Defending the tea parties
In the comments to my tea party post, Freddie writes:
It would help, you know, if you didn’t caricature my argument, or insert terms I didn’t use. Indeed, the point isn’t that they are redneck or that they are racist, but rather that they are, like all people who have found themselves leaving a position of political privilege, scared and angry. That you can’t take that as anything other than racism reveals again that you are a poor student of history, Erik, and you act out against those who call you on it.
At some point, there’s just got to be an acknowledgment of this bare fact: all of these soi disant dissident conservatives, bohemian libertarians and reform Republicans– they are not like the Tea Partiers. And you know they aren’t. What’s the biggest tell? They don’t live where the Tea Partiers live. How many of the self-styled defenders of the Tea Party movement live where the Tea Partiers live? How many conservatives writing for <i>The Atlantic</i> or libertarians at Cato live in rural Texas or the Mississippi Delta? When do you think the last time was that your average boho DC blogger had a real Tea Partier over to their home? How often does your average pomo conservative or libertarian go out for beers with a genuine Tea Partier? What percentage of the real Tea Party protests, do you think, are from New York and DC?
Ah, you say, that just goes to show how close minded you are! But it doesn’t, though. It shows how close minded <i>they</i> are. Because they have explicitly and consistently defined themselves culturally. <i>You can ask them</i>. It’s all over their signs and literature. What did they say about Sarah Palin in the proto-Tea Party moment? They said, "She’s just like us. She’s one of us." She wasn’t– she was always rich, and now she’s downright <i>wealthy</i>–but she plays the game by hating the right people and defining herself <i>against</i> the right people. You really think that all that talk of the "real America" didn’t mean anything? You think that doesn’t have anything to do with how this country is changing? Or did you just ignore that like you ignore everything they say, so that you can foist more and more virtues onto them that they don’t possess and <i>don’t want</i>. What do they have to do to convince you that they are serious when they say that they don’t like who they don’t like? How many signs does it take? How many slogans?
That’s the bottom line here: there are an awful lot of fantasy going on. You throw on so many wonderful virtues to people who are not like you, because you are using them. They are a symbol for you, a political mass to be exploited. <i>They are telling you they are not like you</i>. I assure you, when they constantly attack the "college elite" or whatever is their preferred euphemism at the time, they are saying, among other things, "we don’t like people who write thought provoking blog posts on the Theogony." What planet do you live on where that is not the case? Ask yourself, Erik, really ask yourself, what percentage of Tea Partiers would slur Andrew Sullivan and his husband in a heartbeat if they had a chance? 50%? 60%? You’ll rush to deny that there’s any element of homophobia in the Tea Parties, but I’ve <i>read their signs</i>. I’ve read their literature. I go to their websites. I don’t have the time for pleasant fantasy.
I don’t have the time, and I won’t permit myself, because the beginning of respect, the precondition for respect, is listening to people and extending to them the right to self-define. That’s the laurel I’ll give them that you won’t. I’ll actually extend to them the courtesy of listening to them, rather than inventing some idealized version of them for my own ends. And it’s because I listen to them that I don’t respect them. I don’t respect their incoherent political platform. I don’t respect their fear mongering. I don’t respect their conspiracy theorizing. I don’t respect the hundreds– hundreds– of flat out offensive signs and images that you and I have both seen at their rallies. Me, personally, I’d rather be disrespected for who I actually am and what I actually say than respected as a symbol or a fantasy.
What the Tea Partiers tell me, in so many ways, is that they are my enemy. And so they are.
I’m not sure that it makes sense to respond to each of these points. So let me first say that most of what Freddie is writing here is a straw man. I have never been a loud defender of the tea parties, nor have I foisted virtues upon the tea party movement which don’t exist. Indeed, if anything I have spent a good deal more time and ink criticizing the tea parties than I have spent defending them. Freddie is right – this isn’t my movement, nor do I think I would much fit in at the rallies or with the folk out there proclaiming that they are in fact the “true conservatives” or supporting someone like J.D. Hayworth who says things such as “Like the liberals, John McCain opposes water-boarding terrorists like the Christmas bomber.” I may very well register as a Republican for the first time ever just to vote for McCain in the primaries!
