making them. The historic costumes, flags and slogans tell the story.

"The Tea Party wants to go back-to-the future. They are protesting their powerlessness at being disempowered and replaced. They are protesting the disrespect with which liberal Humanists treat their history and culture. The American event can't turn back. Han Lo Fong and Jesus Garcia and Saul Lipski in 2010 can't be Beaver, Wally and Ward Cleaver returned to 1955. The Tea Party is not the wave of the future; it's the wave of the past.

"The lack of long term planning other than "shrink government" "lower taxes" and a handfull of slogans shows that there is no Tea Party plan or structure for governance. They may get one wish and end up as a stone wall in front of the runaway Obama Toyota, but other than altering histroric documents they don't offer much.

"After 400 years, this is probably the last gasp of the White traditionalists. It isn't politics or principles that decide this one in the long run. It's demographics. Demographics say that it is impossible for this to be a lasting or growing movement. Every day Democrats go to baby showers while Republicans go to funerals."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/09/christine-odonnell-i-dabbled-i.html

[Taverner]

1. "Every day Democrats go to baby showers while Republicans go to funerals."

HAHAHAHAHA

I FUCKING LOVE IT!!!!!

[L0oniX]

28. +1

[RagAss]

30. Brilliant observation !

[AnArmyVeteran]

33. Or another way: "You're getting old when you find yourself going to more funerals than weddings"

An ex boss told me that.

[malaise]

42. +1,000

:D

[Fumesucker]

2. The Teahadists are inarticulate because they are stupid..

I don't care how many years of education you have, if you think Sarah Palin is some sort of genius then you are a fucking idiot.

[rucky]

3. That really does nail it. n/t

[Hepburn]

Kick...N/t

[hlthe2b]

4. Wow ... prescient at least...

How do we know this is a RETHUG party insider and not a teabagger? The person, while showing his bigotry, is obviously a thinking and reasonably intelligent adult. Such intellectual honesty is unheard of in the Bagger movement and increasingly rare in the RETHUG party.

I wonder if anyone would listen to this "guy?"

[ingac70]

5. k&r

[Warpy]

6. Wow, I'm deeply impressed by that line

but it won't always be this way. After a generation or two of reasonable governance by Democratic principles, a new generation of total suckers will arise and be lured by the promise of wealth for all by deregulating everything and fattening the rich. Then we'll be the ones going to the funerals.

However, he's right about the white male traditionalist power structure. Those old boys are dying off, thank goodness, and are being replaced by a more mixed but still mostly male power structure.

[Skidmore]

7. AND they are NOT a separate political party distinct from the Republican Party.

The RNC and elected officials of the GOP have chosen to treat them LIKE a separate party while trying to own their grievances. The teabagger movement needs to be hung like an albatross around the GOP until it drags it down.

[seabeyond]

8. quite a statement. white race is assaut merely cause there is a black president. hm. nt

[ZombieHorde]

9. "their culture or having their childhood historical heroes dragged through the gutter"

One of my favorite pastimes!

[whatchamacallit]

10. Wow, a somewhat lucid RWer lays out what our shit-media has refused to acknowledge:

The core of the tea party is bigotry.

[stevedeshazer]

11. A moment of clarity. This poster is right.

Past or future?

This is the vote in 2010.


+1

[Orsino]

12. Partly, at least.

But perhaps is underestimating the Crazy that will result from a deepening recession.

America really is mortally wounded, and does need taking back, so I expect more such populist movements, both grassroots and astroturfed.

[David__77]

18. What does "taking back" mean?

"Back?" Let us think about the meaning of this. First, it implies that at some point in time, "we" owned the country. I disagree wholeheartedly. It started out as feudal, partly slave-holding society in which the vast majority lack even the semblance of civic participation rights. Slowly, we moved, with the passage of the major civil rights legislation in the 1960s, to a place where formally, all adult citizens have equal political rights. So, to where exactly are we to go "back" to? We need to seize power for sure, and fundamentally transform the country, but that is a different matter.

