Joe Biden has compared the Tea Party to terrorists. Maureen Dowd compared them to cannibals and vampires. Then having run out of mythical monsters, or monsters they believe are mythical, there was nothing to do but roll out a few more articles about the Republican Party being taken over by Dittoheads from Outer Space.
What's interesting about all this Pravdaesque bile is that the focus of liberal rage and terror is aimed at the grass roots. The left dismisses the Republican party as an organization of bankers and capitalists counting their money in between making orphans sweep their chimneys, but then when a populist wave sweeps across it-- they pen dismal articles longing for the days when reasonable country club republicans ran things.
Say what you will about the closeted northeastern establishment which donates to gay rights in between golfing sessions, it knows how to be reasonable. Sometimes it's so reasonable that it scares itself. But in between listening to Chamber of Commerce lobbyists explain why America needs illegal aliens and why their chosen industry needs subsidies-- a different element crept in. A strange creature known as the American voter showed up and demanded to be heard.
The left has looked over the two Republican parties, the party of smokestacks and Pedro clean my kitchen, and the party of less taxes and less government interference. And decided that the smokestack party looks pretty good after all. It's easier to deal with liberal capitalists on the hill than with libertarian visigoths at the gate.
On MSNBC, pretend journalist Martin Bashir, interviewed a pretend doctor who explained that Tea Party members were pathologically addicted to "getting their own way". The Communists claimed that religion was the opiate of the people. Now freedom is the new addiction. "They Can't Stop Doing Their Own Thing-- on the next Phil Donahue."And the only cure is a 12 step UN and EU program to put your faith in Hope and Change.
Addicts, terrorists, vampires, zombies and cannibals. So many names for people who are tired and angry of being at the tail end of a nation run for the benefit of the Bashirs and Bidens. Who aren't looking for a handout, a subsidy or a government job-- but are addicted to the opiate of freedom.
How do you please voters who just want to be left alone? It's a frightening question that no politician wants to confront. The political establishment runs on doling out favors. In their absence there is nothing but the sounds of a country getting back to work.
At the heart of America's economic problems is a corrupt political establishment that goes on making the same mistakes year after year. They are the vampires, the cannibals and the zombies sucking the life out of the country and cracking the bones of the economy to get at the juicy marrow. They are the ones hopelessly addicted to taxpayer money and regulatory power.
Look at the name that someone else calls you and you know what they are. The left's vituperation is also its self-identification. The massive system they have built up is the vampire. Its bureaucracy is the senseless shambling zombie without a mind of its own. In its cannibal frenzy it devours its own future in a rotting pile of debt. And when the money isn't forthcoming, it holds the country hostage acting like the terrorists they sympathize with.
Unfair? So is a system where everyone is forced to subsidize an out of control government whose crony corruption has created a monopoly on power. Where everyone pays and pays to be lectured, policed, ordered about, brutalized, investigated and ruled over by one political machine or another. And when the public cries enough, the vampires, cannibals and zombies point and cry, "Cannibals, Vampires and Zombies!" Not realizing that they are actually describing themselves.
If the Tea Party were really a wholly owned creature of the Koch Brothers, as tame as Soros' left wing grass roots movements, then it would be far less objectionable to the commentators shrieking their fool heads off about it. But it isn't tame, it isn't the pet poodle of some billionaire, the way its counterparts on the left are, and that is what makes it dangerous.
The professional edifice of government that we have now works so long as everyone plays by the rules. And the first rule of Government Club is, "You can spend money, if I can spend money." And the second rule is we never talk about the first rule. When a grass roots movement of amateurs, that is built on rejecting the first rule and organizing against the second rule, comes into its own, it's the scariest thing to hit Washington D.C. since the Porcine Virus.
In the time of a highly exploitable crisis, when the left had its moment to prove that government is the solution, and free enterprise is the problem, it did the opposite. It convinced large numbers of people that government is the problem. Not that they took much convincing.
Americans are naturally distrustful of government-- but it isn't just a local reaction. Harper's win in Canada and the rise of the right in Europe are warnings of a coming storm. The wind of history is no longer blowing at socialism's back. Quite a few people in the developed world think they would do better with less regulation and more flexibility.