Just the other day, I wrote in response to Mark,
Reading through the issues up for a vote in the Contract From America, it’s hard to take most of them terribly seriously, and while Mark is right that they are tightly focused on fiscal and economic issues, it’s hard to ascertain any coherent economic or political philosophy from the list. The only consistent thread is reflexive anti-taxation which is neither new or unique. And while some of the ideas are good ones, it’s hard to take the entire batch seriously. Sooner or later, as certain groups develop more mature policy prescriptions the larger movement will splinter. Some elements will be absorbed into the Mt. Vernon establishment which will gain some new faces but little else. The remaining elements will be outsiders, and perhaps even morph into a third party. But that group will be more extreme, more ideologically “pure” and thus even less relevant than the mainstream elites.
I have previously written that the Tea Party movement is similar to a glorified revolutionary war reenactment. I have written against the reflexive anti-tax sentiment of the Tea Parties. And while, on occasion, I have mused with optimism that the tea parties represent a new beginning, a move toward a better sort of conservatism in the future, I am largely cynical that this is the case (except that perhaps the more extreme elements on the right will end up self-destructing and will be resurrected as something wholly different and better…) I am not starry-eyed about my relationship to the tea parties. I may as well be an ‘elite’ and a RINO and all those other slurs and slings and arrows and talking points.
And I have no love for populism. I am a decentralist at heart, a neo-Burkean anti-revolutionary, much more than I am a modern conservative. I distrust revanchist causes and the culture wars – hallmarks of the Tea Party movement. (Indeed, in that first link in the previous sentence, I call the conservative movement a fraud and as evidence I cite the birth of the Tea Party movement.)
Again – lest I be misunderstood – I have no love for the Tea Parties, nor any really for the beltway elites or the establishment. I distrust populism, whether it is progressive or revanchist. I think the Tea Party movement is doomed to failure – to splinter and discord, etc. Despite any hopes I may have or have had, in the end I devolve into cynicism.
And yet, I also think that saying the entire movement is merely an expression of racism based on fear of losing privilege is false, and wrong, and an arrogant claim. It is wrong in the way that saying progressives are secretly all socialists bent on overthrowing the constitution is wrong. It is a gross generalization that serves no purpose except to make the dividing lines even more clear than they already are – to make certain that our opponents are not only opponents, but enemies. To be defeated at all costs.
That’s fine. We all need enemies, I suppose. And since some of the people we see on T.V. are holding racist signs, that must mean that the entire Tea Party movement is racist. We certainly don’t need to actually go down there and talk with them, learn about them, understand them as humans. This notion that we are letting them “self-define” by accepting the caricatures of them that we’ve been spoon-fed by the media and commentariat is patently absurd. To understand the “other” and their self-definition we have to go a lot further than conventional wisdom.
I agree with Freddie on some of the merits, of course. I don’t agree with the TP’s incoherent platform either (as I note in that quote above!), nor their foreign policy (though I have slim hopes that it will change), nor those among them who hoist up offensive signs, or rattle the sabers of the culture war, or denounce our president as a fake or a fascist. I have no respect for grown people acting like children. I am much more comfortable in a college bar or at a quirky downtown coffee shop than railing against Big Gummint. My vision is for a bohemian conservatism, after all, a decentralist Utopia.
So it’s easy to see the Tea Partiers as a bunch of knuckle-draggers spouting off racist slogans and thumping the nationalist war drum. But do they all? Does the entire movement act this way? Are those particularly bad folk we see on TV really representative of the entire movement? I doubt it. It only helps us to help them “self-define” so that we can better be enemies. Which makes sense. This is politics after all. Somebody always loses. Better it be our enemies.
