(Couldn’t resist G&S updated, and an Obama look-alike…)
Found through a comment here, at Protein Wisdom, where Jeff G. is having yet another go-around with She Who Must Not Be Mentioned, in whom the serious crayzee is in full flood.
(Shamelessly quoted entire, from commenter FordPrefect 1969, on this story at Big Journalism. Enjoy the delicious sarcasm, and thank you, Ford Prefect!!)
To: all NPR Staff
It has become exceedingly obvious that we are about to be forced to justify our existence to a group of people who to whom we have shown nothing but condescension and contempt for our entire careers here at NPR. I’m going to go ahead and continue to work on the assumption that they will be Buckleyesque whipping boys who will treat our apologies and sudden willingness to have a conversation with reciprocal honesty and forthrightness as sincere, rather than simply pulling the goddamned flush lever on us like someone with basic self-respect would. It is quite possible with influx of the Tea Party caucus that that will not work out, but since our lavish paychecks, benefits, and vacation time have always been dependent on revenue confiscated from the aforementioned group, and we have, frankly, been dicks to them 100% of the time, and have very much enjoyed the process of lecturing from a tax-funded ivory tower that they were forced to finance. It has that Orwellian tang to it that really makes it an authentic experience.
So, at any rate, you are, from here on out, to pretend that you think people who are not within the Progressive fold have the same rights good people like us have. Under no circumstances will you communicate to our new bosses that you would put a boot on their necks and make slaves out of them if only you could switch sides of the desk, which, frankly, is what we were really expecting after Dear Leader was installed. Now, it appears, we may all meet our Fryolators of Destiny.
Hopeychange Uber Alles,
Some Fascist Parasite
So, a scattershot essay with a number of different topics that have come bubbling up to the top of my admittedly scattered attention this last week:
The Neighbors from Hell, part –I-don’t-know-how-many, there are just too many to count. See, there are bad neighbors who commit sins of omission, such as not mowing their lawn, keeping up with house maintenance, or just have an aesthetic sense that does not jibe with the others in the ‘hood. Every neighborhood seems to have a couple of those; people who are just fricking clueless. Think of them as small lumps in the happy oatmeal of life. Sometimes you can work with them, bring them around to the right way of doing things, but generally it’s not worth the effort. Just look away from them as much as you can, and call city Code Compliance only when absolutely necessary, because they just might turn into Neighbors from Hell – the other kind of bad neighbor; the aggressive, sins-of-commission kind. The ones who deliberately court offense, who declare open war upon another neighbor, and generally do their best to create Suburban Hell; I’d guess that this piece o’work is that kind of neighbor. Frankly, I’m glad she’s not ours, and extend my heartfelt sympathy to the people who are.
Life on the border, Falcon Lake edition: kinda hard to say at this point exactly has been going on there . . . save to say that the just-south-o’the-border lawless’n’drug-gang situation has been heading to the proverbial nether regions in the proverbial wicker-work carrying container for quite some time now. Seriously, it’s getting really, really bad. Blondie was freaking out this spring when my SO and his snowbird friends and I went to Progresso, Mexico for a day jaunt. How bad is it going to get in the next five months? The odds on some horrific cross-border affray which might actually make the Mainstream f*****g Media sit up and pay attention due to the penetration distance within the US, the number of innocent lives messily lost and the presence of YouTube video detailing every splatter are pretty high. Just my semi-educated guess, people. Just my guess.
Kind of nice, how everybody wants to be a Tea Partier now, isn’t it? Or at least, not be an incumbent. (November is coming – I can see it from my house!) Seriously, everyone is pretty well wise to the method of getting expensive federal government crap for your district, and expecting to get votes in response? They are bribing us with our own money, people. It’s a local and parochial benefit, at the expense of the long-term national good. Personally, I don’t think any federal or state installation should be named after a local politician still living, but that’s just me.
Which brings me to Jerry Brown getting the NOW endorsement not twenty-four hours after being inadvertently recorded as calling Meg Whitman a whore . . . Guess she isn’t the right kind of feminist. Funny, that. Reminds me of why I no longer subscribe to Ms. Magazine. Or identify myself as a capital F feminist . . . It seems as if only the properly credentialed can apply. Screw that, and identity politics generally.
All this, and the Great VFW Endorsement disaster, which I think must be close kin to the AARP ObamaCare endorsement disaster. Way to go, people . . . umm, or way to go those at the tippy-top of such national organizations who have decided it is nicer to go along to get along than pay attention to the real interests and needs of those who have joined your association voluntarily. Shoot yourself in the foot, much?
Well, that should get you off to a good Monday start. No need to thank me, I live to serve.
Sgt. Mom
PS – Apparently someone winged a book at the Mighty O-man last night at a speech – and missed by a narrow margin, but no one knows the title of the book! My guess is a copy of the Constitution, or maybe the Federalist Papers. Blondie ventures: “Maybe a copy of that craptacular autobiography and they wanted a refund!”
So, after a year and three-quarters of the existence of the political entity known as the Tea Party (only it isn’t really a party, just a sort of decentralized mass movement) said movement is getting a little respect. Fearful respect, to be sure – but ever such an improvement on crude and ignorant denigration! Oh, we’re still getting the denigration, but it has become a little more muted lately, and use of the epithet t******er is not as frequent as formerly, possibly because the media personalities who delighted in using it may have discovered that a good-sized subset of the viewing audience took exception and offense . . . which might have affected ratings, and audience share and the sales of advertising time. Myself, I can deal with fearful respect, and so – no doubt – can the rest of those scattered the length and breadth of the Land of the Free Home of the Brave who cherish Tea Party principles. Especially when the fearful respect comes from the likes of Dick Armey . . . or from RINO squishes who come to love the perks of office so much they will do anything, and say anything to stay there. Yes, it was most especially amusing – since I have not the slightest shred of a doubt that the senior GOP strategists and long-serving office holders were quite absolutely sure – right up until the last few weeks – that Tea Party principles would automatically translate into votes for Republican candidates. Booted, spurred and ready to ride, they seemed to think that all was necessary to do was to saddle that Tea Party mustang, and it would obey.
The Dems also assumed – and trumpeted it loudly and often – that the Tea Parties were nothing more than great swaths of GOP Astroturf; the GOP’s sudden horrid discovery vis-à -vis the biddability of Tea Partiers is presumably as much of a surprise to them as well. I can only assume they were goggle-eyed with horror, upon making this discovery, since you’d have thought a canny strategist would have known the words of Sun Tzu.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Ah, yes – the dear old Donks, they may know themselves but, I am pretty sure they do not know Tea Party: they know only a caricature of the Tea Party. I derived some innocent merriment these last few months, visualizing the expressions on the faces of various political operatives in the current administration, the higher reaches of the Democrat Party and their water-carriers in the media, as they tried to counter the Tea Party – and discovered that none of their favored tactics worked. I swear it’s been like Wily Coyote, Super-Genius trying to catch the Road-Runner. The results were pretty much uniform; Wily Coyote scorched to a crisp, forming a neat crater at the bottom of a deep ravine, or augered in by a falling 5,000 lb weight – and meanwhile, the Tea Party elements pause for a brief moment, shout meep-meep and zip on, unfazed and . . . more to the point, un-distracted.
So, one more time, just to make everything clear: The Tea Party is a loosely organized, essentially leaderless and distributed political insurgency, holding these things as our highest values: fiscal responsibility, strict adherence to the Constitution, small government and free markets.
Everything else is secondary: believe me when I say this. Everything else is secondary. People who hold to those principles may also have strong convictions about illegal immigration, social issues, gun rights, home schooling or any number of other current rights-and-issues brangles; some of these Tea Party supporters may have had a long history of advocacy with regard to these issues, but they are not the Tea Party’s main motivating influence. And even though the Tea Party did not exist in anything like the currently accepted form, there were some of us whose concern with federal government excess – to include ill-advised regulations and ballooning deficits – predated the anointing of President Obama. It’s just that damn few in the media, or anywhere else outside the blogosphere gave a rat’s ass, and most of us were lone voices, crying in the wilderness. Just because it didn’t make the headlines doesn’t mean such concerns didn’t exist before 2008.
And just so that we can get that straight – when it comes to President Obama, it’s not the color of his skin, it’s the content of his character, and his admittedly thin resume. (And his weird Chicago friends, his effortless rise to the top unassisted by actual accomplishment, and of late, his propensity for vacations and golf days.) Which a scattering of us were pointing out in 2008, for all the good it did come Election Day. Curiously, in many of the admittedly libertarian/fiscally conservative/veteran circles in which I have been hanging out since 2002; a President and Commander in Chief of color was pretty well accepted – it’s just that we all thought then that Colin Powell or Condi Rice would have been a better bet, as well has having a much more reassuring resume and some, you know, real-world experience. Demanding that Tea Party leaders do, or denounce, or disavow something or other, just to prove something-or-other? Good luck with that. Leaderless, distributed political insurgency, strong emphasis on the leaderless, high value given to individual personal initiative and responsibility. Think D-Day, when everything on the beaches had gone to s**t, but individual NCOs and soldiers stepped out and did what they knew had to be done.
Some of the Tea Partiers I began to know over the last year came from a strong evangelical Christian background, which in this part of the world is hard to avoid. A casual observer might assume that the Tea Party is an evangelical Christian movement – and the casual observer would be wrong. Frankly, not too many of us had any heartburn over Bristol Palin’s baby, Scott Brown’s college pinups, or Christine O’Donnell’s flirtation with witchcraft. Seriously, the evangelical Tea Partiers were supposed to get all bent out of shape over all that? OK, I realize that a lot of people took their ideas about Evangelical Christians from Saturday Night Live’s Church Lady . . . but what did I say about Sun Tzu, again? One more time – the main thing is fiscal responsibility, small federal government, free market, strict adherence to the Constitution. Social issues – secondary importance. A good few other Tea Partiers were cranky and independent libertarian types, and not conventionally religious in any way. In fact, in our own quiet way, a lot of us are pretty worldly. Quite a few are military veterans, small and medium-sized business owners, a good few were bloggers, and well-versed in the ways of the internet as a means of informing and coordinating.
About Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Fox News? Not our leaders. Sarah Palin? Not our leader either. Personally, I never cared much for the first two, never watch the second unless there’s some local disaster – but I did think that picking the fourth for the VP slot on the GOP ticket for 2008 was a stroke of genius. So, mayor of a small town, effective governor of a pretty large state – and with high local approval ratings; nah – don’t believe the lady is an idiot, a fascist or an ignorant hillbilly, not for a moment. But if it satisfies something in the soul of those of the progressive persuasion to think so . . . well, Sun Tzu again. Or whoever it was that advised never interrupting your enemy in the process of making a complete douche of him or herself.