It is funny that the rightists criticized Obama for saying we need to fundamentally change the country, but NOW they are saying that they want to "take back" the country because it's foreign to them. What exactly has changed? Obama as president.

[Orsino]

25. Right. I don't see any movements being televised in which "taking back" the country...

...means anything benign. And if it didn't happen on TV, it didn't happen in modern America. :mad:

As far as where we need to go back to, though, that would be the of-by-for nation immortalized in words and never yet implemented consistently. I'd be somewhat happy, though, if we went back to the division of wealth of a few decades ago, and went back to limits on money as political speech.

There are things worth taking back.

[ThomWV]

13. Horseshit, this just tries to give some credence to their bigotry

Greenwald got it right when he said they are nothing new, just not adept at cloaking the old Republican line in soft words that can not be understood. They call a turd a turd, but then stop to enjoy the aroma.

[lapislzi]

36. Writer doesn't apologize for bigotry

Indeed, he/she feels hard done by because it can't be articulated without charges of...well, bigotry. Writer believes his/her special brand of bigotry to be understandable and justified.

[oldlib]

14. The Tea Party

is made up of upper middle class people, who until recently, have not been impacted by the poor economy. Their stock dividends aren't paying off as before. They can't take the vacations as they had before. The recession has finally reached them and they are pissed and they react as all GOOP,s do, by blaming the Democrats.

[gkhouston]

15. "They are protesting the disrespect with which liberal Humanists treat their history and culture."

Nope, we're objecting to the revisionist history. Nice try, though.

[chaska]

16. Yeah, except that we're also likely to see a repeat....

of what happened in the Sixties. Remember how as blacks joined the Democratic party, whites left for the GOP? With increased Mexican immigration, the Dems will grow ever less white and the GOP whiter still as whites feel increasingly disempowered. I don't expect we'll quite recognize our party's principles in a few decades either really, and I'd be willing to bet that many of us here will find ourselves in the GOP. Shocking, I know.

I'm talking sociology more than politics here. I don't expect you to understand where I'm coming from. And I don't care to expand on this. Just call me crazy and go on with your lives. Have a nice day.

[David__77]

19. No, I think you are right.

But it's not just a sociological question. Eventually the GOP could become the "white party," like the Democratic Party in South Africa, but it would have to ditch its social reactionary positions on abortion and gay rights, etc. I personally would feel more at home in a future Democratic Party I think you are alluding to - I believe it would be closer to a socialist organization, and I am of the left. Not to be needlessly provocative, but I could apply a "Chavez test": those here who dislike Chavez might be the would-be Republicans to whom you are referring.

[Bitwit1234]

17. What right wing heroes do the left drag thru the gutter

I can not for the life of me even begin to think of a hero, since IKE, who has been a republican. Can any of you. Now if they think crums like Rush and Rove are heroes it sorta kinda explains their character doesn't that.

[David__77]

20. The poster is likely talking about Washington, Jefferson...

...and other slave-holding founders. I think the list also may include generals who slaughtered indigenous peoples, and so forth. Little boys no longer play cowboys and Indians, and this is perceived by the right-wing intellectuals as a sign of the impending cultural hegemony of Marxism.

[Kolesar]

34. Nixon, Patton, General Curtis Lemay, Gen. Westmoreland?

The last one is a joke, sort of.

That RW myth about the liberals losing Vietnam and abandoning the POWs is truly insideous.

[Rex]

21. Garbage from a RWing crackpot that doesn't know shit about our

history...sad little racist prick.

Liberal humanist academics? I bet he hates education, because he couldn't cut it in junior high!

White tradtionalist? You mean famous slave owners from the past or the whos-who that killed millions of Indians?

Childhood historical heroes dragged through the gutter? Heroes...like who? Famous KKK members?

What a total fuckwad, I bet he hates his neighbors and life in general.

