"We are all members of the tea party" really interesting article

[marybee]

Source: uniteandstate

The Tea Party is wise but unorganized but still drafted in a fear, politicians became actors and the media became weapons. Civility is their order, but their actions are of contempt and defeat and hatred. The tea party was the right change, but the right has not been satisfied with such an abrupt change. They continually dilute and try to co-opt the spirit, but the spirit is that of our founders. This spirit cannot be bought or renamed or reframed. This spirit will grow and hopefully the END will come. The END to the unexceptional leaders. This is not about Democrats or Liberals or Republicans or Conservatives. We all belong in the Tea Party and we all want the same things. We just can't seem to connect that we are all on the same team being eaten up by the same injustices. Some of us may call it the need to end the Unions, some of us may call it the need to end the Corporate Tax breaks. The reality is it doesn't matter either way if it all adds up to division and the same outcome. Our politicians create careers based on this type of division.

Read more: http://www.uniteandstate.com/column/110/the+end+of+the+world+doom+gloom+and+the+product+of+fear/

---

I heard about this article on NPR earlier. NPR was agreeing with a majority of this article and I had to look it up.

This is a super interesting read. It has an end of the world type of theme but its not about the end of the world. Its about the overall problems americans face and how they are the same for everyone. But we are all being shuffled around and prompted to battle.

The idea that we are all members of the tea party seems odd but when you really think about it, it is possible that many of us would get along. Of course the neocons got involved and distorted the tea party but thats what I think the article is rallying against.

What do you think?

could you see yourself in the tea party? At the moment I can't stand them but maybe my anger is directed at the wrong ppl.

Maybe there would be a consensus on issues if we could all join together and debate it without corporations involved or the GOP involved but just American ppl.. food for thought

[RandomThoughts]

1. I support concepts, what ever group matches those concepts I support.

Constitutional rights for all people, breaking up the big banks, solving problems of graft and corruption, audits and transparency in both public and private sector.

And fewer people on welfare from the work of many people from sectors that don't do anything but skim or make money from nothing, like much of financial sectors.

Less spending on defense and security apparatus, and breaking up of media monopolies, and information system sections.

Still today I find that search results are skewed, and there a few possibilities of how many people read my posts, since still nobody has sent the beer and travel money that is due.

[niyad]

2. sorry, those ignorant, hate-filled, bigoted, lying assholes called the tea party have NOTHING to do

with me.

and welcome to DU

[Skittles]

3. I am angrier than any ignorant teabagging bastard

the difference is - I know who caused the problems (HELLO - the same assholes financing the teabagger party) and who to blame - and that THEY will NOT fix the problems

now, kindly take your fucking troll ass elsewhere

[Boswell]

4. nope I don't want to go back to the 1850's

or peek in womens private parts (except for fun) so no, the baggers can go to Somalia or someplce that will pander to their money. right up until it runs out...

[Taverner]

5. I don't want to go 100 years back - which is what the baggers want

Heck, they want to overturn any constitutional amendments that have happened since 1910

They are dying - we will outlive them

[marybee]

6. What I and NPR was agreeing with is the "idea" that we are all being screwed but in different ways

Maybe in different ways and yes many in the tea party I would loathe with a passion. The concept of all of us being in the same position with different ideas is not that far off. We are being screwed by the corporations. We are being screwed by the rethugs. The tea party just doesn't understand its owners are using them.

[Ikonoklast]

7. Nope. Next question.

[ThatPoetGuy]

8. Sorry, no, I'm a patriot.

The Tea Party is an anti-American movement.

What kind of drivel will come next, "We are all members of al-Qaeda"?

[marybee]

9. Yeah the koch's ruined this tea party but the point was bigger than that

I agree with your point. I think they were making a different point, that the concept of what a tea party should be, not what it currently is. You have to remember context of the original tea party. Not this corporate koch brother distorted version of it.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[marybee]

13. you seem to be attacking me when I agree with your overall point.

The point of a tea party

ok forget tea party as a title


the spirit of the middle class rising up is needed and it needs to be larger. This is the point of the article imo and I agree with the middle class taking back our country

[marybee]

14. Folks don't get mad, forget the label tea party. The middle class must fight back thats the point

The middle class needs to rise up. That is the point. Forget about the tea party.

[AlabamaLibrul]

15. I can not forget about the tea party when they insert themselves into every issue.

I am not a tea party member. I will not be conflated with tea party members.