The god of government has failed the people in the hour of their greatest need. But the Europeans at least avoided doing what their American cousins did. Turning a man into the embodiment of their movement, unwilling to realize that messiahs are a double-edged sword. If they don't succeed, they will take you down with them. It's the lesson that Obama's mad scientists should have learned before unleashing their little monster on the global village. No one will care about your intentions, when the monster runs amok.
Like electromagnets and raising the dead, the physics of politics can be an interesting thing. There might be no Obama without Bush. And there would be no Tea Party without Obama.
The left expected a transformative moment in history-- and they were right. But it wasn't for them. The oceans didn't settle down, any more than usual, and America didn't become Sweden. Instead a sleeping giant woke and remembered its power.
The Obama Moment with its encompassing godhead of government intervention became the shorthand for everything that the traditional voter hated about the system. It wasn't racism, it was worse than that. It was heresy. The left had erected its idol in the middle of an economic meltdown, and it was stunned to discover a mob headed their way with picks and axes.
The media hailed Obama's victory as nothing less than the supernatural and transcendent force of history. But historical forces tend to attract their opposites. The left had turned a man into a symbol. And that symbol works both ways. For the left, Obama was the best of them. For the right, he was the worst of them. And economic conditions and public anger is not on the side of the idol makers, but on the side of the idol smashers. The side of the mobs who gather to torch windmills with monsters in them.
The fear and anger works both ways. And the establishment is just as angry and afraid as the people they have been stepping on. The mask of benevolence keeps slipping and underneath is a greedy smirk, a vicious snarl and a frightened ogre.
As the virulence of the establishment grows, so does its fear. What it fears most of all is a populist movement that does not depend on them and that has no use for them. It has few illusions that its interests run counter to that of the public. And that given a choice the public would toss them overboard in a minute and keep just enough government to fix the roads, put out the fires and bomb the enemies. The establishment has only gotten the taste of unlimited power, it isn't ready to be forced back into the crypt, to hide during the day time, and only to sneak out at night to drink the taxpayer's blood.
The Tea Party movement is the closest that an organized group of anti-government populists have come in some time. And that is terrifying enough. But the thought of the Tea Party as a permanent force in national politics is what truly frightens them. They can weather the occasional populist storm, but not a full scale firestorm.
Change is a dangerous slogan. It indicates a dissatisfaction with the status quo. It can be co-opted by politicians, but it is a raw pulsing nerve indicating tension and anger below. Touch the nerve and the unexpected might happen. Obama came to power on change. But now faced with the prospect of real change, his supporters see monsters behind everywhere. Terrifying creatures coming to bring change. Real change.
What's interesting about all this Pravdaesque bile is that the focus of liberal rage and terror is aimed at the grass roots. The left dismisses the Republican party as an organization of bankers and capitalists counting their money in between making orphans sweep their chimneys, but then when a populist wave sweeps across it-- they pen dismal articles longing for the days when reasonable country club republicans ran things.
Say what you will about the closeted northeastern establishment which donates to gay rights in between golfing sessions, it knows how to be reasonable. Sometimes it's so reasonable that it scares itself. But in between listening to Chamber of Commerce lobbyists explain why America needs illegal aliens and why their chosen industry needs subsidies-- a different element crept in. A strange creature known as the American voter showed up and demanded to be heard.
The left has looked over the two Republican parties, the party of smokestacks and Pedro clean my kitchen, and the party of less taxes and less government interference. And decided that the smokestack party looks pretty good after all. It's easier to deal with liberal capitalists on the hill than with libertarian visigoths at the gate.
On MSNBC, pretend journalist Martin Bashir, interviewed a pretend doctor who explained that Tea Party members were pathologically addicted to "getting their own way". The Communists claimed that religion was the opiate of the people. Now freedom is the new addiction. "They Can't Stop Doing Their Own Thing-- on the next Phil Donahue."And the only cure is a 12 step UN and EU program to put your faith in Hope and Change.
Addicts, terrorists, vampires, zombies and cannibals. So many names for people who are tired and angry of being at the tail end of a nation run for the benefit of the Bashirs and Bidens. Who aren't looking for a handout, a subsidy or a government job-- but are addicted to the opiate of freedom.
How do you please voters who just want to be left alone? It's a frightening question that no politician wants to confront. The political establishment runs on doling out favors. In their absence there is nothing but the sounds of a country getting back to work.
