Tea Party lessons

Jon Stewart is bewildered by the winners of the debt “debate,” the Tea Party. Their intransigence led to trillions of dollars in cuts with no revenue so you’d think they be basking in their glory. But noooo. Many of them voted against it because it wasn't draconian enough! And yet a large contributor to the deficit was maintaining the Bush tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy, which cuts they supported. Stewart correctly understands that they’re not happy because government still exists. We still have traffic lights, those evil controls on our “freedom.”

That's why I said "fuck compromise" because you cannot compromise with economic and social terrorists and gain anything; you can only continue to lose more and more. It is not in the least "integral" to think we can find a common ground with these fanatics, somehow work it all out and give every party to the "debate" an equal voice. If anything that is what the fricken kennilingusts are always accusing the MGM of doing. It seems in fact that agreeing to compromise with them only shows them you are wishy-washy, not committed to your own principles as they are, and this perceived weakness will be used repeatedly against you. Fortunately some of the truly progressive political voices are saying fuck these jokers, stand up for progressive principles, grow some testicular fortitude, and do not compromise with the terrorists: Defeat them! Soundly, roundly and completely.

Matt Taibbi’s prescient 9/28/10 article on the Tea Party has yet again proven his accurate take on the political landscape. Many of the actual folks that believe the hype are those on government programs like Medicare and yet they are duped into hating government “handouts.” They are purportedly against runaway government spending unless it’s on them. Recall Michelle Bachman’s farm is receiving government subsidies, as is her “counseling clinic” and her home was financed by Freddie Mac. Rand Paul, another in this coterie, rails against Medicare and yet when confronted with reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself backed off.

The “real” Tea Party is spin created by mega-financiers like the Koch brothers and Dick Armey’s group Freedom Works. And one thing these conservatives have always been good at it manipulating the ignorant, bending them to their worldview with lies and dirty tricks like creating a spending crisis to avert attention to the increasingly iniquitous wealth gap in this country. They ingeniously get people to vote against their own best interest to keep padding their own pockets. It is brilliant, really, like mad and evil geniuses in some of the cartoon movies we see from Marvel, like Iron Man and whatnot. I have to hand it to them, since they organized this movement with their frame, won hugely in the last election and now look at the power they’re wielding in Congress in proportion to their numbers.

This will hopefully serve to show the power of what can happen when people rally around something and get politically involved. But this time perhaps the progressives can get on the ball, and not be so much manipulated by a top-down bullshit corporatocracy but from the bottom-up, by the progressive people themselves. And learn how to stick to progressive convictions and policies, for we see we can effect change not by negotiating with terrorists but by defeating them in the area of political ideals and at the ballot boxes around the nation.