So, after a year and some of being constantly belittled as ignorant, closed-minded bitter clingers and racists – how do I feel? That holding to that line has probably bounced back and resoundingly. Because those of us who are Tea Partiers know it isn’t true. And those who are close to us – friends, co-workers, neighbors and kin; I think they have probably figured out by now that it isn’t true also. Those of us within the Tea Party movement – we can keep our cool, and be a bigger person about the mindless abuse and constant rain of accusations – but don’t for a moment think that we have forgotten, or will ever forget the names of the worst offenders.
So, everyone clear on the concept? Good. I can see November from my house. And until then, a musical interlude. Enjoy.
So it begins – the seeing of what was screamingly obvious to me a good few months ago; the horrified realization among the politically connected (especially in the GOP) that the loose confederation which amassed under the yellow Gadsden flag with the coiled rattlesnake motif and goes by the name of the Tea Party is not just a sort of mass temper-tantrum, or a collection of irate voters to be gentled, tamed and gelded to better serve the purposes of the Grand Old Party. Nor are they – being a loosely connected and leaderless network of fiscal conservatives, free-market small business owners and strict constitutionalists – a tool and Astroturf organization deliberately created by the machinations of the Dark Lord Rove. Nope – the fact the Dark Lord himself got downright pissy over the fact that Christine O’Donnell scooped the primary in Delaware over the favored GOP candidate . . . and then went on to demonstrate that financially, she has no need of the established lords of the GOP and their deep coffers. It’s not just a case of the tail wagging the dog; the high lords of the established American political process (Republican Division) have discovered to their absolute horror that in this political season, the Tea Party is not the tail . . . but the dog itself, and they have been reduced to being the tail. Or possibly the materiel which emerges regularly from a little bit south of the tail – but I don’t think they will be the first to come to this realization, nor will they be the last.
See – if you really had paid attention to the Tea Party, or been deeply involved from the get-go, you’d have known a number of things about them. One of those things is that – although a fair number of original Tea Partiers are social conservatives, even evangelical Christians – the fiscal-conservative/free market/strict constitutionalist mindset trumps all that. There’s also a strong libertarian bent among them, and a prejudice towards individual responsibility. Basically, it’s ‘let me alone to work out my own economic/personal salvation’ which usually results in statist tools pouncing triumphantly and saying things like “Ah-ha! So you don’t want roads, or police departments, or an FDA screening dangerous drugs, or social security – hah! You hypocrites!†This is something of an exercise in straw-man construction when it comes to Tea Partiers; generally we acknowledge that a government is good for something: roads, delivery of the post, defense of the nation, and a care for the health of the public are good things, and the rightful interest of a representative government elected by the people. It’s just that a good thing taken too far eventually becomes a bad thing . . . and in the words of that wonderful document, the Declaration of Independence ‘destructive of those ends.’ The way to Hell is paved with good intentions – in the eyes of Tea Partiers, a cold and unsparing look at the long-term results of those various good intentions is way, way past due, as well as a reconsideration of maintaining such programs which grew, like Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, out of good intentions some thirty, fifty or eighty years ago. Or even severely modifying them – because one of the other unspoken tenets of people who tend to become Tea Partiers – is that if well-intentioned laws, programs and practices have a bad result in the real world, than perhaps such laws, programs and practices out to be revised, amended or terminated.
All the good intentions in the world do not – repeat, do not – excuse or justify a destructive result. In the real world – that one where one in which most of us live – that which has a bad result should not be continued, full stop, end discussion. It has also been noticed that frequently those who insists that such a law, program or practice ought to be continued with just because of the original good intentions were noble, and that it hasn’t worked because we haven’t worked hard enough at it – have a vested interest in such continuation. As it looks to be shaping up this election season, that kind of blind devotion to principles, lack of consideration to results and self-interest has consequences, some of them severe. Life-threatening, even. Certainly career-threatening, to judge by the way that long-time career Dem politicians are distancing themselves at speed from bagatelles such as Obama-care, and top GOP strategists are regarding primary victories by Tea Party oriented candidates over the properly anointed candidates with horrified disbelief. I can almost hear them saying ‘OMG – they are serious about small-governments and the Constitution!’
PS – as it turns out, O’Donnell is said to be a witch! Three Beers Later…: O'DONNELL 2010“>This kind of witch, I think…
Been kind of amusing, surfing the blogosphere in the wake of the Beck rally last weekend – the usual quibble over how many people were actually there, as if a threshold of so many people crammed elbow to elbow at the Lincoln Memorial actually will confer legitimacy/credibility in the eyes of our so-called bettors, looking down their lorgnettes from the lofty heights and sniffing “Oh, honestly, who do those plebs think they are?†Still, 300,000 or half a million, sweating in the hot sun in a crowded venue; for every one who actually attended, how many would have been there, but couldn’t afford it in these economic hard times, or had obligations elsewhere. How many watched it on television, or on streaming video, and wished they had been there?
How many more will come to the 9/12 rally – more than last year? I know very well that the Restore Honor rally was more of Glenn Beck’s ecumenical religious revival thing, whereas this years’ 9/12 march from the Washington Monument to the Capitol is intended as a tax-payer’s protest and organized by a far wider coalition of groups generally lumped together under the heading “Party of Tea.†In a fair number of so-called elite minds, though, the two are pretty much conflated, if only because it’s pretty much the same kind of citizen participation in both. There is a lot of overlap – no sense or utility in pretending otherwise, but the difference in focus is a subtle one. I’d have to say that generally the Tea Partiers I knew put the fiscally-sound, strict Constitutionalist and free-market principles first, and then the socio-religious principles standing about a half-step behind. Which means that they’ll make common political cause with the gay atheist libertarian any day of the week, and probably enjoy each others’ company enormously to boot, especially if beer and tuna hot-dish is involved.
This might have the common run of moderately-leftishly-liberal bloggers would be quivering in their boots as well, if they ever cared to look beyond the grotesque caricature they have created of a Tea Partier. Now and again, a commentator on Open Salon (and in other places) will venture out among Tea Partiers, rather in the sense of an Anglican arch-bishop venturing among the cannibals, and return either startled at being treated politely and respectfully, and how very . . . very nice they all are. Usually, they are jumped upon by their peers, and brought back around to the correct way of thinking toot-sweet. But they are worried on some level – I would guess, just from the level of vituperative comment.
There will be a great many attending 9/12 rallies; there maybe even more than the Beck revival at the Washington one, or so I am presuming, given the level of deep unhappiness welling up. Not uncontrolled lynch-mob anger as the elites of our political/media/academic class keep assuming, picturing something like a rightist version of anarchists protesting at the G-8 summit. The anger is real, but it’s cold and focused, not easily baited into acting or speaking foolishly, and somewhat beneath the surface of things, rather like a deep ocean current. The very existence of that current must have a lot of other people – in media, and in politics-as-they-are waking up in a cold sweat at night. Because November 2010 is coming, and after that, November 2012 – and I just don’t see things improving for our very own established professional political class in the next two years. If I have observed anything of the current administration over the last year or so – it’s that everything they have tried to do to fix a problem area has just resulted in making it infinitely worse. Even the redecorated Oval Office looks worse than it did before. (Yikes – 70ies earth tones, back again!)
I am, praise be to certain workaholic habits of mine (the one which goes into hyper-space warp-speed drive when faced with an impending deadline) actually able to come up for air today. One large chunk o’impending deadline all but finished but for the polishing and tweaking, and the other all but finished save for the author getting back to me to answer some questions about her MS. Life is good. And so is that 12-ounce bottle of Shiner Bohemian Black Lager that I have drunk about half of, as a reward to myself. Nice burnt-sugar overtones. I’m writing this Sunday evening at about 5:45 PM Sunday, so no need to go all interventionish on me.
Of course, I still have about three other big projects hanging over me – but the largest are out of the way, so I can come up for air and take note of some of the weirdness around me.
OK, so it looks like America’s next top model . . . is six foot something and so impossibly thin that a man’s hands can span her waist: Which was a charmingly old-fashioned standard of feminine beauty in the 19th century, when it was achieved only by the use of a fierce whale-bone corset and a couple of strong maids, hauling away. Dear god, the girl looks like she is morphing into a praying mantis. So, if this is what the fashion designers want to hang their clothes on, just animate a wire hanger and be done with it, and leave the rest of us alone with our cellulite.
So, the same breed of statist limpd**ks that tried to launch the Coffee Party and are trying yet again, with yet an amazingly stupid tee shirt and mug with the logo ‘f*ck tea’. Apparently that’s all you have to do, to get a movement really going. Print up some tee shirts and get your friends in the juice-box mafia (aka whatever has taken the place of JournoList) to push the meme.
Hey, boys and girls, we can put on a show ourselves, around in back in the barn!
Apparently, they insist they are trying to bring about a serious discussion of serious issues and
the something like 54% of citizens who approve and support Tea Party principles should just . . . I dunno, sit down and shut up and be ruled over unquestioningly by the new aristos. OK, one more time: strict interpretation of the Constitution, fiscally responsible, free markets. The Tea Party is a distributed, leaderless insurgency, based on a few core principles, not one person. I don’t know how I can make it any more plain than that. Aside from that, boys and girls, if it looks like bought n’paid for Astroturf, smells like Astroturf, feels like Astroturf and is being rolled out there by the same ol’ Astroturf purveyors . . . then it probably is indeed, Astroturf. Here’s hoping that not too many of the ‘f*ck tea’ ‘tards don’t get stuck with a garage full of un-sellable tee shirts . . . oh, f*ck that – I hope they do.
So, the Mighty O’s approval ratings continue to crater. Time to take another vacation. Look, Mr. Hopey-Changey, coming out with support of a mosque/community/center/arms bunker whatever in the neighborhood of New York’s Ground Zero on one day, then walking back the next – not a good idea. Indecisive, duplicitous, or just plain old telling-the-audience-what-they-wanna-hear? I don’t know, I’m not a licensed political professional, or a mind-reader, but you are getting bad advice from someone. Or if you are getting good advice . . . oh, f*ck it . . . take the bad advice. No one will ever notice. Really. November is a little more than a month and a half away. Kick back, you and the wife and kids take another vay-cay. It’s all on us, I insist.
Yes, freedom of religion in America technically would permit the mosque/whatever to be built wherever . . . good taste and a sense of tact would argue that Ground Zero is perhaps a good place. Sorta like a museum of the Confederacy would not be a good fit in downtown Harlem. (But it might give Cholly Rangel a case of the vapors, so it wouldn’t be a wasted effort to suggest it.)