Here’s probably the bigger sin in the comment I made that kicked this all off: I was too dismissive of the GOP’s/conservatism’s ability to win non-white voters. As I said, people have been predicting a Hispanic migration to the GOP for ages and it never happens. Here’s why, I think: black and Hispanic voters tend to be more socially conservative and more fiscally liberal. The problem is that this is the opposite of the central message the GOP has been receiving from pundits, strategists and the media literally for decades. Thanks in large part to libertarian influence, but not only because of them, the major shift that has been sold to the Republicans has been to loosen up on social issues (give up on gay issues, sex issues, and extremism about drugs) but remain stalwart about low taxes, low spending. This seems like a recipe to at least make inroads in college graduates, for example.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the opposite of what you want to do to attract the moderate liberal Catholic Hispanics who are going to become perhaps the single most important demographic in American politics. I wonder if the GOP might move in a more economically moderate direction while preserving social conservatism. It would alienate libertarians, but it’s really a numbers game, and as influential as libertarians are on the level of ideas, they don’t have the electoral muscle that non-white voters could potentially represent.
Of course, step one would be to stop inviting Tom Tancredo to presidential primary debates.Report
That would be one hell of a re-alignment eh? Social conservative minorities flock to the GOP and libertarians flock to the Dems? I dare say that’d be a sure fire sign of post-racial politics.Report
Part of the reason that it seems so unlikely, I think, is that the Grover Norquist side– extremely animated by economic conservatism, essentially apathetic about social issues– carries so much water with the Republican party apparatus.Report
I don’t think Tancredo waits for invitations to primaries, but the rest of this is spot on (if I’m reading you correctly). I think there’s a really good chance the next major realignment that will occur will be primarily on social grounds. Those are issues much more easily understood, much more deeply felt, and less likely to change with the ebb and flow of the economic cycle.
Everyone has the tendency to believe “The Party should appeal to people like me if they want to win elections.*” They say this regardless of which party they’re talking about. The “people like me” when it comes to smart, educated, and articulate pundits is more in the socially-liberal/economically-conservative zone of the axis. I’ve long considered the notion that the public wants politicians that take these stands a myth. It’s one of those things that people like in theory and like to think that they believe, but when it comes to actual issues (Which programs to cut? Do we really have to put up with such rank immorality?), a different picture emerges.
If I were an adviser for the GOP in the area of long-term viability, I would likely advise that they soften up some of their more incendiary language when it comes to social issues (concerned is better than outraged and outrage riles up some of the wrong people) but stand firm on the issues (until/unless they’re lost) and lighten up their stated economic platform (or, in a different way of looking at it, be more honest about the size of government we’re actually looking at that and redirect their energies to type of government).
Of course, it’s really hard to do when the people aren’t really honest with themselves about what they want. And it’s hard to do when the people whose opinions matter most (both inside the party and outside of it) are saying something completely different. And it’s hard when more than one of the “social issues” at stake at the very least (and, ahem, really do more than) lend the appearance of being indifferent or actively hostile to non-whites, without whom social conservatism does lose much of its political opportunity.
Ultimately, what I suspect will happen is that it will take multiple lost elections before the GOP starts really considering really retooling their coalition into something that will win. It’s one thing to say that hostility to Mexican immigrants (often coupled with a disregard for distinctions between them and their legally American offspring) is bad form… but politicians and partisans start caring when it becomes bad politics.
Of course, for this to happen they have to lose multiple cycles. The Democrats seem to be doing their part to keep the GOP from changing anything but the window dressing.