At the heart of America's economic problems is a corrupt political establishment that goes on making the same mistakes year after year. They are the vampires, the cannibals and the zombies sucking the life out of the country and cracking the bones of the economy to get at the juicy marrow. They are the ones hopelessly addicted to taxpayer money and regulatory power.
Look at the name that someone else calls you and you know what they are. The left's vituperation is also its self-identification. The massive system they have built up is the vampire. Its bureaucracy is the senseless shambling zombie without a mind of its own. In its cannibal frenzy it devours its own future in a rotting pile of debt. And when the money isn't forthcoming, it holds the country hostage acting like the terrorists they sympathize with.
Unfair? So is a system where everyone is forced to subsidize an out of control government whose crony corruption has created a monopoly on power. Where everyone pays and pays to be lectured, policed, ordered about, brutalized, investigated and ruled over by one political machine or another. And when the public cries enough, the vampires, cannibals and zombies point and cry, "Cannibals, Vampires and Zombies!" Not realizing that they are actually describing themselves.
If the Tea Party were really a wholly owned creature of the Koch Brothers, as tame as Soros' left wing grass roots movements, then it would be far less objectionable to the commentators shrieking their fool heads off about it. But it isn't tame, it isn't the pet poodle of some billionaire, the way its counterparts on the left are, and that is what makes it dangerous.
The professional edifice of government that we have now works so long as everyone plays by the rules. And the first rule of Government Club is, "You can spend money, if I can spend money." And the second rule is we never talk about the first rule. When a grass roots movement of amateurs, that is built on rejecting the first rule and organizing against the second rule, comes into its own, it's the scariest thing to hit Washington D.C. since the Porcine Virus.
In the time of a highly exploitable crisis, when the left had its moment to prove that government is the solution, and free enterprise is the problem, it did the opposite. It convinced large numbers of people that government is the problem. Not that they took much convincing.
Americans are naturally distrustful of government-- but it isn't just a local reaction. Harper's win in Canada and the rise of the right in Europe are warnings of a coming storm. The wind of history is no longer blowing at socialism's back. Quite a few people in the developed world think they would do better with less regulation and more flexibility.
The god of government has failed the people in the hour of their greatest need. But the Europeans at least avoided doing what their American cousins did. Turning a man into the embodiment of their movement, unwilling to realize that messiahs are a double-edged sword. If they don't succeed, they will take you down with them. It's the lesson that Obama's mad scientists should have learned before unleashing their little monster on the global village. No one will care about your intentions, when the monster runs amok.
Like electromagnets and raising the dead, the physics of politics can be an interesting thing. There might be no Obama without Bush. And there would be no Tea Party without Obama.
The left expected a transformative moment in history-- and they were right. But it wasn't for them. The oceans didn't settle down, any more than usual, and America didn't become Sweden. Instead a sleeping giant woke and remembered its power.
The Obama Moment with its encompassing godhead of government intervention became the shorthand for everything that the traditional voter hated about the system. It wasn't racism, it was worse than that. It was heresy. The left had erected its idol in the middle of an economic meltdown, and it was stunned to discover a mob headed their way with picks and axes.
The media hailed Obama's victory as nothing less than the supernatural and transcendent force of history. But historical forces tend to attract their opposites. The left had turned a man into a symbol. And that symbol works both ways. For the left, Obama was the best of them. For the right, he was the worst of them. And economic conditions and public anger is not on the side of the idol makers, but on the side of the idol smashers. The side of the mobs who gather to torch windmills with monsters in them.
The fear and anger works both ways. And the establishment is just as angry and afraid as the people they have been stepping on. The mask of benevolence keeps slipping and underneath is a greedy smirk, a vicious snarl and a frightened ogre.
As the virulence of the establishment grows, so does its fear. What it fears most of all is a populist movement that does not depend on them and that has no use for them. It has few illusions that its interests run counter to that of the public. And that given a choice the public would toss them overboard in a minute and keep just enough government to fix the roads, put out the fires and bomb the enemies. The establishment has only gotten the taste of unlimited power, it isn't ready to be forced back into the crypt, to hide during the day time, and only to sneak out at night to drink the taxpayer's blood.
The Tea Party movement is the closest that an organized group of anti-government populists have come in some time. And that is terrifying enough. But the thought of the Tea Party as a permanent force in national politics is what truly frightens them. They can weather the occasional populist storm, but not a full scale firestorm.