Ah well – enough of a rant. Blondie and I went up to Boerne yesterday, and brought back some smoked ribs and BBQ sauce from (I kid you not) a Shell gas station quickie-mart on the corner of Main Street and SH-46, which has a meat counter and a BBQ stand which has the best BBQ around. It’s called the Riverside Market. We stopped in for some soft drinks, and it smelled so enticing that we stopped in on our way home from Boerne Market Days and bought some for take out. Remember – Boerne, Shell Station, on Main Street, and SH-46, just as you cross the river. The place was wall to wall with local people. And the BBQ smelt like the food of the gods.
The first day of August, in South Texas. It’s hot. I should probably not have to reiterate this; it should go without saying, like the North and South Poles are cold, Saudi Arabia has oil, Russians drink a lot of vodka and NY Rep. Charles Rangel is as corrupt as the day is long.
Speaking of good ol’ Chollie Rangel, I guess that he is the next one under the Obama-bus, he and Maxine Walters both. What brought that on that spot of Capitol Hill Cleanup, BTW – a bit of pre-emptive housecleaning against a turnover in November? Ah, well – enjoy the view of the axles and transmission. Heck, there are so many others under that bus it must be jacked up like one of those monster off-road vehicles that you need a 16-foot ladder to get into.
I see – mostly through noting the Yahoo News cliplets which come up whenever I access my email – that Chelsea Clinton got married this last weekend, in a lavish, celebrity-studded, ultra-high end round of festivities at some grand estate in scenic upstate New York. Two or three million is the price-tag . . . which I presume has stimulated some segment of the economy, at least the bridal-industrial complex portion of it. Oh, and air traffic over that part of NY was cut off – security concerns, of course, and between the guests, their entourages, the news crews and the rubberneckers, I presume the related traffic has been a nightmare for the ordinary residents. Three million. On a wedding. While the peasants watch from the sidewalk, tugging their forelocks in obeisance to their betters. Look, I don’t mind weddings, and even wish the presumably happy couple the best, and all that . . . but wasn’t this exercise a little . . . I don’t know – vulgar? Unnecessarily ostentatious, kind of Marie Antoinettish, in time of severe economic downturn? Again, the two or three million wasn’t flushed down the john, I am sure a lot of people got a nice few days or weeks of work out of it, from the waiters hired by the caterer, the flower-arrangers, the owners of local hotels and motels, the limo-drivers and the extra security . . . but still – it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth – it smacks of royalty putting on a show. Jenna Bush’s wedding, and John F. Kennedy’s wedding just seem comparatively more sensible, suitable and tasteful.
Where in the world is Shirley Sherrod, the Mouth from the South – and are her fifteen minutes of fame over? Is she still planning to sue Andrew Breitbart – and on what grounds? You know, PBS could make a kid’s show out of this, a la Carmen Sandiego, with Shirley zipping around to racial hotspots, and dropping clues to the audience. Hey, they could even do an international edition. If any producers want to discuss this concept with me, drop me a private message.
And speaking of the NAACP – how come their president, Ben Jealous looks about as white as my brother JP? No kidding, he looks a lot like my brother – dark hair and eyes, gets a decent tan in the summer.
And finally – JournoList. So I wasn’t having a tin-foil hat moment, wondering why suddenly some news stories, such as that about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Fred Phelps of the Chicago area mega-church scene – just seemed to suddenly vanish down the memory hole during that 2008 campaign season. Here I was thinking that having listened to that nutcase in the pulpit for twenty years would surely have been the kiss of death for a candidate for any office, let alone the highest in the land. My bad – here came the JournoListers to save the day for their guy! Note to self – memorize the lists of members, and consider with a handful of fleur de sel anything they write which I happen to come across. Give them a ration of &$#@! in any comments permitted about having aided in the corruption of the newsgathering process – and the political process.
Seeing November from My House,
I remain,
Sgt Mom
Posting’s been light, because . . . I have a platter full of work right in front of me. And three-quarters of it will be for pay. The remaining quarter is split between providing good a few spoonfuls of good bloggy ice cream, and trying to finish the next book. I was alternating between two – one set during the early days of Anglo settlement in Texas, and up through the Republic of Texas days, tentatively entitled Gone to Texas, and another set fifty years later, in the cattle boom and barbed wire days. Write a chapter or two on one, set it aside, write a chapter or two on the other. Kept from getting bored or blocked, y’see.
But – and that is a Michael Moore sized butt, right there – I had to pull full steam ahead on the Gone to Texas – which may wind up being called Daughter of Texas, having made a decision to have the official launch/release date on the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, April 21. The senior partner in the Tiny Publishing Bidness loves my stuff and we are setting up an account with the printer “Lightning Source†so we can do POD books, as an alternative to litho print. So – my book will be the test run for us. With luck I can scrape some local media interest, since that will be the start of Fiesta. A release date late in April means I have to start sending out advance review copies in late September. Working backwards from that deadline means I have to finish the five or six chapters in the next month, so . . . yes, the personal work schedule is full. I’ll set up to take orders in December, though – for copies to be delivered in early April.
With all this going on, I had to step back from certain other activities, including volunteering for the local Tea Party – but there are so many people getting into it all, I don’t think my absence will be missed. And I certainly will continue blogging about Tea Party matters, and perhaps even a little more freely, since what I now say will reflect only on myself, not the local org. Hey, I might even get to go to a rally or two, and not have to stay afterwards for hours, cleaning up!
I’d write something about the ongoing revelations about the JournoList . . . except that what I’d have to say boils down to two statements: “Yeah, I thought there was something strange about how some stories had legs from here to there and back again, and others vanished into a black hole,†and “Oh, boy – bring on the popcorn! This is gonna be fun!â€
Simply wonderful stuff bubbling up from other bloggers over the last couple of days – rich, creamy bloggy goodness that I simply have to share … that is, if you have not already found it yourself.
The pretensions of our new aristocratic class, dissected for your pleasure, here
I think what has happened is that over the past few decades, the more traditional forms of conspicuous consumption have become less and less effective for wealthy snobs who wish to ostentatiously parade their privilege. It used to be that the rich could be content with having lots of fancy toys and whatnot. But nowadays, when basically anyone above lower-lower class can head to Wal-Mart and pick up a plasma TV, drive a nice SUV, or even get a mortgage to ‘buy’ a McMansion somewhere (at least before ’07), it gets harder and harder for the wealthy to parade their specialness and privilege in front of the rest of us. So it’s only natural that they have increasingly turned to the realm of political postures as their method of choice for distinguishing themselves from the masses. Indeed, in this light it makes perfect sense that leftist policies would be the ones most likely to harm, constrain and impoverish folks who are merely middle class (but not upper middle class).
(link found, courtesy of Chicagoboyz )
Where our new aristos came from, and what they want. Power, basically. But you already knew that.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
(Link found first through da Blogfadda, but this essay is now being linked everywhere, including a fascinating discussion at The Belmont Club)
From the Department of Take a Number and Get in Line – thoughts on hating Obama…
If anyone during the 2008 had implied, or even speculated, that Obama was capable of anything of the sort, he’d have been dismissed as a demagogue, a hater, even a lunatic. But today, after his abandonment of the state of Tennessee (also wracked by flooding), his betrayal of the Georgians, his pulling the rug out from under the Poles and Czechs, his dragging and cold response to the Gulf blowout, his insults to the UK, the GOP, the Supreme Court, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Dalai Lama, it scarcely raises a shrug. That’s Obama. That’s how he acts — with arrogance, superciliousness, and indifference. We can search the entire roster of American presidents, and we will not find a match. This is not the behavior of an elected chief executive; it’s the conduct of a divine right monarch, and a pretty inadequate one as well.
And finally, those poor, suffering, starving and water-deprived Palestinians of Gaza – they only just now got a new shopping mall.
In Turkey, life expectancy is 72.23 and infant mortality is 24.84 per 1,000 births.
In Gaza, life expectancy is 73.68 and infant mortality is 17.71 per 1,000 births.
Turkey has a literacy rate of 88.7% while in Gaza it is 91.9%. (It is much lower in Egypt and other Arab countries where Israel did not establish colleges and universities in the 1970s and 1980s.)
Gaza’s GDP is almost as high as Turkey’s and much, much higher than most of Africa that gets 1,000th of the aid per capita that Gaza gets from the West.
(Source for above info: CIA World Factbook)
World hunger organizations report that 10-15 million children below the age of 5 die each year, and 50,000 people die daily. One-third of all deaths in the world are due to poverty.
While famine kills millions of children in Africa, India, and elsewhere, life expectancy for Gaza Arabs, at 72 years, is nearly five years higher than the world average. In Swaziland, for example, life expectancy is less than 40 years, and it is 42 years in Zambia.
Meanwhile Western governments, misled by Western media, continue to pour more and more money into Gaza for people that don’t need it, while allowing black Africans to starve to death.
As the correspondent for one of Japan’s biggest newspapers said to me last week, “Gaza and the West Bank are the only places in the world where I have seen refugees drive Mercedes.â€
Link courtesy of Rantburg
To: The NAACP and others
Re: The Events of This Week WRT the Tea Party
From: Sgt Mom
1. To the NAACP – Well, thanks. Just thanks. After god-knows-how-many years of being carefully schooled – by the public school system, the military and by the mainstream media (to include the TV and motion picture establishment) to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin – and obediently taking every word of four decades of lectures about racial equality to heart, now I confess to being rather whipsawed by the discovery that you all are just another squalid, money and vote-grubbing racially-based faction seeking political advantage, fearful about loosing what little control you have over events, and doing the bidding of one particular political splinter of one particular political party. So much for appealing to justice, honor, equality before the law, and all the rest of it; that rumbling sound you hear – that must be MLK revolving in his grave with sufficient RPMs – that if hooked up to a generator would power a small city. In my eyes, your crime this week is that you have basically bought into a Big Lie. You have essentially joined a political lynch mob, in accusing the Tea Party (a widely spread and officially disorganized popular insurgency based upon fiscal responsibility, free markets and strict adherence to the founding tenants of the Constitution) of being something akin to the KKK sans white sheets. Duly noted; I thought one of your own founding tenets was opposition to things like lynch mobs, inflamed by thin and unsubstantiated rumor and the bigoted vaporings of press reports with a naked agenda. How does it feel, joining the rush of easy and facile judgment – enjoy the nice glow of satisfaction? What fun, to join in on the wilding of an officially-approved target! Waiting for a pat on the head, for having been obedient to your master?
