Tag: Tea Party

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Tea Party with the Mad Hatters of the Republican Party

I don’t think the Tea Party is really going to have a significant influence on this November’s elections in the U.S. They receive coverage that is vastly out of proportion to their actual influence because they are colorful, loud-mouthed, aggressive, and cruel. It’s lovely watching working class whites out there begging the government to take money out of their pockets and give it to Exxon and Dow and Citibank, and the various industries associated with the Koch Brothers. It is especially lovely when they proclaim how sick they are of being manipulated, deceived, and misled by intellectuals, reporters, and feminists.

They learn these things through Fox News and various conferences sponsored by the Koch Brothers.

Anyway, it would not be too much of a stretch to imagine that the Tea Party is entirely the creation of the Democrats. It’s a conspiracy to keep the Republicans from winning the White House and the Senate: those snarky Tea Party revelers get out there and act ridiculous and say ridiculous things– like “keep the government out of my Medicare”– and heap discredit on the entire conservative movement. I suspect that most Americans, especially in the swing states, don’t want to look stupid by voting for people who invariably look stupid.

PBS recently had a T-Party enthusiast, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network (or, as I prefer, the Capitalist Broadcasting Network) on for an interview with Judy Woodruff. Brody came off pretty well exactly like the evangelical leader that President Bartlett kicked out of the White House in a memorable West Wing episode.

Why was he on? The only reason I can think of is that the Republicans have been known to go ballistic on the issue of Public Television and the perceived bias of this institution which used to receive substantial government funding.

PBS has lately moved beyond the fake controversy over global warming: they now act as if it is a proven fact, which it is, and examine the ramifications. It’s a courageous, intelligent move, and sure to enrage the Tea Party, if they noticed it, which they won’t because they only watch Fox News.

How Romney could win: easy!

  • endorse the Dream Act which gives some illegal immigrants a pathway towards citizenship
  • announce that you can compromise with Democrats on taxes and allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on those earning more than $250,000.00, and declare that it is more important to get things done in Washington than to score political points, as when the Republican House votes 33 times to repeal Obama’s Health care act.
  • sound statesmanlike as you soberly acknowledge that the nation must pay it’s bills and part of the plan to do that is to make a modest hike in taxes while cutting spending on programs. This would put Obama in a very uncomfortable position.   I’m not sure why he won’t don’t do it. Well, yes, I am sure: they are idiots who have fervently believed since Reagan that it is possible to cut taxes and claim to reduce the deficit at the same time and then blame the deficit on the Democrats when they are in office.
  • announce some policy that could actually be mistaken for something compassionate or kind. Your own party will HATE it, as will the Christian Broadcasting Network, James Dobson, Franklin Graham, et al, but who the hell else are they going to vote for?
  • The independents will flock to you.
  • announce that what a woman does with her own body is none of the state’s business. Your support among women voters will rise 2 – 3 %, I would guess.

Might be enough to tip the election.

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The Three Days of the Tea Party

In the uncannily prescient 1975 movie “Three Days of the Condor”, Turner (Robert Redford) gradually unravels a rogue CIA plot to destabilize the Middle East in order to secure vast supplies of oil for the U.S. We are, wisely, not given too much detail– it’s more believable that way.

A hired killer named Joubert played suavely by Max Von Sydow, has been trying to murder Turner since he stumbled into the plot. He seems to have finally tracked him down just as Redford has uncovered the mastermind behind the oil plot, a middling CIA manager named Leonard Atwood. But instead of shooting Turner, Joubert suddenly turns and kills Atwood. Turner is shocked, and puzzled– why did you kill Atwood? Joubert doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. I suspect, he says, that he was about to become an embarrassment. Then he offers Turner a ride back into town. He sees that Turner is still afraid of him. Joubert smiles– my contract to kill you, he says, was with Atwood. As you can see…

It’s an elegant, profound moment. Joubert is one of the more intelligent creations of the genre– a professional, passionless, rational killer. There is baggage with the term “hired killer”, but how different, really, is he from a soldier? I liked him. He advises Turner to go into hiding. There is no future for you in New York (his home). Turner insists he wants to keep fighting the corruption he has uncovered. Doesn’t Joubert care? How do you not care?