Change is a dangerous slogan. It indicates a dissatisfaction with the status quo. It can be co-opted by politicians, but it is a raw pulsing nerve indicating tension and anger below. Touch the nerve and the unexpected might happen. Obama came to power on change. But now faced with the prospect of real change, his supporters see monsters behind everywhere. Terrifying creatures coming to bring change. Real change.
Comments
Maureen has pretty hair, but she is wrong. They are more like Fucanglong when you really get right down to it and dig into the inner working of the entire thing.
ReplyDeleteYes, Fucanglong definitely!
Sultan,
ReplyDeleteNoting a change of tenor and in fact thought I was reading the prelude to an epitaph. I’m wondering if you read the budget throwdown as a turning point.
ST,
Akiba
This tea party has been hijacked by ppl who don't want social security, Medicare and good paying decent jobs for our middle class, or anyone else but themselves. This is a class war.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the tp footsoldiers don't want the safety net either. THIS is what MoDo and her ilk are squaking about, and rightly so. Agreed that they don't have the balls to blame the problem on their overlords who write their meaty checks, but what would YOU do?
Media hacks (liberal and libertarian) are ELITES and supporters of the oligarchs. BOTH are feeding at the same trough and rely on their useful bases to (inadvertently) support the looting of the middle class. And it is working.
Liberals want to protect immigrants (both legal and illegal) and libertarians mock them for allowing these "criminals" to come here without papers etc. Why don't the libertarians take that same ire and energy and dump it on corporawhore America's boardrooms? Why is this an argument AGAINST government when the government is supposed to be working for us?
Trouble is that BOTH liberals and libertarians ignore the legal migration and visa and green card policies that are truly destroying the middle class. Until both take the rebellion to Chamber of Commerce and insist on taxing wealthy corporate workers, a sane jobs policy for Americans FIRST policies and a halt to foreign workers coming here to take our jobs, your premise unfortunately is just as useless to the welfare of our middle class as the libtards.
-Chuckie
"For the left, Obama was the best of them. For the right, he was the worst of them."
ReplyDeleteIMHO, the root of all the problems is this use of the antiquated and emotion-laden language of "right" and "left". If the "good guys" (i.e., us) can change the vocabulary to limited vs. unlimited government, there is a chance that even the most dumbed-down Americans can see what is in their interest.
"And that given a choice the public would toss them overboard in a minute and keep just enough government to fix the roads, put out the fires and bomb the enemies."
Maybe fixing the roads and putting out fires can also be eliminated and taken care of more efficiently by the "private sector". Let's try to leave them with defense and keeping the peace, and make sure that we define who the "enemies" are.
Thank you. Excellent article. I appreciated how you pointed out that, in reality, the Govt are the cannibals, and zombies, etc.
ReplyDeleteAmazingly, it took you saying it for me to realize that they were calling ME what they themselves are.
In response to "Chuckie" up above. Every report shows beyond a doubt that the ponzi scheme known as Social Security will be BROKE in a decade or less. The govt number crunchers themselves are telling us this.
Plans have been proposed to save SS. Which we (Tea Party) support. These plans guarantee that those currently receiving benefits, and those who are poised to receive them will see no change. But those coming up into the system will see a re-arrangement that will GUARANTEE that SS will be available to them. Do nothing, and it WILL NOT be.
However, useful idiots like Chuckie run their ignorant mouths, claiming we want to destroy SS. Thereby helping maintain the status quo that will guarantee it's bankruptcy.
This is the greatest frustration. Not that it's the Govt vs the People. That's understood. But that there are SO many of the very People that the Govt is harming who SIDE with the Govt against their own best interests, unbeknownst to them.
Chuckie despises the ones who are attempting to SAVE SS, and is a bitter clinger to the Govt Monster that he perceives as paternalistic.
Nor do we have any problem with the societal "Safety Net" for those amongst us in need. It's the "hammock" that we are tired of seeing the "net" turned into and abused.
Is there any way to, once and for all, knock the scales from the eyes of such as he?
Bruce O'H. nailed it.
ReplyDeleteMr. Greenfield,
ReplyDeletethank you for your eloquent expression of my thoughts, and I'm sure, millions of others. You put everything into perspective without sugarcoating.
I have printed it, and will share, and discuss this with as many people as possible.
Thank you!