2. Which brings me to the second part of this rant; the folly of having joined your socio-political fortunes to someone whose skin is (at a squint) of color, but whose life-experience seems only distantly American, whose resume of actual managerial experience in any enterprise (military, commercial or governmental) is cobweb-insubstantial, and whose actual skill at what is required of him as POTUS and therefore ostensible leader of the so-called Free World (insert brutally skeptical quotes wherever you see fit) is sub-par. Heroically, mind-bogglingly sub-par . . . and what is the saddest part of all is that there were and are good solid candidates of color, with real-world experience, and undoubted abilities who would have been fairly able to excellent Chief Executives. How sad that you could not bring yourselves to examine the content of character rather than color of skin. Might have saved yourself the embarrassment of metaphorically chaining yourself to a political disaster.
3. As for demanding that a broadly based and distributed, leaderless, volunteer, non-formal-membership, non-dues-paying movement stressing fiscal responsibility and a strict adherence to the Constitution . . . well, what is it that you want us to do about so-called racists who might or might not be informally associated with us? Tell you what – you all formally disassociate yourself from the New Black Panther Party, and race-mongering bigots like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. You first. I’ll wait.
Sincerely
Sgt Mom
To: Various
Re: Current Situation in the Gulf of Mexico
From: Sgt Mom
1. To our various house-broken major-media news-hounds: So, here we have a situation, producing an oil leak from a busted oil well in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, of such a copious quantities that it has been described as the equivalent of the cargo of the Exxon Valdez every four days, and this has been going on for . . . . 60 days and counting? Yes, I know the crisis has come on a little slowly, not nearly as fast as Hurricane Katrina – after which then-President Bush had about two days grace before being raked viciously over the coals for not swinging into the federal government into action instanter than instant and fixing everything immediately! Exacting standards for performance in coping with the results of man-made and natural disasters should most certainly be applied for other than Republican administrations – and we are looking forward to see you apply them. Not holding my breath on it – but definitely looking forward to it.
2. Gratifyingly, there are definite signs of this dawning on those who have an ambition of being more than Baghdad Bob Gibbs press pool lap-dog. Perhaps this new awareness may have come in time to save y’all from the general impression that you are as partisan a collection of hacks who ever lightly edited a government/corporate press release and knocked off early for an expenses-paid luncheon. Or maybe not. And speaking of Robert Gibbs, doesn’t he just remind you of the fat, smug authority-figure suck-up from high school, whom hardly anyone could stand except for a handful of other authority-ass-kissing sycophants? The one who was beneath contemptuous notice by the athletes – but that the bad kids once ganged up on, pantsed, painted a rude, rude word on his pallid buttocks in indelible ink, administered a swirly in the nastiest toilet on campus and then chained him to the flag-pole? With his trou around his knees so that everyone could appreciate their lack of spelling skills?
3. So, don’t tell me that y’all in the White House Press Corps haven’t had that fantasy float through your heads. I have my ways of knowing these things. When you do, get footage of it, even if only on cell-phone cameras, please, please post on YouTube anonymously. You know the drill.
4. To the innocent citizens of the locality formerly known as Great Britain; I am sorry, sorrier than I can ever say . . . especially as this affects pensioners and ordinary investors – of both our countries who had investments in BP. Me, I thought we still had a rule of law, which applied equally to individuals and entities. The so-called ‘Chicago Way’ I had thought was confined to . . . well, Chicago. And gangster movies. I know very well that many of you indeed are not fat-cat capitalists, in frock-coats and top-hats, lighting your cigars with $50 bills, or the current Euro equivalent. The remarks of the current resident of the White House, and those of certain of our own citizens, and our own national media with regard to dreadful matter are, to put it kindly, unhelpful. I apologize again for them. I will note, for the record, that I did not vote for him. Believe it or not, quite a good few of us did not, so if you would be so kind, don’t lump us in with those Americans who were too starry-eyed over Mr. Hope’n’change to think straight.
5. I do wonder, however – if the situation were reversed, and a wholly American-owned drilling company experienced a disaster of the same magnitude in, say, the North Sea, and the resulting oil plume threatened your coastline – what the tenor of public and media comment in your sphere would be, then. Just wondering – I’m deeply cynical, that way. BTW, from the tone of British and European media coverage of Obama in the 2008 election season, I was left with the distinct impression that his victory being welcomed with hosannas of happy joy by one and all. How’s that hope’n’change working out for y’all? Miss GWB yet?
6. You know, seeing how the offer of efficient Dutch skimmer ships was turned down, how an exemption for the Jones Act to permit foreign ships to assist with the clean-up wasn’t obtained in a timely fashion, and how permits for the construction of sand berms to shelter fragile Louisiana coastal wetlands were delayed, and then the deployment of barges equipped to suck up oil were sidelined while the Coast Guard ascertained that they had sufficient safety gear on board, and how the well is still gushing . . . well, one might wonder if the continuance of this crisis is an advantage to the Obama administration. After all, Rahm Emmanuel famously urged that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. Shut down drilling for oil in the Gulf – which is a body blow for that industry – allow by inaction the fouling of the coastline, which affects tourism and local commercial fishing . . . My mother often cautioned me never to attribute to malice which could be easily explained by simple ineptitude, but in this case I might be persuaded to make an exception.
7. Finally, I would suggest that readers pick up some extra bags of frozen Gulf shrimp, the next time they are at Sam’s or Costco – the price is gonna go up, if it hasn’t already. But don’t forget – we can see November from our house.
Sincerely,
Sgt Mom
(Later – Found through Facebook link …
I see by the headlines this morning that the President gave a prime-time speech on TV last night . . . gee, like that hasn’t happened lately? Or what seems like every week since a year ago January. Vacation, speech, vacation speech, party at the WH, speech, vacation, trip to someplace or other, speech, vacation . . . It’s a grueling schedule, people – I for one, can barely keep up with it. Nor can I listen to the sound of that sonorous, empty-content equivalent of political cotton-candy for another minute; so thanks – I’ll just do a quick scan of the transcript . . . oh, like cotton candy, it shrivels down to a couple of teaspoons of sugar syrup, once all the hot air has been excised.
Looks like it went over like the proverbial lead balloon; kind of the cherry on the top of the bitter sundae of disappointment with our president among those who were stumbling in a golden haze of worship and adoration a bare eighteen months ago; yes, I am have been detecting the stirrings of disaffection and careful distancing of themselves from the shadow of the Glorious One – especially among the punditocracy, who were so quick to go down on their knees so many months ago. Talk about wailing and lamentations – I might have to get some earplugs soon, if creatures like Maureen Dowd, Peggy Noonan and Jon Stewart get any shriller. Over at my digs on Open Salon, the murmurings among the up-to-know obedient faithful are still as a gentle surf: they are bewildered, not quite openly rebellious yet. (And too damn many of them are still using the t******er slur . . . oh, Carrie Fisher? You are dead to me now. Never shall I spend money on one of your books or movies again.) Where was I – oh, enjoying a quiet romp through the meadows of schadenfreude, and biting back my impulse to snarl at the poor bewildered lefty darlings to grow a pair, or a spine, and ask them – well, what did you expect, you idiots?
Yes, what did you expect, supporting and voting into the highest office in the land, a charming and well-spoken cipher, with a resume of real accomplishment thinner than Callista Flockhart’s thighs, a jet-propelled affirmative action fast-burner shooting up the ladder so fast that all negative fall-out was left far, far behind, who never held a meaningful job in an industry, a small business, or in the military, a man with a lot of rather embarrassing friends and connections, a hollow man from the bowels of the Chicago political machine – than which there is none in the land possibly more corrupt or unaccountable – with no real and perceptible managerial talent, who can’t speak off-the-cuff and off-the-teleprompter in any coherent fashion . . . yes, what did you $#&$king well expect? I won’t even go into the list of the One’s other incompetencies, it’s too &$@king depressing.
I perceive though, that many who were only too happy to support him back then are now very, very sorry. I perceive also that many of us be sorrier still, in the very near future, so for those who went all starry-eyed over the One Who Some Of You Were Waiting For, I have a request. Apologize, publicly, abjectly and without reservation, for your part in having landed us with this malevolent fool. Wear sackcloth and ashes, stand in the marketplace for a day – and if you were a prominent pundit, a Hollywood personality or news-reporting professional (or any combination – it gets hard to tell, sometimes) who went all ga-ga for the O-man, then I suggest that a spot of hari-kiri would not be out of place, either. Perhaps you can expiate some of your guilt by driving a tanker truck full of dish detergent down to the Gulf Coast and spending the next few months de-oiling sea birds. I don’t care – just stay out of politics, away from the microphone and out of the voting booth for the near future, since you have demonstrated yourself to be too #$&%king gullible to have any civic responsibility expected of you.
Sincerely,
Sgt Mom
You know, it amuses the bitter cynic within me, that of the critics, pundits and just plain bloviating a-holes of both the professional and ungifted amateur varieties who felt the urge to charge out there and start opining on the Tea Parties, and the people who participated in them – damn few of them appeared actually to have gone to a real Tea Party protest for longer than about twenty minutes. In the case of news professionals, those seem to have remained just long enough to shoot the footage and scoot back to the studio or newsroom. Few of the national mainstream media geniuses felt a need to talk in depth to anyone who participated in any of the planning for same, or read any of the various Tea Party websites and newsletters. Too much trouble to actually search out some genuine representative samples, apparently – easier just to talk to some self-identified expert already in the rolodex, and come up with a superficial judgment based on two or three minutes of TV news camera footage.
I do have to admit, while this has provided an irony-rich environment for me over the last eight months – it seems to have left the national main-stream media and those of the leftoid persuasion floundering in a sea of misconceptions: Those awful, horrible, rude Tea Party people! They-they’re dumb! They’re a put-up job by Faux News! They’re red-neck, bitter-clinging white men! They’re raaaacists! They’re potentially violent! They have no real program other than expressing their resentment of a Black Man being in the White House! They don’t think! They’re a bunch of religious nutters! They’re a front for the GOP/the health insurance industry! They’re a crop of Dick Army-corporate supported astroturf! Und so weider, und so weider, so on and so forth. Myself, I came away from the experience of reading what was said about the Tea Parties and what I knew from first-hand immersion with bad case of existential whip-lash.
Our events were jolly and laid-back, kind of like the largest neighborhood block party in the world. We very carefully picked up the trash, policed ourselves for threats of violence and intemperate talk about secession. Not a GOP party front, or a shill for any media network; most of us were angry at both organized political parties. Racial-hate element? Oh, please. For all that the CBC and elements of the frothing media keep insisting on it by comparing the Tea Parties to the KKK, actual, verifiable evidence for that is pretty thin on the ground. We were funded by small donations from individuals. There’s no national leadership calling the shots, no big corporate sugar-daddy, no paychecks for any of us. Frankly, there’s not enough money in any slush-fund, no matter how humongous to pay for what we did as volunteers, and go ahead: multiply that among Tea Parties in other towns and other states. It turns out also, according to a CBS/NY Times poll (which actually surveyed real Tea Partiers- whotta shocka!) that the average Tea Party activist tends to be a little better educated than the average American, and in another recent poll that a large proportion of the ground to mid-level organizers are women. I have tried to explain various elements of this, to people who fall somewhat along the leftish side of the spectrum, and seem to pride themselves very much on their intelligent toleration for everyone who agrees with them. Nope – no credence given for the evidence of my own lying eyes.