Joubert tells him, life is easier if you don’t believe in either side.

Later, Turner meets with another CIA manager, Higgins. Higgins is probably not part of the corruption, but he must protect the agency from the threat Turner represents. He argues with Turner: Americans want us to make those difficult, morally ambiguous decisions, without telling them, so they can preserve the illusion that they live moral lives while enjoying their big cars and heated homes.

Cut to 1992 and “A Few Good Men”, far inferior film even if it was written by Aaron Sorkin. (After all, it was directed by Rob Reiner, not Sydney Pollack.) We all know the line spoken by Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson): “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!” In this case, a pair of marines have caused the death of a fellow marine who brought discredit upon their brand by complaining about his treatment. The viewer perhaps needs to be reminded that in most other dramatizations, the two marines would be the villains. Here they are the heroes: stalwart, proud, professional. Oops– we killed a fellow marine. Jessup is the villain because he ordered them to do it, and then strung them out to dry, dishonored.

Higgins might well have said to Turner: “You can’t handle the truth”. “It’s easier if you don’t believe in either side”. Jessup believes he is so right that he must make life and death decisions for us. He passionately argues that our society can’t stomach the kind of moral decisions he has to make all the time, but, by God, we want killers like Jessup out there on the walls protecting us from …. well, the truth is, from the other Jessups out there, on the other side. He and Atwood and Higgins are all of a piece: we make the unpleasant decisions so that you can enjoy your Hummers, your air conditioning, your jobs.

Cut to Norway, 2011. Anders Behring Breivik. Europe is being overwhelmed by Moslem immigrants who threaten the foundations of Western Culture and religion. And Norway’s political leaders do nothing, except welcome them with open arms, and allow them to build their mosques and cover their faces.

What’s an earnest little fascist to do? His lawyer says, “he hates all the Western ideas and the values of democracy.”

Cut to the Tea Party: at a recent debate, the Republican presidential candidates were asked if they would accept a deal with the Democrats that made $10 of cuts for every $1 of increased revenue, if it meant raising taxes. Not a single one was willing to compromise. That is the definition of fanaticism: they are so right they need to defy all common sense and reasonableness.

There is not much of a future in Washington for a reasonable man.

You can’t handle the truth.

Aaron Sorkin is a brilliant writer but, like the Editorialists at the New York Times and 60 Minutes, he has an odd, fetishistic reverence for the military, because he really believes in the myths of honor and integrity, and that there really are enemies out there trying to kill us.  He’s right about the enemies, but that doesn’t mitigate the creepy allure military men posses in Sorkin dramas, especially since Sorkin himself, of course, of course, never served in the military.

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Tea Party Down the Deficit

So if the real problem is jobs and the real solution is more government stimulus and all you really want to do is cut taxes for those who are already extremely well-off, what do you do? You scream about the deficit. A reasonable solution to the deficit problem probably includes a tax increase on the rich. But your real mission is to get the poor and middle-income people to pay for government services, while you grab a bigger and bigger share of the pie. How do you get that past the rational people?

In other circumstances, the voters could have had choice between the screaming, hysterical mad hatters of the tea party and the rational, measured Reid and Obama. If…. if Obama had immediately counter-attacked the Republican hysterics with a strong, determined insistence that, at a time of 9% unemployment and recession, the government needs to step up.

The minute Obama agreed to make the deficit a priority, Reason went out the window. I think it was a huge mistake. Republicans demanding tax cuts is nothing new. But by endorsing the basic principle, Obama seemed to validate the idea that the deficit is the big problem facing America right now. It’s not. It’s unemployment.

Even so, it’s surprising how many people out there kept their heads. And a little baffling in terms of Obama’s strategy: the majority of Americans still seemed to support the idea that unemployment was the number one issue and that the Republicans were acting like a bunch of spoiled children. And that the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, at least as they apply to the rich. Why, oh why, did he cave?

The biggest irony of all this, of course, is that the Republicans don’t actually give a damn about the deficit. When Bush borrowed billions to finance his tax cuts, throwing the budget into a deficit a scant one year after Clinton (who left a surplus) left office, there was nary a whimper from the mad hatters. (Yes, since his tax cuts put the budget into a deficit, Bush took out a loan, made the taxpayers liable for repayment, and handed the money all over to his rich benefactors.

