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Edited on Tue Feb-09-10 03:58 PM by Political Heretic
Noam's not talking about the 600 upper middle class white people sitting at a Tea Party conference. He's talking about the millions of Americans that, according to polls, profess some sympathy toward what tea partiers are doing.
The idea that somehow the tea party movement wasn't around before the election of Obama is simply incorrect, though it didn't see the same sort of MSM coverage. The first tea party marches occurred long before Obama was even nominated for President. The same people were out int the streets marching in protest before Obama was elected?
When Obama took office, this pocket of unrest grew. It grew in part as a backlash to an increasingly bad economy. It grew in part because racists joined up as an outlet for anti-black obama hate. It grew in part as a reaction to conservative parties being out of power.
But it didn't spontaneously appear out of thin air the day Obama got elected. That's some highly revisionist history.
How do you find common ground with people who believe government, and not economic injustice, is the problem? By pointing out - correctly - that there's little to no delineation between government and corporations, and to blame one is to blame the other.
No one, including Chomsky, is talking about leading Tom Tancredo to water, or upper-middle class white racists who can afford to by 1100$ go as a family and sit in a convention.
Stop focusing on the 600 people in that room and ignoring the (apparently) millions of Americans for which the message of frustrating with government, distrust of the establishment and desire for radical change deeply resonates.
The biggest mistake we make is to assume that people that don't agree with us are lost causes. I can't tell you the number of people I have befriended who were die-hard Glen Beck fans when I met them, who were ultimately persuaded to think differently because I didn't assume they were racists, or assume they were stupid, or assume they were pathetic or beyond reach. And I was willing to talk with them. Not lecture them. Not yell at them. Just talk with them, which included even listening to what they had to say.
This includes my formerly evangelical fundamentalist, anti-government, ultra conservative family. Well, that's what they were ten or fifteen years ago. Today they are liberal activists working to combat poverty and homelessness in our community. They credit their political turn around to my tireless, patient attempts to reason with them and redirect their outrage to where it belongs.
If I would have treated them like they "can't be reasoned with" or thought some of the things that have been said on these boards about conservative minded folks, they would never - ever - have changed.
The same is true for my many friends and acquaintances who were once angry libertarian types who now forward me news and information on social and economic justice and work on working class issues on a regular basis.
Again, there will always be some people who will not be persuaded, who might even be described as "lost causes." There are seething racists involved in the Tea Party Movement, and there are also people seeking to manipulate the emotions of others for their own callous purposes within the Tea Party Movement. There will always be some people who represent the worst of the worst and cannot be reasoned with. But they are a minority, even with in conservative populist movements like this one.
Because on the other hand, there are the millions more Americans who are angry and disillusioned with government, disgusted by wall street, and feeling that no matter how hard they work they are still getting screwed by the system. And those people may tend to be more political conservative or politically liberal - but the broader feeling of "enough is enough" is starting to become the same.
They may go to a tea party or shout at a rally because their sick of feeling used and a seeking something different. But their not professional ideologues. These are the people Chomsky and Hartman speak of. Not the 600 people in the room but the thousands of people in the streets.
And every time some elitist prick starts talking about how stupid the "sheeple" are and how pathetic "voters" are and the "ignorant masses" blah blah blah - it reflects the attitude that I think keeps our country in shackles.
I'd rather stand with so called "dumb ignorant hicks" and "sheeple" and "stupid uneducated dipshits" (all phrases uttered here in the last week) - than with pseudo-liberal elitist pricks who think that somehow they're going to "save" the country while disdaining the very people who comprise it.
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