This kind of serial misunderstanding, dismissing the Tea Parties out of hand as just another unfocused temper tantrum, has come at something of a cost in credibility for the mainstream national media: is it a coincidence that MSNBC’s ratings are tanking, readership of the NY Times is down, and Newsweek is on the block? Granted, coincidence is not necessarily causality – but still . . . people who are Tea Partiers, and those who only sympathize with them have very little appetite for being continually denigrated, ridiculed and marginalized. And that portion of the public who still retains any faith and credence in mainstream media outlets may be in for an unpleasant surprise. We do more than just protests. There’s been an effort gathering steam over the last eight or nine months, as more and more people inside the Tea Party organizations sat down and thought about it, working at the local level to support candidates who support the small-government-strict-constitutionalist-free-market POV. Not a third-party; that way lies disaster, but to work at the local caucus level, to get the word out about viable candidates in ones’ own and other districts – candidates who perhaps might see a term or two in the House or Senate as a citizen’s temporary duty, rather than a thirty or forty-year long career. You don’t have to believe me, of course – free country, still – but don’t be surprised, come November. I will have told you so.
Nononono . . . not the kinda-sorta-conservative political part of that entity formerly known as Great Britain, and usually prefaced with the adjectives ‘hidebound’ and ‘reactionary’ . . . but those citizens of the 13 British colonies distributed along the east coast of the North American continent, two centuries and change ago. Those who disliked the thought of independence, of having their comfortable apple-cart upset, who liked the way of things as they were, and trusted above all that the Crown divinely appointed, of course. They trusted the Crown, of course. They trusted the Crown’s duly selected, and properly credentialed authorities to Know What Is Best for All, most especially what is best for the upstart, uncultured and amateur rabble. Who, being poor, unwashed, uneducated and singularly bereft of connection to as well as the friendship of Important People at Court, as well as their Pet Intellectuals (certified to have had all their shots and been properly neutered and de-clawed) were in desperate need of the guidance of their betters.
Such rebellious rabble were to be severely chastised if they had the gall to reject said guidance, for of course, those proffering such guidance had pure and noble motives, uncontaminated by any thought of gain or personal advancement. (Yeah, I know – a bit of a straw-man there, but I am having fun with it – indulge me.) Of course, looking at the mighty establishment of an Empire, (even if in a nascent form) and about two thousand years (or even longer!) of habitual deferment to the Big Guy with the Nice Shiny Sword, the Bigger Army and the Well-organized Establishment – certainly at least a third of the American colonists could do the political math. Bow to the Big Guy, acknowledge his authority, timorously attempt to ameliorate the worst aspects of his policies, sigh and throw up your hands and call it a day when your feeble attempt is rebuffed. You tried – and good intentions trump all. Good intentions count more than eventual results. That’s life under an aristocracy/oligarchy. The well-intentioned aristos and intellectuals retreat to their comforts and wring their hands. All that counts in this version of the exercise is good intentions and meaning well, feebly. Am I a bitch for snarling something rude therefore, concerning the traditional paving materiel used for the off-ramp to the Judeo-Christian theoretical concept known as Hell? Yeah, probably so: adjust. For I am a quiet rebel, and now I recognize my own, very well. And I have also begun to recognize my enemies, the new Tories.
In the words of a very astute observer at the Belmont Club,
There is a huge reserve of strength and good will in the American people. It is literally the only force on this planet with the ability to turn the ship around. The “ruling class†won’t do it. The “moneyed class†won’t do it. The “chattering class†won’t do it. The “intellectual class†won’t do it. It will be the tens of millions of productive citizens who – with the help of modern communication technology – will force an accounting, and accountability. The misadventures of the political class has awakened a sleeping giant, and it’s on the move.
Those in L3’s trenchant description, those are the present-day Tories. They’ve got theirs, Jack – they have the friends at Court – oops, the friends inside the Beltway – the house in the gated enclave, the tenured position in the education establishment, an income-stream so generous that nothing the current administration or its minions could do would ever reduce them to shopping at Goodwill or Wally-world. They’ve got theirs, so they can cheerfully go on paying lip-service to the principles upon which this nation was founded, while at the same time undermining, denigrating and perverting those principles and standards at every turn. And the ‘chattering classes’ and the ‘intellectual classes, (not to mention the ‘media classes) may continue viciously abusing those ordinary concerned citizens – those who are concerned enough about a suddenly quadrupled national deficit – with baseless accusations of racism, indiscriminate violence, sedition, being the puppets of various interests, and just plain general ignorance. My god, these Tories have the very nerve – accusing the rebellious Tea Partiers deeds which they themselves have committed in the past. Like millions of others, I have been driven ever farther into disrespect – and to open rebellion against our very own Tory class.
I and most of my middle-class friends in the Tea Party movement do not have the princely advantages that these new Tories possess, although many of them are at least comfortable. My own military pension is roughly 25% of what I had in my paycheck my last year of service, and my other income stream is – to say the least, erratic, although I very much enjoy the work that I do to bring it in, of marketing my books and producing blog materiel for pay – I enjoy it because mostly, I am my own boss. I can work at home, taking a break when I feel like it. I do occasionally have to hand-hold clients who fall along the full spectrum from the difficult to the seriously deranged – but that is by my own choice. I work at night, and on weekends, even federal holidays, when a project needs to be finished. I have a certain amount of freedom – perilously maintained, but it is freedom. I answer to my clients and customers, and very rarely to anyone else. And that, I surmise is what the New Tories despise above all: that we would rather control our own lives, even if the actual work is arduous and success not absolutely guaranteed. We are comfortable and independent enough in our lives. We are not clients or dependent upon the modern oligarchs and aristos, or the big government teat – yet, anyway. I will close with another quote: this one from the Old Testament: 1 Kings, 19-18
“Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.â€
Not being one of those terribly imaginative people – except when it comes to my books, and then it’s katy-bar-the-door – I’ve managed over the years to avoid being caught up in many of those OMG-TEOTWAWKI panics. I know that people with books to sell, and local television news reporters, not to mention the talk shows love this kind of thing, but the truth is, I’ve just seen too many of them fizzle out. Future shock, global nuclear winter, satanic abuse in day-care, overpopulation, Y2K, and AWG . . . not any of those sent me into any kind of panic, although it wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of various peers. Chalk it up to a skeptical gene, inherited from Dad the research biologist. Or maybe I just have a sort of mental time limit rule about this – if it’s still a concern after half a decade, then maybe I’ll dredge up some shreds of more than passing interest and concern.
That having been said, I wasn’t one of those entirely crushed by the election of our current President. You know, said I to myself cheerfully, ‘Self, although he is almost totally inexperienced, never been in the military, never managed a shop or met a payroll – he could develop into an effective administrator, since he doesn’t have a lot of pre-existing baggage to overcome. He’s supposed to be bright enough – everyone says so, and perhaps this time some of them could be right. He can adapt and learn – OJT! The United States is a big, strong, stable entity; this is just one president – how can just one kark up anything too badly in the space of one term? And since he is kinda-sort of black, or at least half of him is, maybe with him in office, people will get off our case about the inherent racism of the establishment, for once. What do you think about that, Self – room for optimism?’
And Self chuckled darkly, and answered, ‘Just have to wait and see about that, beeyoutch! And while you’re at it, pour me another glass of Chablis – the good stuff, not that gack-from-a-box.’
So – train-wreck. I hoped it wouldn’t be, but it’s been happening in slow-motion, all this year long. It’s not just a matter of ‘Will the administration kark up this?†but more a question of “How badly?†as the overall approval ratings for the One sink. Seriously, at this rate, by mid-summer, they’re going to have to batten down the hatches and do whatever it is with the ballast tanks that they do in old war movies to make the submarine ready for a deep dive as the alert horn goes ‘Ahhh-oooo-gah! Ahhh-oooo-gah!‘ This would all have considerable cynical amusement value for Self and me – save that a lot of other stuff will sink with the One – and no, this time I am getting worried with all the rest. Before, it had always seemed to me that the worry was more of a theoretical thing; all that was required seemed to be that you worry, too. Maybe sign a petition or two, post about it on your blog – even go to some long meetings and short protests, if you really, really felt strongly about the issue.
I keep sensing all kinds of oddball stuff, not precisely internet or news-media based, but in the no-kidding-real-world, or some mixture of the two – like a whiff of smoke in the air, or some straws blowing by, a casual comment here or there. Timmer remarking about how farmers are moving out of California, and setting up in his state. Friends of friends, moving up into the Hill Country, and having a well dug, buying a generator and plenty of emergency gasoline for it. My friend Alice’s internist grouching to her about how he is about to close up his medical practice, now that “Health Care Reform†has been voted through. Various firearm enthusiasts complaining to each other about how hard it is to buy ammunition now. And this last Sunday, when Blondie and I went out to a local nursery and specimen garden (a place of which I am terribly fond, since a lot of my money – when I had it to spend – wound up there). It was very, very crowded last weekend, more customers than I had ever seen unless there was a special event going on there. I asked one of the long-time managers of it was all right to take pictures, since I wanted to do a little feature about the beauties of spring flowers for one of my paying clients. This manager has known me casually for years, and asked after Blondie, and what she was studying in school. Blondie explained about her major – research biology, and the manger said cheerfully “Well, at least you can earn something of a living at that!†and went on, unbidden, to make mention of what Obama and his “Health Care Reform†were going to do to the medical professions – and then to tell me about how they had been selling flat after flat of vegetable starts this spring.
“Everyone’s starting a garden,†she said, “And it seems like everyone who started one already is expanding it.â€
“Oh really,†I said, noncommittally.
“This is the best spring for vegetables that I’ve ever seen,†she said.
And now, I am really, really, wierded out.
Sorry it’s taken so long, life’s been busy and about to get busier. Sometimes I have things to say that are longer than what Facebook allows. Most days that’s a good thing.
What I do know is that I’m getting more worried for our country as I watch President Obama and his merry band take away more freedoms and take over more private industry.  The banks and car companies were bad enough. The current Health Care Bill, while not as bad as we first saw it, is still bad enough and now we’re talking very personal information in the hands of the people who bring you the post office.  It’s a cliché I know, but have you had to deal with a front line Federal Customer Service Rep lately?  In any department? OMFG!  I swear sometimes I think that all those mental health patients that were released years ago, all went to work for the Feds.
