Great Read On The Tea Party

[DemocratSinceBirth]

The individuals in the Tea Party may come from very different walks of life, but most of them have a few things in common. After nearly a year of talking with Tea Party members from Nevada to New Jersey, I can count on one hand the key elements I expect to hear in nearly every interview. One: Every single one of them was that exceptional Republican who did protest the spending in the Bush years, and not one of them is the hypocrite who only took to the streets when a black Democratic president launched an emergency stimulus program. ("Not me — I was protesting!" is a common exclamation.) Two: Each and every one of them is the only person in America who has ever read the Constitution or watched Schoolhouse Rock. (Here they have guidance from Armey, who explains that the problem with "people who do not cherish America the way we do" is that "they did not read the Federalist Papers.") Three: They are all furious at the implication that race is a factor in their political views — despite the fact that they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed by reports about how the New Black Panthers want to kill "cracker babies," support politicians who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to enact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over Charlie Rangel, ACORN and Barack Obama's birth certificate. Four: In fact, some of their best friends are black! (Reporters in Kentucky invented a game called "White Male Liberty Patriot Bingo," checking off a box every time a Tea Partier mentions a black friend.) And five: Everyone who disagrees with them is a radical leftist who hates America.

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They're completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I'm an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I'm a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are.

It's not like the Tea Partiers hate black people. It's just that they're shockingly willing to believe the appalling horseshit fantasy about how white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority. That may not be racism, but it is incredibly, earth-shatteringly stupid. I hear this theme over and over — as I do on a recent trip to northern Kentucky, where I decide to stick on a Rand Paul button and sit in on a Tea Party event at a local amusement park. Before long, a group of about a half-dozen Tea Partiers begin speculating about how Obamacare will force emergency-room doctors to consult "death panels" that will evaluate your worth as a human being before deciding to treat you.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904?RS_show_page=1

[lunatica]

1. I know people who are exactly how he describes them

They're dense, opinionated because they think opinions trump facts and have the attention span of a gnat. A lot like that Art guy who Rachel tried to interview the other night.

[The Wielding Truth]

2. I just stormed a tea party in my area. Lord help me I walked into

the lion's den and talked and talked and talked. I was so unprepared, but felt so duty bound to do it.
They were in my face and I kept talking. They ask me to move and I used their mantra of free speech. I was so determined to save them from their ignorance that I underestimated mine. I was videoed and I kept talking. I found a few like souls and spent an hour talking to a republican who was reasonable and kind. Although I felt as if he was taking one for the team to occupy me.

If I am on you tube I will die because I was not prepared to face what I jumped into. Should I be consoled or scolded?

[Exilednight]

5. Can't argue with a stupid person. They wear you down and beat you with experience. n/t

[The Wielding Truth]

6. In the belly of the beast today,I found them different from this article writer's assessment.

They weren't overtly anything. They mostly just wanted to hear the speaker.They didn't want ot hear me. I was so stupid to go into a revival meeting and ask how they could begin to believe that junk. You are right, but I have always thought that one little person could open a crack in a door. I hope I did not cause any to close farther. I needed intervention. I am still shaking and it was over at 2PM.

[butterfly77]

12. You will get over it..

I get angry with myself but you live and learn. I would be seething and angry and thinking about how I could have made them see things from a different point of view.

Many of them don't want to hear anything because they know what they are doing and they just don't give a damn.

A lot of them don't realize that what effects others will effect them too. As you think on it you will recall who said what and wonder why they think the way they do but,you weren't the one with the problem they were..

[The Wielding Truth]

13. Wow, thanks butterfly. I really needed some commiseration. I have been

so traumatized by my own gutsy stupidity. It's so good to have DU friends who too want to be Don Quixote. I just realized too late that I was not prepared for the fight. I just felt that I owed it to everybody to try and stop these people from taking in the poisonous words that were blaring from the courthouse steps.

[butterfly77]

15. I know the feeling..

me and a friend of mine do it every chance we get,she is a little more gutsy than me and she will slow lead into an issue and then goes full force.

I will feel out the people or the situation and then attack them with facts but I gradually do it by talking about it in a way that they will listen.

There have been times where someone else will chime in with the "they are going to do what they want anyway" and some who will try to take the subject in a whole different direction and then they will have you explaining something that isn't even relevant to what you were discussing in the first place..

[The Wielding Truth]

17. That happened many times today. I must have talked to about 40 people.

I don't think I would be safe around you.Although I'm deffinitly not safe by myself and I think you would be a good friend. :fistbump:I'm laying low for a awhile.

Gee.. I was a fool.:hide: :patriot:

[Diamonique]

7. Why did you do it?

[The Wielding Truth]

8. I was making calls at the local office and the woman at the same table

said she was going and I said I would go along,but when I got there I couldn't find her so I thought I would make an impact while I searched for her. I never found her. I wish I would have had a sounding board.