I found your article both interesting and enjoyable to read. I have copied a few paragraphs to my blog with a link back to the article and will advertise it on Facebook and Twitter because it is a good foundation for further discussion for both Statist and Conservatives.
ReplyDeleteDesertCactus
can-you-hear-us-now
An outstanding article! Not just well reasoned, but eloquent and right on point.
ReplyDelete"As the virulence of the establishment grows, so does its fear. What it fears most of all is a populist movement that does not depend on them and that has no use for them."
And that, I think, pretty well sums up the reason for the rabid snarling of both the Lib establishment and their check-pants country club partners in crime. From John Kerry saying that Tea Party conservatives are “an impediment to the proper governance of this country” to the dark lord Karl Rove saying that Sarah Palin "doesn't have a chance" to be president, the Ruling Class Elites are already chaffing at the tight collars being prepared for them by the "little people" in flyover country. They who know best in all things (Libs) and they who were born to rule (Check-Pants Pubbies) have only one real enemy, and that is the average citizen they presume to rule over.
This "new nobility" Ruling Class imperium has a unique sense of noblesse oblige too, One that dictates to them that it is absolutely imperative for THEM to remain in control and to do so at all costs. Letting loose of the dogs of real citizen rule is just too awful to contemplate.
Sorry to drone on so, but this article does have some punch.
Spot on! Again! Donation to follow (my second, and larger).
ReplyDeleteDaniel noted: “As the virulence of the establishment grows, so does its fear.” Actually, I think it is fear that feeds the virulence. It precedes the name-calling and knee-jerk deprecations, because it’s symptomatic of an underlying uncertainty that one is not getting away with the scam. Fear that one is failing to fool the grass roots and their supporters all the time ratchets up the abusive language and gross characterizations. And anyone who resorts to that tactic has no arguments, no yadda-yadda that people are willing to buy anymore. Remember that politicians and Brian Williams and Matt Lauer and Jake Tapper and the whole lot of them fake reality and fob off the fake as the genuine. When someone rips down the façade, and shows the truth, all they can do is grow nasty. The worst of them are the politicians, who are so cut off from reality (supported by taxpayers and privileged beyond imagination) that the reality you and I live in is seen by them as a nemesis that must be controlled and kept at arm’s length. It partly accounts for all the regulatory legislation, which employs force and extortion and is designed to convert our reality into the political and intellectual establishment’s fantasy world reality, where all their wishes are supposed to come true, but don’t.
ReplyDeleteYes. They're an establishment, tyrants pretending to be revolutionaries, and that's their greatest weakness.
ReplyDeletethank you civil westman
ReplyDeleteanon and desert cactus, I appreciate the sharing
ReplyDeleteMr. Ed, sure they've forgotten the lesson about grasping on to power at all costs.
Great article! The left does fear the Tea Party; it was supposed to have gone away by now due to lack of establishment and MSM respect, but instead is still growing. Now the left is blaming them (us), i.e. Americans who care about the Constitution and who vote, for the U.S. credit downgrade by S&P. What a joke.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Eddie
Thanks Sulton and Bruce O'H....well written and timely perspective of the root cause for this lashing out by the multi-sided progressive establishment.
ReplyDeleteThis blame pointing is such an obvious & lame meme I have to think they are beyond fearful and approaching the desperation that forebodes some even more irrational reactions....beware and always respond quickly to each and everyone of the increasingly desperate meme's.
Thank you for the well articulated and humorous depiction of the current political ideological debate in the nation. You have supplied me with with a plethera of quotes expressed with intellectual sincerity.
ReplyDeleteDan, the 'Tea Party' actually doesn't mind government spending so long as they, and they alone, are the recipients. They show all the selfishness and lunacy of the Scotch-Irish without any of their vaunted courage!
ReplyDeleteGo Chuckie go!!!
ReplyDeleteProudscalawag,that was deviously smart of you to toss in the Irish-Scotch slur based on my last name starting with O'H.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in your brilliance, you weren't sure if it was Scots or Irish, so you made them a single people.
For future reference, any name that begins with O' is Irish, a distinctly different tribe of people from the Scots.
As for this Irishman, I receive no govt funds and am a retired firefighter...really. I will put my courage up against yours any day.
Don't take too much pride in your ridiculous comment, it showed a distinct lack of education and intelligence.
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