:rofl:

[lunatica]

22. Why does this guy think he needs to defend his race?

I'm white and I don't feel the need to defend that. I am what I am genetically. What counts is who I choose to be in my mind and actions. When minorities got their civil rights none were taken away from me. when the LGBT community get their rights, I'll still have mine. What's his gripe? There's nothing to 'take back' since nothing has been taken from me.

[Iterate]

23. It's simply grievance politics.

We've seem it before, but this baggers got a bad case and thinks he invented it. He also has seem to have forgotten that his cherished white brethren were not always kind to their other white cousins.

He may want to cloak it in grand notions of an inventive protest movement (heroically bearing the withering assaults of...biologists and tweed-clothed history professors), but its heritage runs issue by issue, vote for vote, from Bush to Reagan to Nixon to Jim Crow to the KKK to failed reconstruction (win the war loose the peace) and on to all of its nativist variants.

Neither was it invented in the USA, sorry. It was endemic in Europe after WWI had turned into an ethnic war of all against all, and it sputters along there today among Kaliningrad Russians, Sudetenland expelees, and Serbs; it's still in Rwanda and you can spot it in Birmingham. The thread they have in common is the loss of social, economic, and political power by a once powerful ruling group. And it just never ends well.

Except once, in South Africa.

So the TP/Republican options are this: either take half the world down into a hell hole of economic collapse and climate disaster for the next 400 years, or give it up, give it up, ask for forgiveness, share power and solutions, and move on. I think they would find the world of science enlightening and humanists entertaining. They might also find that Han Lo Fong and Jesus Garcia and Saul Lipski have the nicest families they've ever met.

[David__77]

27. Re: South Africa

I agree with your points, although I must argue that whites in South Africa are not generally freaking out for two reasons: 1) They will own most of the economy and live comparably very well, and 2) they realize they are a small minority, so if they really have a problem they move to the UK and become right-wingers there.

[Iterate]

31. Fair enough

and I knew better, but was too taken for the moment with the image. Besides that, contrition is hardly in the national DNA.

[Patiod]

35. I wish we could "like" comments on a thread

If we could, I would be "liking" this. (And yes, I was just on Facebook)

This is why I come to DU. Instead of the incoherent, brain-dump, misinformed, misspelled, grammar-torturing comments that one sees on right-wing or mixed boards, there are so many of these thoughtful and informed comments that educate and enlighten based on a sophisticated understanding of history and current events.

Thank you, DU. Thanks Iterate.

[Iterate]

40. And thank you.

Right now I'm feeling a bit shamefaced for the thousands of posts I've passed here over the years and moved on without comment.

I think more though of the ones who must put in hours each day, searching the news and blogs, compiling and posting, helping the rest of us learn and refine our views. And all without reward but for the sake of community. I wonder if that makes us communists.

[democrank]

24. Brilliant

[Johnny2X2X]

26. Racism

How the Hell did we go backwards as a society. Blatant racism is more tolerated in this Country than at anytime in the last 20 years. We've gone backwards somehow. I see and read more racism in 2010 than at anytime since the 80s.

This is embodied in the Tea Party. Yes most are not racists, but they tolerate and in many ways encourage blatant racism.

[Fuzz]

29. Weird shit there. There's some truth in that racist bullshit, but it's still racist bullshit.

[nc4bo]

32. I'm too through with them twitching and wheezing, be done & gone already.

and don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

Bless their hearts.

[Dappleganger]

37. "the end of the white majority"

That day can't come soon enough.

[Hansel]

38. The founding fathers where a white minority.

American Indians outnumbered them significantly. Not sure why they aren't celebrating this one more thing they can have in common with the founding of America!

[Hansel]

39. They do have legitimate grievances just like the rest of us do.

But it might be better if they put their bigotry in check long enough to realize they are pointing their fingers of blame in the exact opposite direction of where they should be.

The blame lies with the greed and corruption of the rich. Not with the black woman down the street who gets some nominal help from the government.

[DailyGrind51]

41. The Tea Party brought younger women to the traditionally old white men's GOP.