The Seattle Times ran yet another unenlightening story, this time borrowed from the Washington Post, on the latest shenanigans of the Tea Party movement. This time it is was about another bunch of pallid-faced “patriots” dressed-up in 1770’s garb and railing about the “dangerous times” we live in. Yawn. No one in the media ever bothers to tell these buffoons that if the times are “dangerous,” it is because of bigoted ignoramuses like themselves. Why doesn’t the media ask them why these times are any more dangerous than, say, the Bush years, when we had warrantless wiretapping and U.S. citizens were being tortured in Navy brigs? Why were those years any less dangerous, when “smart guys” were given full reign to gamble with the country’s financial institutions and the real-estate market, lining their bank accounts in the full knowledge that their greed was sending the country closer to the edge of economic ruin?
If these times are more “dangerous,” it is not because we have a “socialist” black president, it’s because we have extremists on the right who are not “patriots”—because they have no conception of nationhood and oppose the precepts of equality and justice this country was founded on. The line “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” should come with an asterisk: Only members of the founding father’s race apply. They exist in a xenophobic bubble. All they think about is guns, taxes and race. Period. They may talk about bailouts and deficits, but these are words that have no meaning unless they are used in conjunction with Democrats and “socialists,” especially a Democratic president who happens to be one of those racial interlopers.
The “mainstream” media is so craven these days. It never looks to see the rotted guts below the surface sheen. They find a bunch of costumed clowns with their simple-minded slogans and think there is a “story.” There is a “story,” except it isn’t the one that is being told. That story would include the fact that the Tea Party movement is nothing more than the same bunch of paranoid bigots who fear the loss of the “privilege” of doing whatever they damn well like, which includes, of course, expressing and acting on their prejudices; these people have come out of woodwork throughout the course of U.S. history, and usually in defense of the concept that not everyone has rights a “native” is bound to respect. They think that respecting other people’s rights and aspirations mean they have to give something up. Deep down in that dark place it really is only about themselves, not the country.
Since the media gives tea partiers as much airtime as they want, it doesn’t perceive the “silent majority” that simply wants the government to do what is necessary to put the country back on its feet, because they can’t do it themselves. It’s too “big” for them. What they don’t like is the fact that is all the name-calling and stonewalling and filibustering in Congress. They can’t understand why Obama wasted a whole year looking indecisive while trying to coddle Republicans whose only “idea” was obstruction. Name one piece of major legislation passed in Congress over the past two years with the country in economic turmoil that had more than three Republican votes. It isn’t because they didn’t have “input.” Their “input” helped craft a half-arsed health care bill, then refused to take ownership of their dirty little mitts’ handiwork. You had a Republican senator who helped craft the bill offering tax breaks for small businesses, and then backed-off from voting for it, for the unspoken reason that Republicans just don’t want to give Democrats a legislative “victory” before the mid-term elections. In other words, screw the country; Republicans are the only party in history that thinks that deliberately sabotaging the country will win them votes. And you know what? It does. Take, for example, an ad by Dino Rossi, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Washington. He claims, in a mild-mannered voice, that he is going to stop tax increases for working people and small businesses. This, of course, is yet another bit of bald-faced deception that has no basis in fact; the reality is that the tax break for small businesses that the Obama administration was pushing failed to get a single Republican vote. Nothing new here, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that tea partiers would be the first people we can expect to gobble-up this rotten meat whole. Say the word “taxes” regardless of the context, they attack like sharks whose minds are wired to do nothing but attack and feed.
Republicans claim that Obama wants to turn the country into a “socialist state. The Republicans, apparently, want the country to turn into a Third World backwater, with all the power and wealth in the hands of a few “elites.” And tea partiers are right there to help them do it, because they can’t see beyond two feet in front of their faces. We are not there yet, but if you want to know what the first phase would be like with tea partiers in control of the country, you don’t have to look any further than Arizona and Nevada. I’ve already talked about Arizona, where the Jurassic Park Republicans recently “addressed” their state budget issue by raising the sales tax—and then turning around and cutting income taxes, in effect sticking it to the poor while giving the well-off yet another “gift.” Nevada, meanwhile, leads the nation in just about every negative economic indicator, such as bankruptcies, foreclosures and now unemployment. It doesn’t help that the state is dependent on sales and “entertainment” taxes to fund the public sector, and that the state’s “big shots” have opposed any taxes on their income or regulations slowing the amount of money earned in the state from leaving the state. It was even reported recently that Pennsylvania collects more in casino taxes than Nevada. But that’s the tea partier way; let’s just gamble the country away.
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