[Hannah Bell]

19. rise up to do what? if it's to ban abortion & attack immigrants & the poor, forget about it.

the issues are important.

i understand your point about division, but the fact is, division exists. how do you propose to bridge that real division?

teabaggers don't *want* to "rise up" to take on the rulers; they're satisfied with beating powerless scapegoats.

[mrcheerful]

17. Lets see the original Tea Baggers were the ones who supported Ron P ad

call anyone left of RP a liberal RINO. Sorry but that dog aint hunting here. Tea Baggers never once used facts or anything else to get angry about in fact there anger only showed up after a black man won the white house. They are the R base who want to blame D's for their life problems while ignoring that it is the peoples whos boot heels they are licking causing their problems, but if the solution to fix their problems includes helping "others" then they will continue blaming D's and others rather then stop licking the boot heels of their master. So no they are not like us nor will they ever be like us because they want it all or nothing.

[DeSwiss]

11. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." ~Abraham Lincoln

"Folks seldom talk politics or current events except during the final weeks before an election and when prompted by lefty agitators like me, or grassroots neocon Republican operatives -- people who understand that the four cornerstones of the American political psyche are (1) emotion substituted for thought, (2) fear, (3) ignorance, (4) propaganda. Why had the working class so plainly voted against their own interest? And will they do so again?

I am standing in the checkout line at the Food Lion. The lady in front is telling the clerk how her church rallied to buy her and Eddie a secondhand truck after theirs was repossessed: "It only needs a front tire and new brakes." "Praises be to Him!" exclaims the clerk, as if God had come down to personally deliver the 1990 Toyota himself. Obviously they are all born-again. The wife grabs up her purchases, a sixer of Diet Pepsi, a carton of Little Debbie Cakes, and moves on to the door.

Behind me are four or five other customers who could be their doubles, overweight, cheap clothing, looking as though they'd been shot at and missed, and shit at and hit, each of them with his or her own assortment of money, health and legal problems. The fact is, liberals and working people need each other to survive the growing economic calamity delivered to us by the regime that promised to "run this country like a business." The left must come face-to-face with Americans who do not necessarily share all of their priorities especially with Americans who have not been voting.

So I sit here watching fat Pootie in a T-shirt that reads: ONE MILLION BATTERED WOMEN IN THIS COUNTRY AND I'VE BEEN EATING MINE PLAIN! That this is not considered especially offensive says all you need to know about cultural and gender sensitivity around here. And the fact that Pootie votes, owns guns and is allowed to purchase hard liquor is something we should all probably be afraid to contemplate. The Nazis gave the German people the Jews to hate. The Republicans have given the American people the gays and Muslims to hate."

http://www.joebageant.com/">~Joe Bageant, from 'Deer Hunting With Jesus'

In the end, the core of the arguments against Teabaggers largely boil down to being put-off with them because of their ignorance and lack of education. And we know that such traits foster misogyny, racism, sexual repression, brainless nationalistic jingoism and a plethora of other socially negative and psychologically unhealthy "isms."

But if it is their ignorance, their lack of education and their meager intellectual capacity which recoils us from them, then how can that be their fault???? Until and unless America comes clean about its past - jettisoning the lies of its vaunted heritage which is based upon slavery, repression and genocide, then the bullshit lies and crappola coming the from Teabaggers will continue. Because they believe in those lies. It's what they've been taught. It's all they know. It's all they have left to cling to.

I'm not giving Teabaggers a pass here. I'm not saying they don't know right from wrong. I think that we all KNOW when something is inherently right or wrong. And regardless, we are each responsible for what we do in this life -- and no one else. But to ignore the reality of the Teabagger's world is to fail to understand the true nature of the problem. And we will continue to focus our disgust and invective against the symptoms rather than the causes.

How can anyone feel anything but pity when you see Americans hoodwinked into railing against government intrusion into their lives while also demanding that "they" leave their Medicare alone? What more does one need to understand that these are people who don't know what they're screaming about? So we can either chuckle at their ignorance and let them keep voting for people like Rand Paul and Michele Bachman, or we can try to break-down these barriers, educate each other to the other's reality and then pool our voting power to defeat the corporatism which is at the center of this, the grossest of national manipulation campaigns.

Or we can stand pat and continue to point out their flaws and jeer at their ignorance and desire to cling to the past as the world speeds out of their control and further confuses and infuriates them. And allowing the manipulators to have their way.

- It's our choice.......

[MedleyMisty]

16. I go back and forth on this

I agree with you, really.

But then, on the other hand...

Sometimes I look at how all of our choices support destruction and death. For instance...it's hard for me to look at someone who can support war, who wanted to invade Iraq, and see a human being rather than a monster. My instincts say that no matter what the propaganda, they should have known that Iraqis are people.