* – I used to fall into this trap myself. At some point I realized that many issues I feel strongly about (Down with the state lottery! Down with the death penalty! Up with Gay Marriage! Up with market-oriented solutions!) are political losers in combination with the general public.Report
“and lighten up their stated economic platform (or, in a different way of looking at it, be more honest about the size of government we’re actually looking at that and redirect their energies to type of government)…”
Any specifics on this one? Let’s note this was also George W Bush’s plan circa 1999 or so.Report
I think that Bush circa 1999 was actually on the right track from a coalition standpoint (though I did not, and do not, like many of them from a policy standpoint). There were a number of problems with the implementation both inside and outside the administration and the timing turned out to be wrong. Bush himself clung to tax cuts in a way that didn’t square with the sort of thing that I am thinking of and he bit off more than he could chew with social security privatization. The bigger problem, though, was that the party was never really on board and when the going got tough they defaulted back to Reagan. They believe that’s the path back to power. They may be right in the short term (it’s positioning them as well as can be expected for 2010, all things considered) but I am inclined to believe that they’re wrong in the longer term.
For this realignment to occur, it’s going to have to become obvious to the GOP that their coalition is broken. It’s been pointed out here on TLOOG that the party has an electoral coalition but not a governing one. Another cycle or two of disjointed GOP governance as we saw during the Bush administration and with demographics changing I think they’re going to be without both. If I were advising the GOP, I would want them to start laying the groundwork for the change before it occurs. But I think they need to see it for themselves. Or perhaps they’re right and I’m wrong and there really will be a renaissance of small government thought that will build enough endurance that they will not only be elected on the platform of shrinking government but will be able to deliver to the point that they won’t self-destruct all over again. I felt that was unlikely before the economic collapse, think it’s more unlikely now, and believe that the changing demographics make it very unlikely in the future. But I’m not the one that would be taking the risks that I would advise the GOP to, so it’s easy for me to be cavalier about it all.Report
“the party has an electoral coalition but not a governing one.”
I’m stealing this phrase.Report
Freddie:
Why don’t you also add the Rebups should give up on fighting illegal immigration?Report
That’s part of it, but the devil is in the details. Sorry that that’s a unsatisfying answer.Report
Interesting that you repeatedly write things like this: “So it’s easy to see the Tea Partiers as a bunch of knuckle-draggers spouting off racist slogans and thumping the nationalist war drum. But do they all? Does the entire movement act this way? Are those particularly bad folk we see on TV really representative of the entire movement? I doubt it.”
I would suggest that you don’t really doubt it. That you reiterate similiar comments about the TP movement because you want want to impune it while seeming to hedge your bets. Could you give that some thought?Report
“It is wrong in the way that saying progressives are secretly all socialists bent on overthrowing the constitution is wrong. It is a gross generalization that serves no purpose except to make the dividing lines even more clear than they already are –….”
I agree with this. The things the other team are doing are bad enough so that there’s no need to exaggerate them. I think the liberal agenda right now is better described as social democratic rather than socialist. But in defense of the Tea Partiers, there is really is no social democratic tradition here in America. So the word for the politics behind fringey, Leftist, collectivist economics is “socialist” here, even if it’s not really accurate.Report
The word for progressive social policy among precisely those people E.D. is savaging here is socialism, yes.Report
In E.D.’s defense, the person he was pointedly talking to refers to himself as, and let me cut and paste it here so you know that I am not making this up:
“the actual left, the Marxian left, which I belong to”
See it in context here (so you know that I’m not yanking it out of context):
http://voguerepublic.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/modern-liberalism-raceclass-ctd/#commentsReport
“And yet, I also think that saying the entire movement is merely an expression of racism based on fear of losing privilege is false, and wrong, and an arrogant claim. ”
I don’t think all conservatives are racist, it’s just the policies they advocate for tend to help wealthy, white people over everyone else. Socially conservative African American and Latino voters have noticed this over the years and vote their self interest. I’m assuming voters are rational choosers here.
Privilege isn’t about the individual innocence of the privileged person, who is not “at fault” for being born white, male, and into an economically stable situation. Conservative racism isn’t about one person, or a small group of people, it’s about the movement as a whole and the people that it serves. I don’t think saying that American conservatism is about privilege and the maintenance of privilege is particularly controversial. Isn’t maintaining a competitive advantage what neoclassical economics tells us to do? Wouldn’t it be irrational for a bunch of wealthy white men to suggest and implement policies which diminish their earning power? Yes it is, so they don’t. Free market Capitalism is not nice or moral, it is efficient and ruthless. It is the system advocated by conservatives and that system has benefited white men a great deal in America.Report
“How many of the self-styled defenders of the Tea Party movement…”
Not sure if I am self-styled, or a defender, but…
” live where the Tea Partiers live?”