What truly creeps me out, what sends an icy chill down my back, is that all my wanna-be hippie friends from high school in the 1970s who were all about “freedom from the man†and “man, read “Animal Farm†and “1984†before the Republicans take over†are now telling me to calm down and just listen to Obama.  Things are fine. Relax. Don’t panic. Everything is fine. It’s for the greater good.  I’d like to gather them all into a room and Leroy-Jethro-slap each and every one of them.
I work in Agriculture for the state where we retired. In just the past year and a half, I’ve learned that we’re basically getting more and more of California’s “Happy Cows†because their regulation on dairies has become so restrictive, the farmers have picked up and moved over here.  We’re expecting an influx of their egg farmers here soon as well. California’s animal rights people don’t like how egg farmers coop their chickens so…the egg farmers will move out and come over here and our state will get all that tax base goodness.  Ya see, if you make things too hard for a business, if you add too much regulation, they’ll just move away and not come back.  Especially if the people doing the regulating have NO clue about what they’re talking about. You want to make a farmer’s eyes go blank? Start talking about the individual rights of an egg layin’ chicken.  Hell, I’ve just met chickens casually and I’ll look at you like you’re a fool if you speak about their rights.
Now people…I’m sorry, but people have rights.  Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.  They’re not just words to me. I’m very fond of those rights.  Liberty is “a big fucking deal†to me.  It’s not just some “concept†or “catch phrase left over from the 1700s.â€Â When I was in the Air Force I signed over some liberty.  Can’t have a military that’s “too†free. Nothing would get done.  I’m not in the Air Force any longer and there are things I can say about the Commander in Chief that I wouldn’t have said in uniform.  First and foremost, I believe that he believes that he’s doing the right thing.  I’m absolutely serious. And at first glance, I’m right there with him. Dammit, we’re a wealthy nation, everyone damn well SHOULD have health care.  The problems are, and this is where my high school chums get lost, that the government should NOT be able to dictate what that health care is going to look like.  They should NOT be able to dictate who my doctor will be.  They should NOT be able to dictate what a doctor can charge for his services.  They also should damn well NOT be able to dictate how much I need to spend on a plan that’s going to take my money away without any input from ME.  And yes, I use the word “dictate†to redundancy because it’s important that we understand what’s happening.  The Federal Government, in the past year, in the guise of “the common good,†has begun to dictate.  They’re taking over the banks, they’re taking over industry, they’re taking over health care.  And again, I’m absolutely positive that the President believes he’s doing the right thing.  I’m absolutely positive that he’s wrong.
So, even though the so-called Health Reform Act was pushed through Congress by an interesting mixture of threats, bribes and general arm-twisting, over the objections of well over half the American public, and Botox Nan got her chance to strut her stuff with a gavel the size of a fifty-pound sledge-hammer . . . the denigration of Tea Partiers continues apace. In fact, it has gotten even shriller . . . gosh, you’d think the Democrats and their tools in the media would be just thrilled to pieces that they won, but the mere existence of opposition appears to constitute an unbearable offense to our very own House of Lords.
Yeah, it must be a real bummer for Democratic legislators and the Obama Administration, having people all over the Capital lawns, screaming “Kill the Bill†so loudly. You could almost hear them muttering to themselves; “Honestly, who are these rubes, and what in the world gives them the idea that we work for them?†Must have been a real bummer, expecting to stroll into an auditorium of bored elders, political cranks and busybodies and administer a bit of emollient verbal pablum, field a couple questions, and stroll back to DC and get on with it. Instead, all those obstreperous Tea Partiers showed – not just at the town-hall meetings, but at the district offices, bringing letters and petitions, sending emails and faxes . . . geeze, do you have any idea how much toner costs these days? And nothing contented these people, day after day after day, with the insistent questions and demands for answers; how’s the House and Senate supposed to do business and parcel out the pork if all these voters get ideas above their pay grade!
So, ignoring them didn’t much work, and ridiculing them as teabagging, sister-humping minority-hating morons didn’t much work; neither did all sorts of heavy breathing about the Homeland Security watchlist as possible terrorists, or painting them as such in Law’n’Order episodes or Captain America comic books . . . (look, I refuse to call them graphic novels. Same with places where mobile homes are parked. I call those trailer parks, ‘kay? And you kids – get off my lawn!)
Anyway, I am viewing the current antics of our American House of Lords, and their water-carriers in the traditional media with a wary eye. Now, from being ignored and ridiculed – Tea Partiers are routinely accused of encouraging violence, or even outright accusations of it. Not much actual evidence is offered for such claims. Videos from last weekend’s protest rallies around the Capital showing members of the CBC being spit on, or called racial epithets are at best inconclusive. Obscene and threatening phone calls to Congressional offices and homes, and un-sourced vandalism present a more serious problem; as your mother would say, someone could get hurt.
And when and if someone does get hurt, that’s when the fur will really fly, and don’t tell me that the Obama Administration, the Democrat side of the House and Senate, and the mainstream media creatures who adore them aren’t just aquiver with happy anticipation at the thought, especially if responsibility for an act of violence can be pinned to a frustrated citizen with some kind of Tea Party connection – no matter how tenuous the actual connection. And insisting, as I have had, over and over and over again, that Tea Partiers are generally responsible, law-abiding citizens, who really don’t have much of a race problem – that will have no effect. We will all be smeared, with the greatest vigor – and in fact, the smearing has already begun. The battle space is being prepped; and it is entirely possible that the required incident may be manufactured to order, if it doesn’t present itself naturally. Thoughtful and sensible commentators like Wretchard, at the Belmont Club, and Neo-Neocon are drawing unsettling historical parallels.
Yes, it’s going to be a damned long eight months. When we get to the end of that period of time, are we going to see anything that we recognize as familiar?
…It’s not over. Oh, no, my friends – it’s definitely not over.
It’s just beginning. And the gestures won’t be stupid and futile.
Later – yep, just as I suspected. As one of those e-mails going around says:
Let me get this straight……we’re trying to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president that also hasn’t read it and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke.
What the hell could possibly go wrong?
Still Later – While I am doing quotes, howsabout this one?
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.†– Samuel Adams
One of the most exasperating elements WRT to tracking the fortunes of the Tea Party movement is going into comment threads here and there and running slap into the constant insistence from commenters of a certain persuasion that Tea Partiers are stupid! Stupid, I say, dumber than dirt! Drooling morons, apparently barely able to find their way to the latrine, the voting booth or to tune their radios to whatever channel is carrying Rush Limbaugh!
They bang on and on about the stupidity and reckless lack of clue among the Tea Party set constantly, seemingly impervious to any contrary evidence – such as that of my own lying eyes. Of the activists who launched my local tea party, included among them was a corporate lawyer – an A & M grad (so of course the jokes about that are endless), a professor at a local and notoriously expensive and upscale private university, a madly creative and seriously eccentric video producer, a IP techie of proven skills and a very hot temper, a military contractor specializing in very high-end specialist software, a good few scrappy real estate agents, an academic doctor . . . and then myself, the historical novelist. There was also the married lady of irreproachable virtue and deeply Christian principles who had at one point in her now-distant youth been a Playboy Bunny, a guy with a long career in print media sales who now runs a tiny construction bidness of his own, and we have since added another two lawyers, an insurance-firm executive and others of the same professional ilk. In other words, lots of professionals, managers, and graduate degrees The picture ought to be fairly clear, I would think – not too terribly many mouth-breathers among the cadre of the seriously involved, but bless their hearts, the leftoid commenters everywhere have only a few horses to flog when it comes to the Tea Party, so they flog it relentlessly. (The other equine targets being ‘you’re all raaaaacist!’ and ‘you’re all tools of the GOP/Fox News’ being the main ones, although “where were you when Booooosh maneuvered us into two illegal wars/put us into a deficit first!†is being brought around from the stable.)
It’s pathetic – this is all they have, when anyone who has ever attended, or had anything to do with a Tea Party knows that the dumb/racist/GOP tool is not only false, but completely lame. Seriously, pukes – do you want to have any credibility left as a sentient being, after November, 2010? And then I think – perhaps that is all they have. No real and workable ideas, no energy, no stamina for the dull and boring labor of actually doing political activism, the kind that takes years, the kind which consumes your life, the kind of work done by William Wilberforce and Tom Paine, by Abraham Lincoln and Lucy Stone. For a while, I did battle in comment threads, regarding the derisive epithet “tea-bagger†– I said (over and over) that using it in a discussion of the Tea Party was like using the word “n****r†in a discussion of civil rights. Eh, I think my point has been made. Of late I don’t much waste time objecting to the use of it, since it has become a time-saver. Someone using it has already marked themselves as so bigoted and essentially closed-minded that they are hardly worth wasting time and pixels over. I have to save my energy for the long fight. I can’t waste time over correcting fools.
Oh, and yeah – I have to save enough energy to earn a living, and to write some more books; currently have drafted six chapters for “The Quivera Trail†and five and a half for “Gone to Texas.â€
In the meantime, it looks like my suspicions from last week about the so-called Coffee Party being nothing more than a fresh roll of Axelrod Astroturf? Oh, yeah – big time. The blogosphere is on the hunt. I deduce that fresh scalps will soon be joining those on the drying-rack next to those lifted from the heads of the global-warming crowd. Good times, people, good times.
We just got a telephone mecho-call from Kay Bailey Hutchison – claiming that she had been endorsed by National Tea Party leader Dick Armey…
So, Blondie said… “Er… who?”
And I said, “We have a leader?”
Seriously, we have a leader? OMG, if this call went out to everyone in Texas with a telephone … she has seriously just stepped all over her … er. Whatever.
Sunset Station, that is – the turn-of-the-last-century historic railway depot in San Antonio, a splendid pile of Mission Revival stucco and russet-colored roof tiles, which was the pride of the town when it was completed in 1903. The main depot building had electric lights up the wazoo, and a pair of round stained-glass windows in the peak of the roof on either end, glass windows that were as big as ornamental fishponds. There was a grand divided staircase at one end, and heavy wood benches arranged to best effect on the lower level. It was the waiting room, then, although I think most people waiting for a train would have been out under the awnings, where there would have been a bit of a breeze, and train travelers could have appreciated the gardens and the ornamental trees – the Southern Pacific architect and landscapers did not do things by halves, back in the days when rail travel was the thing, and automobiles were cranky and unreliable toys for rich men.
After mid-century, the rule of the steel rails diminished, and the rule of the automobile came to pass: city planners slapped six lanes of highway along the edge of Downtown, thirty or so years ago. This amputated the railway station and the blocks of hotels, warehouses and cafes off from the rest of Downtown, the part with the Alamo and the Riverwalk and the people – still the old Depot remained. Fortunately, they re-vamped the old depot building as an event venue a decade or so ago, lovingly re-constructing every bit of plaster ornament and stained glass, and out in back of the main hall is an open terrace with an arcade along one side, and landscaping and an iron fence along the other. There are some fine old buildings surviving in the blocks around the Station, although I don’t think it will ever be as lively as it was in it’s heyday.
