The Ugly Face of Teabaggery

oddjob shared this video with us (with a hat tip to Wicked Gay Blog) in comments and I think it is well worth posting.

CNN actually deals with the craziness that is at the heart of teabaggery. Clearly Jim Spellman, the correspondent reporting on the movement, is spooked by what he has seen and heard.  Why we are not seeing more reporting of this kind is a mystery to me.  There is indeed something very dark and disturbed about this entire movement. 

What really pissed me off about the Post's treatment of this story yesterday was not merely it's front page position, but even more so the bloodless fashion in which the movement and the protesters were described.

The mass rallies that I have been to have always had a pretty clear goal and set of grievances inspiring them. Could any of the tea partyers describe any aspect of government policy (actually existing that is) that they wish to change and why.  One listens to cries of "tyranny" and "gestapo tactics" and "liberties" lost and one grapples with the impossibility of engaging these people.  Gestapo tactics?!! From a president who seems to have a hard time even mildly denouncing his opposition?  Lost liberties?  Do tell.  (Quite rich from the supporters of an administration that took the position that the president could indefinitely detain American citizens without charge and could engage in warrantless wiretapping as part of the Executive's inherent authority as Commander in Chief.) Tyranny?  The tyranny of having to collect your goddamned Social Security payments monthly and have your medical bills paid by Medicare? 

What you see here is a lumpen mass whose inherent sense of resentment and suspicion has been turned up to eleven by right wing manipulators like Fox, NRO, Malkin, Instapundit, and their fellow traveling cretins.  It's all well and good until one one or two or more of these armed rubes snaps and we have carnage on our hands.  Then despite the inevitable protestations of shocked innocence on the part of the aforementioned shit stirrers, they will truly have blood on their hands.    

Comments

[oddjob]

I think one of Sully's readers is onto something I hadn't properly considered.

[Stephen]

oddjob,

It's a fairly good point, but he dismisses the power and effect of "simple racism." Their racism is what allows them to treat Obama in this fashion; I really don't think Clinton was being treated in this fashion 9 months into his first term.

That commenter also doesn't take into account the supreme sense of entitlement these people have. They have grown up believing that they were God's Chosen People to lead God's Chosen Country. Pat Buchanan merely says out loud what these people believe: America was founded by white Christians for white Christians.

While most of the people taking part in the teabaggery are intentionally ignorant and dedicated to leading entirely unexamined lives, what motivates them is pretty damn complex - basically all the ugliness of our society that's been kept quiet is now erupting to the surface.

[oddjob]

...

I think Dowd was right to see it behind Wednesday night's outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson (R) of South Carolina, a man previously best known as one of the last hold-outs for keeping the confederate flag flying over the Capitol in South Carolina. And you didn't have to wait for the night of the speech though. The day before the speech, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia said Obama needed to show some "humility" when he showed up on Capitol Hill Wednesday night. I've heard presidents criticized, pilloried, even villified for lots of things. But I don't think I've ever heard one warned to show some humility.

It's no accident that both comments came from white men from the Deep South in their early to mid-60s. I won't say because I don't think this is all the GOP, just as I don't think that all the opposition to Obama is rooted in atavism and paranoia. But it is a big chunk of it. And it's the 'chunk' that's got the voice at the moment and increasingly seems to be calling the shots.

--Josh Marshall

It would appear Ms. Dowd (& Josh) more or less agree with you, Stephen.

[low-tech cyclist]

I really don't think Clinton was being treated in this fashion 9 months into his first term.

I think it's partly due to the available media. Fox News didn't start up until the fall of 1996. There was no Internet in 1993, and there were a lot fewer crazy emails being passed around, because only a relatively small, mostly highly educated group of people had email. Sure, there was talk radio, but there have always been crazies on talk radio, and they've never been viewed as entirely respectable; it didn't bleed nearly as much into the mainstream discussion.

This is the first time the full wingnut media infrastructure has not only existed, but has been fanning the flames nonstop, during a Democratic Presidency.

I think the crazies were out there, but they were only starting to find each other back then. And the fact that a lot of the grassroots organizational advantage of the right over the left was through evangelical churches, did keep a lid on the tone of much of the crazy back then.

Now they've found each other, and they're feeding on each other's craziness, and this is happening largely outside of church (even if many of them attend evangelical churches) so that environment isn't there to limit their shrillness.

Sure, I think Obama's race is also a factor, but these folks would mostly be batshit crazy anyway.

[Eric Wilde]

I have to agree with ltc. The crazies would still act crazy if Obama were white. Just being a 'Democrat' is enough of an Other for people to act out their fantasies. Growing up a Yankee in the deep south, I felt this otherness myself at times.

I do believe Obama's skin color makes it worse, or at least accelerates the insanity.

[oddjob]

I agree with Eric. We haven't seen a president who was both a Democrat and also a Yankee since JFK, and that on its own would still bring out most of the teabaggers. That Obama's part African intensifies that.

[Corvus9]

I agree with everyone who isn't Stephen. Racism isn't even the trigger of this madness, it's just an intensifier. Also, the writer does mention these people supreme sense of entitlement. (S)He points out how most of them are white, middle-class types who don't want to examine how their existence is built upon the suffering of others. And the "Shadow" (s)he is talking about is a manifestation of this lack of self-examination.

I like the Shadow idea. It does a good job of accounting for exactly why this stuff is not just virulent, but largely incoherent. If it was all about racism, you'd think it might be a little more straight -forward.

And I love Sully's cognitive dissonance at the end. "But reasonable people have drawn that exact same conclusions as these crazy people!"

[oddjob]

Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP's broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid.

Such insiders point to theories running rampant on the Internet, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, or that he is a communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents. Those theories, the insiders say, have stoked the GOP base and have created a "purist" climate in which a figure such as Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) is lionized for his "You lie!" outburst last week when Obama addressed Congress.

...

Some are pressuring the Republican National Committee and other mainstream GOP groups to cut ties with WorldNetDaily.com, which reports some of the allegations. Its articles are cited by websites and pundits on the right. More than any other group, critics say, WorldNetDaily sets the conservative fringe agenda.

...

"There's a war going on, a pretty big one," said Dan Riehl, a Virginia conservative whose popular blog, Riehl World View, has criticized those challenging the base. "Many of us distrust the elite Republican establishment."....

Hat tip, TPM.

[Phoenician in a time of Romans]

"There's a war going on, a pretty big one," said Dan Riehl, a Virginia conservative whose popular blog, Riehl World View, has criticized those challenging the base. "Many of us distrust the elite Republican establishment."....

i.e. the sane on the Right.