I'm not terribly formally educated myself - went to rural public schools, have a two year degree from a rural community college.

However....I was tested as reading at college level and above when I was 10 - and when I was in second grade I was doing my half-brother's senior English homework for him (reading Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and answering some questions about it). My 7th grade verbal SAT score was high enough to get me into Duke's TIP program.

And I tend to take myself as normal, as the template I can use to judge other people by. No one ever sat me down and explained that I wasn't normal or told me how normal people worked.

Sometimes I feel like a mental and emotional neocon. I wasn't born into material wealth, but I was born into genetic/nurturing wealth. And I guess I have the same problem understanding people who weren't born with my advantages that rich people do.

But at least I have the self-awareness to realize that and work on it. Unpacking neural privilege?

[DeSwiss]

20. The difficulty lies in the undoing of the lies.....

...for it is indeed a very tangled web. And yet nothing worthwhile was ever gained easily. Because when it is gain easily, it is never appreciated because little to no effort was required to get it.

Of course many Teabaggers supported the war(s) -- that's the "brainless nationalistic jingoism" I referred to above, at-work. These wars are wars of acquisition for TPTB (The Powers That Be). Corporate America is demanding more and more of the world's resources be stolen from others, in its vain attempt to extend this ponzi scheme we call our economy -- for as long as possible.

And with most Teabaggers at or close to the bottom of that economy, they do whatever is required of them in support of TPTB and look askance at who gets killed in the process. It helps to deal with one's conscience if one can reduce those "sacrifices" to something less than human. Or at least foreign to themselves.

But I'm from the old school. I date way back. Alice and Jerry books -- that's how far back. But my parents, my mother in particular, instilled a love of reading in me at an early age. I spent many hours in libraries while she sought her own education back in the 50s, which is saying quite a bit in and of itself. And so it is that education which I cherish more than my degrees -- the one I've given myself. And it's one that I'm still getting because I love learning just for its own sake.

This is not likely to be so for most kids today.

And certainly wasn't the case for many Teabaggers. They never got a chance to develop a love for learning because the practicalities of life were calling upon them right away. Strangely, I can easily relate to this. I worked 30 hours per week from the 10th grade through to the end of high school. And I worked full-time all the way through college to get my BS and my Master's degree, so I don't know what it's like to "just be a student." Yet this was something that I found natural for me, but only because I loved to learn.

Today, most kids spend more time watching mindless teevee programming rather than enriching their knowledge base or understanding political issues that will impact upon them the greatest. And as long as people remain uneducated and disconnected from reality, they will always be easily manipulated. MLK understood this. That is why he said: "until all of us are free, none of us are free."

And freedom begins with knowledge. One must first know what one is to be free of, and to have the power to be able to discern what is true. So going back and untangling the lies of our past won't be easily done. But do it we must if we are ever to break the hold that these manipulators have upon the Teabaggers. Using their fears and prejudices against them to control what they do. And we play right into these manipulator's hands by reinforcing their BS lies which they sell to the Teabaggers wholecloth, through our rejection and scorn of them.

By doing so, we allow people like the Koch's to brand progressives, Democrats, etc., as the source of their problems, rather than shining the light upon the corporations and banking entities themselves who are the true malefactors. (Of course most Teabaggers know this, but are reluctant to say it. They know who signs the check where they work). And TPTB have used these fractures to wedge between blacks, Hispanics and the working poor classes and pit them against each other for the scraps they thrown down, for centuries. And now they're using it to include a wedge against the middle class. Because this ponzi scheme of an economy now requires that the middle class be sacrificed in order for the rich to retain their positions.

But this possibility is what the rich fear most. They must know that if Teabagggers, progressives and Democrats were ever to join again as they did in the days of FDR, that they would be doomed. Because most would not be satisfied to just shackle them with laws and regulations as in the past, but to dismantle the system itself in such a way that they can never repeat what is happening now.

This why they're pulling out all the stops.

[OneGrassRoot]

23. Thanks to all three of you for your thoughtful input here. :) n/t

[butterfly77]

12. No,I am not a part of and will have any association with...

the lying ass,hypocritical,racist,no label,TEABAGGING bitches, they can kiss where the the sun don't shine!!!

[Arkana]

18. No. Those bigoted, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, willfully ignorant

wastes of perfectly good oxygen co-opted the name of a genuine gesture of patriotism.

The REAL Tea Partiers would be sick if they saw what was being done in their name.