The Republicans only ever seem to care about decreasing taxes on the rich. That’s it. That’s all. The military, Wall Street, Copyright, Patent Law, Homeland Security— everything is to protect the wealthy from the claims of the poor and lower classes. Everything must maximize the burden on working families to pay for the minimal necessary government services so that the rich can send you to die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and he, how about Iran?

Iran is there waiting. It is waiting for the vacuum that develops when America is not at war with anyone else.

Obama’s only hope for the next election– and it is NOT a dismal one– is that the Tea Party will apply their effluent enthusiasms to the primaries next year and they will nominate a Gingrich or Bachmann or Palin or Perry to run against him.

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Mad Hatters of the Tea Party

It’s not that big of a secret that the real movers and shakers in the Republican Party are not Joe Miller, Christine O’Donnell, and Sharron Angle, or even Jim DeMint or Sarah Palin.

Well, I think it is to the Tea Partiers.

Listen to this comment by Trent Lott, Svengali of the Republican Establishment, now a lobbyist just raking in the dough, as was always his purpose as a Republican politician (if you receive the money afterwards, is it still a bribe?): “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them”.

“They” are the tea party. It won’t be difficult– “they” are Republicans. They actually believe that in America, the goal of government is to provide a level playing field so that companies can battle it out among each other to provide consumers with the best products at the best price. They are in for a shock. The first thing they will learn, from Trent Lott, Karl Rove, and the others, is that the purpose of Republican government is to pin down the young, the poor, the middle class, and entrepreneurs so that the corporations can ransack their pockets with impunity. The rich, powerful corporations actually control the legislative process through lobbyists who lob millions of dollars at every politician in the firm belief that their votes can be influenced.

What Lott is afraid of– and it’s an amusing scenario– is that some of these tea party candidates are what I call “true believers”. What if they reject the money and vote their conscience? Oh my! The horror! At what point will Sharron Angle realize that she is not voting to “level the playing field” on most legislation– she will be voting to confer fabulous favors and benefits upon powerful interests who will gladly, in return, pay for the expensive negative ads she needs to run in her next election campaign when, undoubtedly, she will be running “against” Washington.

Jon Stewart hilariously showed us John McCain, in a recent campaign ad, declaring that Washington was “broken” and needed to be fixed. Then he showed us McCain using the same line over and over and over again going back to his first election campaign 30 years ago.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…. three times… eight times… ten times… uh… doh!

For all the media hype, how much influence has the Tea Party had on this election? Well, name a single Tea Party candidate who won a seat that the Republicans would have lost without him or her?

That’s right– not one.

Why? That’s pretty straight forward: a “movement” unconnected with a particular idea is always going to fizzle. The Tea Party doesn’t really have a single coherent idea that isn’t

  1. already held, in emasculated form, by the Republican Party,
    too whacko to ever be implemented,
  2. too generalized and idealistic to have any real application.
  3. In August, CNN revealed that the percentage of Americans who actually call themselves members of the Tea Party? 2.

That said, what a shame that we won’t have a real tea party victory. A victory by the Tea party– by the true believers– would be as devastating to corporate interests and old guard Republicans as it would be to the Democrats. If Tea Party Candidates came in and cleared out the lobbyists, the backroom deals, the earmarks, and so on, we might all be better off than we would be under a victory by so-called moderate Republicans.  That is, if they do what they say they will do.

It’s a little puzzling that so much mainstream media– allegedly “liberal”, of course– have given so much coverage to the Tea Party, which, as the Washington Post discovered, is actually quite small and really insignificant.

Why why why? I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, so it must be because conflict and anger and spectacle make good news.

“Look at Lott’s lobbying clients: Citigroup, General Electric, Raytheon, Entergy and other Beltway bandits, subsidy sucklers and regulatory robber barons. These guys live off of bailouts, massive government spending, and earmarks. These are exactly the policies Republicans are supposed to oppose, but don’t. They’re also the very things Tea Partiers and Jim DeMint rail against most.”

Read more at the Washington Examiner.  [dead link: sorry.]

 

The picture, at the top, is of my feet, 1976, Calgary, Alberta, sitting in a basement apartment we rented for the summer while working for the United Grain Growers.