[butterfly77]

11. Consoled..

they were just doing what they always do on fox 5or6 against one..But in your case it sounds like many more.

[The Wielding Truth]

16. Only I approached them and tried to tell them how wrong this was.

I jumped in their arena. They were not too nasty, in retrospect. They are just so searching for the good old white republican non-progressive non socialist-European United States. They had their reasons and their fears are palpable. I was so out of my comfort zone.

I was supposed to meet-up with a stronger dem than me, but I couldn't find her. I felt like I had to carry the banner. I had to save these people from this farce.

One of the many problems with that is that they had traveled and invested in being there. I was not who they wanted to hear. I think that other than being a unwanted insect I may have shown how this lefty had no exact fix on what I thought a tea partier really was.I knew how this movement was hurting the overall cooperation needed to solve problems and emboldening ugly harsh politics and policies,but I hadn't seen until today that the individuals there were not ugly or harsh. It was odd and unnerving to be among people who would embolden racists, who swore they hated the KKK and would not support them,yet made it a point to show me the one black woman at the rally as proof of there multiracial openness.

I am not smart enough or calm enough to have done and said what I did, but it didn't stop me. I have something in me that says I have to make it better I have to get through to them I have to tell them how extreme I had seen them. There are so many here who are stronger and smarter and more poised. I prey they step up. Although I had the best of intentions, I don't think that I was so good at it.

It's nice to have someone to hear you confess their odd combination of bravery and stupidity. Thanks again for listening to me.

[butterfly77]

19. We get so angry as we..

watch them on tv lie straight in our faces and the hosts seem to never follow up. We have our lists and when we get fed up we email a lot of these hosts,newspapers,blogs,etc.

I remember during the bush years in between classes and work or on weekends when I would be out,shopping etc.

I would write something that would get their attention a different issue but someway that relates to how it will influence them and their lives and they will pay attention, then I would make copies and leave them in different places with website addresses or senators or congressmen and women.

Some really think they don't pay attention and I tell them they pay attention to the teabaggers because they email more than we do so they vote for what they want and not what we want..One lady told me she was afraid to email because her son told her not to...

[Parker CA]

3. Terrific piece. The entire article is well worth the read. nt

[jimlup]

4. Nicely said

[JoePhilly]

9. When you enter a "fact free zone", don't take facts as your weapon ...

Most of these folks are "ultra-religious". Their BELIEFS carry far more weight then any FACT you might produce.

An approach I enjoy is to asking them to be specific about ANY topic. We need to get back to the Constitution, ok .. give me a specific example.

They can't, they babble some nonsense about "freedom" or "liberty" ... Ask them what spending to cut, they can't tell you, and if they try, they screw it up.

Try this ... find one who calls Obama Hitler, and one who says he's like Stalin, and another who says he's like MAO ... and then get those three to PICK which one Obama is actually like ... they can't all be correct.

When they talk about Socialism ... ask them the percentage of DOW, S&P 500, or NASDAQ companies Obama has NATIONALIZED (the answer of course is ZERO). Their heads explode.

They've been feed talking points, and that's what they repeat. Past that, they know very little. But the believe whatever Fox tells them, like a religion.

[butterfly77]

10. The teaparty just...

TALKING LOUD AIN'T SAYIN NUTHIN!AIN'T SAYIN NUTHIN!:silly: :crazy:

[Cognitive_Resonance]

14. You can't reason with them. All I have spoken with are hopelessly narrow-minded and driven by

their prejudices. The only solution is to defeat them at every opportunity. These types will never disappear entirely, but after enough elections are lost the Republican Party will move away from the Tea Party strategy.

[drlindaphd]

18. This is the product of 8 years of fear and ignorance...

propagated by a government led by the terrorist in chief and his minions and continued by Republican leaders. Fear and ignorance are the enemy of freedom and democracy. Tea Party people are scared out of their minds, by their own leaders. They listen to the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, Pailin, and their leaders in congress who manipulate them for their own personal gain and they make no sense at all. But they are loud. And they are busy. If the media would just ignore them, they would fade into oblivion where they belong and let the adults run the country.

[The Wielding Truth]

20. I felt like the canary in the coal mine. I thought that if I put some truth out

there or interfered with them listening to the propaganda I would maybe save them. Instead they videoed me and tried to shoe me away until in conversation they walked me to away from the center of rally.
I don't think I made a difference,except they think a talky liberal has crashed their party. Oh my I hope there are more talky liberals out there so I don't seem so odd.

[COLGATE4]

21. You can't fix stupid. nt

[opihimoimoi]

22. Their rationale, their stories, confirm a rejection of Sanity, Reason, and Logic.... a sure sign of

Delusion, Fanaticism, & Stockholm Captivity.....

Its come to the Final Battle::

The SANE vs THE INSANE......