[grahamhgreen]

21. The tea party is a tentacle of the billionaires, their anger is misdirected.

[JanDutchy]

22. They worship sselfHate, and Stigma in USA

[OneGrassRoot]

24. Hi, marybee, and welcome to DU....

:hi:

While I strongly dislike (and often loathe) what the Tea Party has become, and honestly get confused about exactly who "founded" it, I know that a percentage of the original members were indeed focused on deficit and taxes, and spoke up about the same during Bush's presidency.

I have a libertarian family member who was one of these original members. While I completely disagree with his worldview, I don't believe he is a racist or bigot. I can't say that about any other Tea Party member I know.

Those who are now the face of the Tea Party were just triggered into action by the Koch Brothers and others, based on their fear and ignorance, racism and bigotry. The same ones decrying "socialism" yet also saying "Keep your hands off my Medicare/disability/unemployment!"

I've come to believe that there is a certain percentage of the population who choose to be willfully ignorant and are immersed in so much anger and hatred that reasoning with them is impossible. These are the Beck followers and Limbaugh devotees.

Those who truly identify with the ideals you speak of as far as the origins of the Tea Party, and don't identify with what we see of the Tea Party (racist signs, irrational and misplaced anger, threats of violence), can be reasoned with, and I think we should try.

It really isn't about us versus them for the most part; it's us against the corporatocracy, imho.


:)

[Javaman]

25. Agent provocateur. nt

[EstimatedProphet]

26. The quote you show reads like a delusional diatribe

We are not all members of the tea party. There's some very specific and very good reasons that we are not. For example, the tea party is a bunch of people that protest how Obama has raised their taxes, when he has in fact lowered them. Also, they often talk about how Obama is restricting gun rights, when he has in fact lowered them. These, in addition to the obvious but unstated fact that they clearly object mostly to welfare and government money going out to "those people", are the reason that I cannot see myself as a tea party member. I'm simply not enough of a stupid bigot to be one.

[semillama]

27. Perhaps you should check out the Coffee Party

http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/

Here's the full text of their mission statement:

"We are Americans working to create a fair and inclusive society. Our members represent the diversity of thought, background, and circumstance that is found in the cities, towns, and neighborhoods of our country. We are a meeting place for Americans seeking common ground and collective action to strengthen our democracy.

We maintain our independence from all political parties and labels. Yes, we are non-partisan, but being non-partisan does not mean we will not take positions. It means that Coffee Party members will arrive at positions based on principles and facts; not on party affiliation. By seeking and spreading accurate information, we empower ourselves to take action and participate in government based on informed decisions.

The Coffee Party provides a place where men and women of all ages, races, physical abilities, and orientations can come together for a respectful and honest exchange of ideas. We believe that by talking and learning together - we can take action to solve the problems facing our nation. Along with national goals, we encourage Coffee Party chapters across the country to pursue local and regional projects chosen by their members.

As voters and grassroots volunteers, we understand that the federal government is not our enemy, but the expression of our collective will – and we pledge to both support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them. The Coffee Party USA believes that the influence of money, and the politics of fear and exclusion, stand in the way of a government “of, by and for the people.”

We believe in the Constitution and ‘the common good’, and will work to ensure that the voices of the people - not the power of the dollar - decide the policies and the direction of our nation.

Our love of country is not based on division. It is founded on our shared belief in democracy, equality, liberty, and justice. These are the ideals that define us as a nation. This is the heritage we wish to pass on to future generations."

(mods-if that's too long a quote, let me know and I'll edit)

[marybee]

28. The problem with the tea party or the coffee party is division

I think americans can gather enough issues to rally around and support and create one giant coalition that will take on special interests and corporations. I think change occurs with the larger your group. Enough division is my opinion.

[semillama]

29. But the whole point of the Coffee party is unity, not division.

It rejects the whole right-left dichotomy and wants to address the larger issues. Granted, it does seem more liberal than conservative, but that's because realistic solutions to our problems are generally ones that liberals support...

[dionysus]

30. eh, mostly they hate blacks, hispanics, and poor people (and unions).

[pampango]

31. Tea party is "populist" at least the faux kind, but also right wing.

Teabaggers are anti-trade, anti-immigration, and anti-bailout (their "populist" positions). Of course, they are also anti-HCR, anti-union and anti-multiculturalism (which is why they are on the "wrong" side).

"when you really think about it, it is possible that many of us would get along" - There may be some issues (their "populist" ones?) with which we could "get along" with teabaggers, but there are a lot of others where common ground would be impossible.

[Morning Dew]

32. Sorry

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