I do, actually.
“How many conservatives writing for The Atlantic or libertarians at Cato live in rural Texas or the Mississippi Delta?”
I used to live and work in DC and did a lot of stuff at Cato. And I live where the Tea Partiers live. There was a huge rally down the street a while back. Another is planned. I live in Pennsyltucky, by the way. The place where John Murtha mused that we were mostly racist rednecks.
” When do you think the last time was that your average boho DC blogger had a real Tea Partier over to their home?”
Today, actually.
“How often does your average pomo conservative or libertarian go out for beers with a genuine Tea Partier?”
In my case, about twice a week.
So I guess my question is… so? Does this give me license to do something ED cannot? Am I allowed to say things without having to prove myself in these ways? Which political opinions does it open to me? Which does it close off?
Am I permitted to “exploit” the Tea Partiers now? What does that even mean?
More broadly, it seems to me that the Tea Parties will fizzle out. But maybe not. It’s a nascent movement of various movements, loosely connected, if at all. Someone might be able to harness it in a useful way, a la the various anti-war and progrssive movements that started going post-911. And which eventually became useful to various folks on the left. To what effect? Depends. Go to the comment section over at Yglesias some time. Some of them feel cheated. Then there are the pragmatists counseling patience. Etc.
Note that this momentum, this progressive inertia, did not push someone like Kucinich or Nader into office. It all got co-opted into support for a reasonably centrist guy from Chicago. And the people pushing for single payer and an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and freedom for Mumia and all the other pet causes gor used. In quite cynical fashion. But that’s how it goes.
So will the Tea Parties elect Ron Paul to the White House? Of course not. In the best case scenario, they will fall in line behind someone who pushed the right buttons at the right moment, like Paul Ryanm perhaps. And they will complain when he actually turns out to be… Paul Ryan.
But again, I hope that the fact that I had beers with these people gives me the right to opine in this way.Report
The fact of the matter is, you don’t believe what you are saying here, which is that there is no functional difference between how the Tea Partiers define themselves– the Platonic Tea Partier– and, say, your Tea Party-supporting average Ivy League graduate editor at the Atlantic. And, of course, there is a difference. What’s more, it is the Tea Partiers who themselves define that difference, and who define it according to certain cultural cues of which we are all aware– education level, urban vs. rural environment, income level, religious belief, acceptance of homosexuality and other “alternative lifestyles,” and, implicitly, whiteness. (Whatever is true about Tea Party attitudes about race, they are overwhelmingly, incredibly, absurdly white.) You don’t have to take my word for it when I say that Matt Welch and Joe Q. TeaPartier live very different lives. And, again, this is not me creating divisions; this is me respecting the divisions that the Tea Partiers have themselves created.
You know that there is a vast cultural difference between the people attending your average Tea Party and those writing for Reason magazine, and the fact that you can’t countenance that difference demonstrates again that your vision of your coalition, such as it exists, is a fantasy.Report
Where, exactly, do the tea partiers live?Report
“The fact of the matter is, you don’t believe what you are saying here, which is that there is no functional difference between how the Tea Partiers define themselves– the Platonic Tea Partier– and, say, your Tea Party-supporting average Ivy League graduate editor at the Atlantic.”
Who ever said that, at any time? Of course there is a difference. Just like there is a difference between the lunch-pail union guys and the people who write about unions for Mother Jones.
Seriously. Who said there is no difference? Does a coalition, any colaition, consist of people who are exactly the same? Or does it consist of people with difference, even substantial difference, getting together for one reason or another, hoping to grab power, and fighting over who’s priorities should hold sway?