Facing the back of the old Depot is a covered pavilion with a raised stage, and all that is necessary for concerts and entertainment. I had never been there before – but that is where the San Antonio Tea Party held their first anniversary rally on Sunday. We drew a fair number of people, about 230 or so, on a lovely breezy Sunday afternoon. We were gifted with a fine warm day, wedged in between a couple of cold and icy ones, just right for a meeting which turned out to run about an hour longer than expected. At the last minute, we had added Kevin Jackson, Sheriff Mack and Stewart Rhodes of the Oathkeepers to Joe the Plumber – which proved to be at least semi-attractive to three out of five local TV news networks. And after the rally, our Cap & Trade working group had set up another guest speaker, who had a presentation about Global Warming. To be precise, his presentation concerned the fraud thereof, and that apparently drew out some counter-demonstrators.
I think this must be the first time that the local progressives actually organized something: usually it’s just been a handful of regulars showing up with singularly uninspiring signs. It would appear, from the TV news stories posted on Sunday evening, that one of the things which raised their ire (well, besides even having a Tea Party to start with) was the presence of the so-called “global warming denier.†That apparently is still a high crime, to those who haven’t yet managed to hear about Climate-gate. They came on a bus, pranced down the street to opposite where we were, and chanted “Health Care Now!†and “Green Jobs Now!†– although they did break it up at one point by singing Happy Birthday – although to whom, I can’t be sure. Then the bulk of them did hop onto their bus and depart – I guess forty minutes was about as much as they had stamina for, or maybe that was all that the Acorn budget allowed.
There were a handful of die-hards, though; one with a video camera, and another with a bullhorn who kept shouting incomprehensible questions from across the street; basically that we were all rich racists, and something about the jerk in Austin with IRS issues and a small plane. It seemed rather laughably pointless, as they were doing this while a succession of candidates for local office were acquainting us with their campaigns and their fitness for the various offices they were running for. Here we are, basically holding a town meeting, being serious about evaluating people we are about to vote into various offices, attending to our basic civic responsibilities . . . while a stupid woman with a bullhorn shouts irrelevant insults through the hedge. I did stand up in a gap between the bushes and waved cheerfully at her companion with a video camera in front of her face, and Blondie wrote “Hi, Mom!†in her palm with a Sharpie and waved also.
So, they couldn’t be bothered to come to the Tea Party rally – which was free and open to the public, or to the Global Warming talk, which also was free, etc., and ask questions, and enter into a real debate, and take part in a fairly serious encounter with people who are asking us all to vote for them . . . but still preferred to stand on the sidewalk and screech like howler monkeys. As Blondie said at the time, “Mom, sometimes you can’t fix stupid.â€
And the funniest part? I went a googling here and there, and found some of their own videos and websites – and this little event was put together in part by what appears to be a joint effort of activists from San Antonio and Boerne (all thirty of them or so), some of whom are calling themselves “The Coffee Party.†No, I didn’t make that up. They have a website and all, with a nicely designed logo and some facebook meet-ups, although the nationwide chapters still seem pretty thin on the ground. I am thinking that I have probably found the follow-on to last week’s little patch of Astroturf, “The Tea Party is Over.â€
From: Sgt Mom
To: Various
Re: Some Apparently Inconvenient Home Truths
1. Oh, my – the case of the absent-minded professor, the irreproducible results and the ‘dog-that-ate-my-data.’ Yet another stake through the heart of man-made-global-warming, to add to the existing collection; I swear, in popular media culture this global-warming c**p has more lives than Freddy Kruger. Hey, aren’t we all ready to have a good long laugh at Al Gore, now? And can we at least have our incandescent light-bulbs back? Thanks, ever so.
2. Note – to aspiring politicians (I’m looking at you, aspiring candidate for governor of Texas Debra Medina, who was about to break out on the national media level, but flubbed a key question asked by Glenn Beck – who, I may add, was not exactly hostile media to fiscally conservative, independent and grassroots candidates, m’kay?) – there is only one acceptable answer to that particular question. That acceptable answer is “no.†Or “hell, no.†Although the Bush administration, and before that, the Carter administration, might have been able to put together the pieces of the intelligence puzzle a little more efficiently, or take more seriously the rantings and threats of a wierdy-beardy Islamist squatting in an Afghan cave – the US government most certainly did not coldly and callously enter into a labyrinthine plot to murder 5,000+ of their own citizens in one morning. If you well and truly believe that a conspiracy of that magnitude is doable, probable and technologically possible – than why do you chose to remain a citizen of such a monstrous country? And more to the point, if you believe in 9/11 as a government plot, why would you even want to become a part of the government? S**t, people, the X-Files was a fictional TV show, not a documentary – get a grip.
3. OK – one more time: the Tea Partiers are not knuckle-dragging, sister-humping, room-temperature IQ racists, and the more certain of you choose to bang on about this meme, the more you are blowing your credibility with the public, outside your own cozy little echo chamber that is. One more time – they are fiscal conservatives, small federal government, free market and libertarian. The Tea Partiers I know don’t give a good g***amn about the color of your skin, the color of the POTUS’ skin – and we wouldn’t care much about what Captain America thinks of us either, except that once a meme gets going, it’s a pain in the *** to uproot. See item 1, above.
Oh, yeah – and our protests are fun. Lots of smiling, friendly people, lots of laughter, music – kind of like a very laid-back neighborhood block party. And we clean up after ourselves, too.
4. And in reference to item 3 above? Yeah, for a while I went around explaining earnestly that using the word “teabagger†in a discussion of the Tea Party movement was kind of like using the word n*gger in starting off a discussion about civil rights – now? Eh, not so much. When I see it being used, I can be pretty sure the person using it is as aggressively ignorant as they are bigoted and rude, so I can safely disregard anything they have to say. Just by using it, they’ve already proved they have nothing much to say, so I can save valuable time.
5. I’d write a good scathing essay about Courtney Cook – except that it looks like pretty much most of the milblogosphere already seems to have taken some good hearty thwacks at her Salon essay. (Jeeze, what is it with Salon and Open Salon these days? Is there some kind of convention going on for shallow, narcissistic writers over there?) Passive-aggressive, self-absorbed and immature is no way to go through life, dear – just my opinion.
Sincerely,
Sgt Mom
You know, the funniest thing about being active in a local Tea Party – aside from some of the soap opera antics resulting when people involved have different ideas about where we should go and what we should do – comes from going back and reading, over and over, in comment threads, editorials/commentary and news stories, those unsupported and wildly asserted claims about what we are and what we want. Strict Constitutionalists, limited federal government, free markets . . . nothing more radical than that, actually. No, seriously, nothing more than that. Really, cross my heart, et cetera – it’s nothing more than that, as a handful of the media anointed who have come down from their lofty heights and actually did their jobs have discovered. Much to their own mild surprise, I might add. However, sometimes it seems that the larger portion – or at least the noisier portion of academia, the media, the political elite and dumbasses commenting on blog and news threads are still convinced otherwise. According to this particular assortment of gits, such beliefs in the strict interpretation of the Constitution, and a small federal government with limited powers are horrifically radical and dangerously un-American notions. This would suggest that in general, public education has reached astonishing new lows in total incompetence, when it comes to education in basic civics and history – Especially, it would seem, among those in the leadership cadre among certain unions.
No kidding, looking around at all that is said of us in various fora – it’s an absolute hoot. I am following one comment thread now where it’s being asserted, over and over again that the Tea Partiers are the tools of big corporations. No actual proof of the assertion are posted, mind you – such as details about which corporations, and how they are supposed to be commanding us Tea Party sheeple. If anything, and to go by my personal knowledge of Tea Partiers – more of them are owners of small, and even micro-small businesses. There’s a fair number of retirees, lots of military veterans, heaps of fairly observant churchgoers; all of this makes one particular assertion fairly risible – that we were all stupid dope-smokers in high school who couldn’t into college or get real jobs and don’t pay taxes. Have to admit, I was shaking my head over that one. If anything, most of us were probably totally earnest, clean-cut parent-respecting nerds, back in the day – and were roundly laughed at by the dope-smoking crowd.
Seems to me also, that the level of disparagement aimed at the Tea Partiers is rising, of late – and so is the ugly slant taken by some popular culture outlets. At least those responsible for the latest kerfuffle, which has a plotline of Captain America meeting what appears to be a Tea Party protest, have had the grace – or at least the economic good sense to back down and render an apology. Even if it does seem more along the lines of “I’m sorry you were offended/I’m sorry we got caught†sort of weasel-apologies.
Oh, and for the umpteenth time – Sarah Palin is not our leader. Glenn Beck isn’t either, and Rush Limbaugh certainly isn’t. And most of us are at least as angry at the Republicans as any else, so please spare me the insistence that the Grand Old Party is our puppetmaster. If fact, most of us wouldn’t bother pissing on the traditional Republican leadership cadre if they were on fire.We have no leader. The whole thing is a distributed insurgency – and for what it is worth, some of the loosely-associated groups are going and doing their own thing. With greater or lesser degrees of success. Personally, I think those groups who are depending on a handful of funding sources with deep pockets and paying for services rendered, rather than the dedication of volunteers and many small donations are on the wrong track. That runs the danger of becoming what made us angry in the first place. But as I said before: a herd of cats, all moving more or less in the same direction.
Ah well –interesting times. And on the anniversary of the start of the whole Tea Party movement (February 21, which strangely enough is also my birthday) they may get even more interesting yet.
Or maybe the beginning of the end – either way, the Massachusetts landslide on Tuesday has really given the political landscape a really good Richter-detectable shaking. And I have to say I have enjoyed the whole thing, immensely, and hope, oh-hope-oh-hope that it is a harbinger of good things to come, that it means an enormous mass of Americans realizing that – yes they are people who can make a substantial mark, that responsible citizens have an obligation to become interested, even focused with a laser-like intensity on matters that for too long, we left to the political wonks to take care of. The conduct of our civic affairs can no longer be left to the usual suspects. For our own good, we must, we must become involved. And now we are, and we – the cranky independents, the bloggers, the Tea Party political virgins, sadder and wiser young Libertarians who cut their political baby teeth on Ron Paul, single-issue gadflies pursuing every conceivable local issue to the point of acute tedium . . . we made a mark and shook the larger political world. I know beyond a doubt that a large portion of donations to Scott Brown’s political campaign came from Tea Party independents: I know that the San Antonio Tea Party put out the word that the Massachusetts special election this week was something that we ought to take an interest in. I also know that while he may not be a perfect small-government, fiscally-responsible-strict Constitutionalist, in the real world, the perfect is the enemy of the good enough, and he is good enough for government work. Good at campaigning, established record of accomplishment, quick with the repartee, a military reservist, and not-half-bad looking.
