This Modern World: A history lesson from the Tea Party

[meegbear]

In days of yore, giants strode the earth. We know and worship them them today as the Founding Fathers!



http://www.salon.com/entertainment/comics/this_modern_world/2011/02/01/this_modern_world

[gratuitous]

1. "Low taxes and lots of guns"

Heaven, I'm in heaven.

[FSogol]

2. The Eternal Unchanging Constitution!

Another home run from Tom Tomorrow.

[Fuzz]

3. Love the dinosaurs. One thing though, teabaggers won't get the sarcasm.

[Erose999]

5. One of my fundie friends actually believes Dinosaurs and Humans walked the Earth at the same time.

I didn't see any use in challenging him on it. Let him think that if he wants.

[Enthusiast]

8. Yes, and all the earth's geological events

took place during a world wide flood. Except the ones that didn't. :rofl:

[DCKit]

10. No kidding. Lots of head-scratching going on about that one.

"Is this supposed to be funny? I don't get it."

Eh, WTH, they'll probably just use it as a teaching aide in Sunday school.

[intheflow]

15. Of course not!

But teabaggers aren't TT's intended audience.

[Erose999]

4. This is one of Tom's best. Throwing the hyperbole of the "Jack Chick" set right back at them LOL.

[Enthusiast]

6. Fantastic! That one hits on several issues. nt

[trotsky]

7. "Awesome!"

Too funny. :rofl:

[yurbud]

9. I'm torn about which panel to use for a new sig line pic

It's down to one of the George Washington's or MLK.

[Electric Monk]

11. k&r

[Blue_Tires]

12. kick

[Gemini Cat]

13. K&R

Home run!

[du_da]

14. Know thy enemy

Presidents riding dinosaurs, for some reason that was exceptionally funny. The irony would certainly escape the fundamentalist crowd.


Now for the critic. There are many things for which we can poke fun at the Tea Party, and no I will not use the derogatory term as it hurts us more than it helps although it does make us chuckle each time we read it. However, we need to ensure we are being honest at the same time or we undermine our own position.
* First, the Tea Party does not quote the founders because they believed them to be infallible they quote them because they represent ideals that are still applicable today. We do the same thing but focus on different points of interest. What we need to do is to differentiate those that are applicable to today's world and those that are not and be able to explain why and how we can go about making changes to system to reflect our current environment.
* Second, the 3/5ths of a person was added by those who more closely align with our side as a means of diminishing power of the slavery supporters, the pro-slavery crowd was happy counting slaves as a whole person in that specific metric.
* Third, conservatives in general not just the Tea Party want to make changes to the Constitution too. They just don't believe in deviating from the rule book without first changing the rule book to allow for said deviation, or at least that is the logic behind their position. Although I would argue they often forget about that when it comes to furthering the Republican agenda. That however is different from viewing said rule book as unchangeable.
*Lastly, The Tea Party was suppose to be about taxes not fundamentalism. If you want to real get their goat, focus on the fact that the movement has been hijacked and the original member aren't focused enough to get it back. This is especially embarrassing for the Libertarian contingent who tend not to fall in line with the fundamentalist agenda.

[zeemike]

16. The tea party is just theater.

And it plays to nationalism....and that is why they act like they love them and freedom and all that crap....and it is all just an act to cover the real agenda...which for most of them is money or settling the score for integration and the civil rights act.
That is what the facts are.

[AlbertCat]

17. The Tea Party was suppose to be about taxes ...

... but ended up being about the scary black man in the white house.

[du_da]

18. If you believe that

then they have already beaten you. As much as we on the left tried to make the racism case the reality is that for the vast majority of them they couldn't care less about race. For them it is about money or more specifically controlling what they see as their "own hard earned wealth". Until we learn to accept what they are really about then we can't beat them. It seems to me that many of us are so convinced that no sane person could possibly disagree with us on the direction the country should go that we are justifying the position they are taking by trying to revive a bogey man that use to work well years ago but has turned on us much as in the boy who cried wolf.

If you want to take down the tea party you have to start by actually listening to their arguments to understand their perspective. You don't have to agree with them but you have to understand them and realize that you can't define their arguements for them you have to work with what they put out there. Only then can you break down their logic and show why they are wrong or how their path leads in the wrong direction. This is particularly important because neither side can win anything without the center and their side has ingratiated itself to the center much of the fault of that being the lack of respect given to them by us. The point isn't to win favor of the tea party, the point is to win favor of centrists and we can't do that using the tactics that we used over the past couple years. Those tactics simply pushed away the people we have any hope winning over.

[olegramps]

22. It is not about race?

I would suggest that you attend a couple of their events. As for winning them over that will never happen.

[du_da]

25. I did

It isn't about race for the major majority of them, that is my point. There is a relatively small group that has attached to them for whom race is an issue but the reality that the freedom of speech crowd has always dealt with that. The left had it back in the day with the militants and the libertarian roots of the tea party has always had to deal with the racist nut jobs on their coat tails. This is a common practice and should be seen for what it is. You have to exclude the fringe nuts who are hoping their otherwise unpopular cause gets forwarded by going along with someone else's cause that includes the free speech message thus forwarding the nut job speech as well.

Those on our side who think this is about race are fooling themselves by assuming that those fringe groups are the core of the movement. Which is tragic because it hurts us more than it helps us in today's day and age. That tactic use to work back in the day when those on the right could be guilted by their indirect associations to these nut jobs, but if you have been paying attention you may have noticed that the core group's desire to leave race behind as an issue has resulted in them not caring if we point to their fringe groups and claim hypocrisy. Now they just ignore us and keep going. The reason for this is that as much as we might want to convince ourselves otherwise the core group within the movement sees the fringe racists as tag-alongs not as members. Which wouldn't be a big issue but apparently the centrists have also made this connection and are giving the right leeway that they didn't use to get.

What does this all mean to us? It means that we have to change how we deal with them because the assumptions we have become comfortable with no longer apply to the core membership. And the methods we used based on those assumptions no longer work. If we don't adapt to that then we will continue shooting ourselves in the foot.

You can't beat them if you don't understand them.

[olegramps]

27. If you attended then you must not have talked to anyone.

It isn't just the ones with the signs. I have spoken with at least fifty and EVERYONE, except for three who I remember distinctly because of they were more balanced, expressed their displeasure with having a Black person as president. And they didn't use the term Black. These people are so damn uninformed and misinformed many thought that Obama had raised their taxes.

[Kurovski]

20. And embracing theocracy.

[Fumesucker]

23. When did the Teabaggers amend the Constitution to eliminate Habeas Corpus?

I'm getting old and apparently I've forgotten when the Constitution was amended to get rid of a basic right..

[Jakes Progress]

19. Just how scary is it

that these people have driver's licenses? That they can sit on juries? That they have and rear children?

Is there a lower form of life?

[Presidentcokedupfratboy]

21. Tom Tomorrow

Funny as hell, as usual.

[dotymed]

24. The fucked up fratboy

is at Ft. Campbell, Ky. today to hawk "his" book to the returning soldiers. I wish they would boo his ass of stage. He is not their "commander in chief" now.
I live a few miles away and the security is so tight that a mouse farting would be shot.

[Toon Me Out]

26. that third panel especially...

...is priceless!:D