Were all anti-war activists good members in standing in International ANSWER? Of course not. Are the people who lobby for the Sierra Club solid supporters or Earth First? Do they motor around in boats and interfere with whaling ships? Or do the lobbyists sit around drinking in U-Street enclaves and tip their hats to the activists while they try to make political hay out of things? And sell them up the river when they can get a good deal for doing so?Report
If that isn’t the most flagrant bit of goalpost moving I’ve ever read….
It’s pretty simple, man– the Tea Parties have defined themselves by cultural difference. I pointed out, correctly, that a good deal of Tea Party anger is the result of a historically privileged demographic, rural white Christians, losing that privilege to the growing electoral power of Hispanic and urban voters. Erik proceeded to defend the Tea Partiers in a way that obscured that very self-definition through cultural difference, and suggested that I was being unfair in ascribing that cultural difference to them. I pointed out, correctly, that it isn’t I who have defined them through cultural constraints, but they themselves, and I pointed out, again correctly, that allowing them to do that is a prerequisite of respecting their right to define their own political platform.
Then you jumped in and hoped to occlude that cultural self-definition by saying, yeah, I drink beer with them, and I’m from where they’re from. I point out that denying the cultural difference between you, Cato dude, and Category Tea Partier is foolish and a denial of reality, and then you say, disingenuously, hey, I never said we were all the same….
Now, since you brought it up, yes, I can walk side by side with a member of IAMAW and a Black Panther and a trustafarian and a neo-Wobbly and a feminist soccer mom and a pastor of a black church and a member of Code Pink, and the reason I can is because the liberal coalition has made a belief in pluralism an absolute prerequisite for joining for decades. Yes, the multiculturalism that the right has mocked for ages gives our coalition strength, because we truly believe in tolerance, acceptance and a multiplicity of cultures working together.
The Tea Parties, meanwhile? I’ll let you settle that question on your own; it’ll have to be between you and your own interior honesty. If I’m right, and the Tea Parties are explicitly about culturally distancing themselves from people who aren’t like them, well…. Then you’ve answered your own claims of inconsistency.
Glenn Beck always says “They don’t surround us, we surround them.” I think I know who he’s referring to, and I think you all do, too.Report
“The Tea Parties, meanwhile? I’ll let you settle that question on your own; it’ll have to be between you and your own interior honesty. If I’m right, and the Tea Parties are explicitly about culturally distancing themselves from people who aren’t like them, well…. Then you’ve answered your own claims of inconsistency.”
Distancing? I see them as pulling rank over the political establishment (ie, people “not like them”), which is supposed to represent and be accountable to the citizens at large.
“Glenn Beck always says “They don’t surround us, we surround them.” I think I know who he’s referring to, and I think you all do, too.”
Ok, I’ll bite: who?Report
How is it moving the goalpost? You accused me of saying that Cato guy and local tea party guy are the same. That there are no differences. I will cut and paste it again here: “… what you are saying here, which is that there is no functional difference between how the Tea Partiers define themselves… and, say, your Tea Party-supporting average Ivy League graduate editor at the Atlantic.” I never said that. If you would like to point out where I said that, I would be interested to see you cut and paste it below.
You say that the Tea Party people are the ones who define themselves culturally. After all, ED does not drink with them and live where they live. You say: “You know that there is a vast cultural difference between the people attending your average Tea Party and those writing for Reason magazine, and the fact that you can’t countenance that difference demonstrates again that your vision of your coalition, such as it exists, is a fantasy.”
Who’s the one who can’t countenance that difference? Not me. Not the Tea Party guys I know. I understand this is inconvenient for your argument, but I graduated from an Ivy League school. I worked for Reason magazine. And last week the main Tea Party guy in my neck of the woods called me on the phone to talk about things. He lent me four cookbooks. We chatted about Marcellus Shale gas wells, and how there was once a plan to frak the wells with a nuclear bomb.