With luck – there are lots more candidates like him, coming up to the starting line, and a larger media that will – from this moment on, be inclined to pay attention. It’s been a gradual thing, this building up; I think practically no one but the moderate blogosphere paid much attention early on: and at that, no one more than Da Blogfaddah. I do recall very well, when I started being drawn into the Tea Party; through a blog-friend, Robin Juhl, who was a fan when this site was till SSDB, Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief, back in the Dark Ages of Blogs. This which would be, inter alia, about 2003, when Robin had a blog, called Rant’n’Raven. We kept in touch – and about March of last year, just when the concept of a Tea Party to protest the horrible, awful, astronomically-deficit producing stimulus package. Robin and some other people had used Facebook to put together a local Tea Party group – and, hey, I had experience writing, and with microphones and TV cameras and all that besides blogging – so did I want to come on board and write their press releases.
At the time, I assumed we would have a few hundred people meeting in a city park, I’d send out a release or two, snap some pictures myself for the website, we’d listen to some speeches, wave some signs and maybe get a trickle of interest from local media. But one thing and another – and our big Tax Day event ballooned into something much more than that. I did have to giggle at one of the local bloggers; two weeks before the event, he sneered that there wouldn’t be more than five or six stooopid red-neck H8ers in Alamo Plaza on April 15th. It turned out there were considerably more than that: the sheer numbers of people startled even us organizers. But I think the local media saw the event as a one-off, one-time-only, and that Glenn Beck was the big attraction, overall. One reporter even wistfully asked me, beforehand, was it just a Fox event, or could anyone play.
Things settled down after the Tax Day rally – there was interest from people, not much from the media, particularly. We did a protest here and there, rustled up some interest, and planned a 4th of July event, with a little bit more time to spare than we had for the Tax Day. There was local media interest in that event, mostly because the Governor of Texas made a pit-stop appearance. He was meant originally, I think, to zoom in, introduce our headline speaker, and zoom out again, but he stayed for hours, and that’s when we could begin to see concrete proof that the Tea Parties had something to offer, on the long-term scale of things. Whatever else you say about Governor Perry – he and a handful of other state and local office-holders were perceptive enough to see there was a good-sized crowd there, and there might be some political utility in getting out in front of it.
Still and all, after the 4th of July, it seemed that media interest settled down again – and of course, we in the Tea Party were still working out what to do next, what we would focus on. We had come to a conclusion that events – big events – although they brought us attention, they were very draining on time and energy. Even smaller coordinated protests were draining, although certainly enjoyable for the people participating in them. To really make a mark, we would have to make long-term plans, and concentrate on the 2010 mid-term elections. We would have to focus on candidates, and on education, and a lot of other rather un-splashy stuff; we’d also have to structure ourselves, coordinate more effectively, and raise funds for long-term projects. This isn’t much the stuff of news releases – but as part of this, another experienced media hand suggested that we do face to face outreach, with every local TV station, and the management echelon of the local paper. We’d set up an appointment, and talk to them about coverage, what we could do to make it easier for them, about our long-term plans and goals, offer them the expertise of various experts within the Tea Party. We thought we’d start with the easiest – the local Fox affiliate, and it went so well, we were emboldened to set up a meet with what we thought would be the toughest: the local daily newspaper.
Just by coincidence, that meeting was scheduled a within a few days after the 9-12 rally on the Mall in Washington, DC. I know there is still quite a considerable disputation about how many people were there; one million, two million – but for every person there on the Mall, we calculated fifteen or twenty more who wished they could have been there, but couldn’t afford it, or couldn’t get away from work. We met with not only the various editors, and two columnists, but also the publisher of the paper – and for a good two hours, in the morning of a working day for them. After that, the second most astonishing thing was their own relative astonishment; we were all so normal, rational, and articulate; not sign-waving crazies, screaming on the sidewalk. Everyone came away with their eyes opened, after that. We’ve had a great deal of cautious respect from our local media outlets ever since, although in a lot of venues – including some which you’d think would have known better – the Tea Partiers are still described as red-neck racists, uneducated, reactionary, fascists, racists, easily led by obvious propagandists – the whole vocabulary of ignorant abuse from people who I am sure preen themselves regularly over their own tolerance, and breadth of mind.
And so to the Massachusetts special election – which I see as a kind of nation-wide wake-up call: there in the heart of Kennedy country, the cranky independents all organized, raised funds, campaigned and won – cheered on by out of state cranky independents. This is a defeat so stinging, and so decisive, that I sense it has become a wake-up call for many of those bloggers and members of the commentariat who were formerly inclined to take the ignorant-racist-reactionary-sheeple line to heart. Reluctantly, it appears to me that the more sensible – or those whose social instincts are more finely honed are beginning to reassess not only Tea Partiers, the current administration, but their own opinions, in the light of Tuesday’s Massachusetts upset.
This was found among the comments at Neo-Neocon – somewhat appropriate, considering the special election in Massachusetts tomorrow, and the marked degree of unhappiness generally with our re-elected aristocracy.
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God’s help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.
“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!â€
Well, yeah, it was Oliver Cromwell, on the eve of the English Civil War, and he eventually became as odious a dictator as those he fulminated against. Still, a cracking good speech … and in the current political situation, curiously resonant.
Later: and in the current mood, and from the same source – a Hitler Movie Parody Edit:
You know, it amuses me no end, checking out the comment sections on various websites and blogs, especially when the commenter start to go to town, with regard to tea parties, tea partiers and the whole Tea Party thing. After the obligatory snigger about teabagging, I find out that Tea Partiers are screeching-angry, hateful, racist, rude, Nazis, sister-humping rednecks who hate everyone else, and most especially the fact that we have a black president. That apparently is supposed to be the thing that sticks in our craws the most – I guess the oh-so-observant commenters have missed the sign that said, “We don’t like his white half, either!†Oh, and we’re all old, and/or uneducated losers, and the Tea Party rallies are more of a mass temper-tantrum, there’s only a handful of them, and they’ve all been deluded by Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, or perhaps by the Republican Party, and we’re secretly being lead by all of the above, or maybe Sarah Palin and her little dog, too . . . So they can be safely ignored and scored by all right-thinking people.
Seriously, I’m almost sure that none of the commentators holding forth in this manner, from the high – say, the New York Times, down to the very low, which would be some whacked-out Kos diarist, or possibly some more than usually-deranged denizen of Hollywierdland, like Janeane Garafolo – have actually ever gone to a mass Tea Party event. Nope – I’d be surprised as heck, to find out they are opining from actual, real-world encounters with Tea Partiers.
See, folks – I’ve been to one monster Tea Party event, a good few smaller ones, worked on media strategy for a metropolitan Tea Party, and helped pound out their long-term strategy. I have something to base my opinion of Tea Parties and Tea Partiers on – such as the evidence of my own lying eyes. While it might make a portion of the public and the old-line media happy as a pig in swill to believe the angry-racist-red-necking-dumbass-sheeple meme, and to agree with all the other voices in the echo-chamber . . . I have to say up-front – y’all aren’t doing yourself any favors. Especially, you won’t have done yourself a favor, when the Obama Administration, and all its works and all its ways goes down faster than a Japanese carrier at the Battle of Midway. You won’t be able to figure out why, having been blinded by willful mis-perception. Reality, she is a right bitch, and she will eventually crash any party of the delusional.
Mind you, there is a smidgeon or sometimes more to justify the stereotypes: yep, there are Rushbo and Glenn Beck fans among the Tea Partiers, and a goodly number of evangelical Right-to-Life types; there are Republican establishments and politicians who have been quick to grasp the advantages of being perceived as having something to do with the Tea Party, and lord help us, there are a scattering of screeching, ignorant ranters and racists who call themselves Tea Partiers. But to assume that is the truth and sum of all is to delude yourself – and if you are a media person or an academician saying this, than you are deluding the public that you are supposed to be informing.
Here’s the real deal: the Tea Parties have a couple of unifying principles: small government, fiscally-responsible and strict constitutionalists pretty much says it in one sentence. Everything else is secondary, and at this point, kind of a distraction. Blessedly most are not distracted – although because of the sheer number of passionate people involved in a Tea Party does mean that sometimes contrary opinions are involved. Groups split, morph, form other groups. Among the flavors of political opinion drawn into the Tea Party brew are libertarians, people who run small businesses, generally middle-to-working-class, veterans, people who pay taxes, people who are angered by the same old, same old. There is anger as deep as an ocean about politicians who seem to be more of an aristocracy, spending decades in office doing what is best to secure reelection rather than what is best for the country. Many of the Tea Partiers that I know are just as angry at Democrats as they are Republicans – and they come in all colors and religious backgrounds. Myself, I’ve been describing the Tea Party movement for months as a herd of cats, all motivated by pretty much the same thing, and going in more or less the same direction.
Tea Partiers may also rightly be described as angry; there is temper-tantrum angry, but there is also purposeful and focused anger. The sort that I see within my Tea Party is the purposeful, goal-oriented kind. Their focus and their strategy – and it is a focus, not spasms of temporary anger about administration policies – is to search out, and elect people who will uphold the principles of small government, fiscal responsibility and adherence to the Constitution. In other words, they are starting from the bottom up. This is not spectacular; this doesn’t make a flashy television statement, or make it easy to follow, if you are not directly involved. There is no known leader, really – oh, everyone in the lefty commentariat goes on about Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck, or Rushbo, but they aren’t really our leaders. There are no leaders. We are all leaders, each of us pushing on towards a goal, according to our own inspiration and our own beliefs. Such beliefs are buttressed not by Fox Television, but in the provisions of the Constitution, which we are – if not familiar with it before – are studying with a renewed attention and appreciation.
And I sense, this is what may prove to be much for frightening to the powers that be, the old-line media sitting in easy and ignorant judgment, or the internet commenter who has enough actual first-hand knowledge about the Tea Party to fill up a small cheap tea bag. Not that we are all they have proclaimed us to be – but that we aren’t. And that there are a lot of us, working quietly and with intelligent focus within our communities, picking up the trash after our protest events, seriously applying ourselves to the intricacies of applying to be precinct chair, or running for local office, recalling to ourselves what it meant to be truly politically involved, instead of hiring through pro-forma elections some empty cipher with good hair and a smooth line of patter, to go to Washington and bring home enough pork to be elected again, one way or an other.
Yes – we are all Spartacus. And there are a lot of us, who have remembered what it is to be citizens. Not subjects.