Your understanding of the situation would seem to indicate that this interaction would be impossible. My reality tells me it is not.
I don’t understand where you take my argument to mean that because I hang out with the guy, that we have no cultural differences. Of course there are cultural differences. But again, if you can find that portion of my argument, I will retract it. I do not think that there is no difference between me and the categorical Tea Party guy. There is a difference between me and him. I don’t know how to make my position on that more clear. And I don’t understand how pointing it out, contra your argument, amounts to moving the goalpost. You accused me of making an argument I never made. I objected.
Are there cynical conservative opinion makers in DC taking advantage of these guys and claiming a false cultural allegiance to them? Of coure there are. But if you think that being on the Left means that your side is immune to that kind of cynicism… Wow. You’re nuts. Seriously. The guys from CAP get together on Friday nights with their buddies from the UAW and the NAACP? I know that inclusion is part of the game plan. But come on.Report
And yet, I also think that saying the entire movement is merely an expression of racism based on fear of losing privilege is false, and wrong, and an arrogant claim.
It would be those things, yes. And any serious commentators who continue to make these claims should reassess and retract, because the Tea Party movement has clearly cleaned up its act from the early very problematic impressions it indisputably gave to anyone watching its early incarnation. Do you are to cite any such serious commentators?
That being said, again: Bill Maher? Bill Maher?? You know how Rush Limbaugh lies and claims he is an entertainer, not the leader of an actual movement in this country? Guess what: Bill Maher actually is an entertainer. I for one want BIll Maher to keep on saying the irresponsible, unfair shit on Friday nights that is on many people’s minds but that they don’t say because they do want to be responsible for their words. Do you not? Do you claim he doesn’t dish it out to all sides, even if not in perfectly equal slices? Has this blog seriously descended to whining about unfair treatment from Bill Maher? Violins. If you manage to make Bill Maher call you a racist, wow, that’s a tough fate. Violins.Report
“Now, since you brought it up, yes, I can walk side by side with a member of IAMAW and a Black Panther and a trustafarian and a neo-Wobbly and a feminist soccer mom and a pastor of a black church and a member of Code Pink, and the reason I can is because the liberal coalition has made a belief in pluralism an absolute prerequisite for joining for decades. Yes, the multiculturalism that the right has mocked for ages gives our coalition strength, because we truly believe in tolerance, acceptance and a multiplicity of cultures working together. ”
You don’t live in reality, do you? I can’t begin to describe how superficial this coalition is when the pie’s divided. Trustafarian? Oh my. Have you ever met a real Black Panther? I’m sure you amused him.Report
Not sure if you will ever see this reply E.D. but I am curious about something. You said that:
“So it’s easy to see the Tea Partiers as a bunch of knuckle-draggers spouting off racist slogans and thumping the nationalist war drum. But do they all? Does the entire movement act this way? Are those particularly bad folk we see on TV really representative of the entire movement? I doubt it. ”
And this was in counter to Freddie’s assertion that he wasn’t addressing a mere caricature of the Tea Party movement but an accurate representation of what they themselves define the movement to be. Freddie cites as evidence videos of signs and interviews from Tea Party events in media, or web sites that they voice their opinions on etc.
So my question to you, or anyone really, is how much evidence would it take for you to conclude that this is an accurate representation of the movement and simply not dismiss it in ‘One True Scotsman’ fashion? I mean if a KKK member came up to you and said that racism isn’t really what the ‘real’ KKK is all about you would be rightly skeptical because the evidence we have both current and historical point to clearly racist motives.
Not that I am trying to equate the Tea Party to the KKK but do you get the point I am trying to make? I mean we can sit and say that Glenn Beck isn’t representative of the ‘real’ tea party, or Sarah Palin, or Michelle Bachmann, or that crazy guy with a dumb racist sign on TV and that is all a misrepresentation from some media induced hallucination. But what, if anything would it take to convince you of what the ‘real’ tea party represents? And whatever the Tea Party means to you personally, where do you get that representation now?Report