The difficulty of demonizing the Tea Partiers: less than six degrees of separation
The word has gone out that, now that HCR has been passed and President Obama is spending his precious time going around the country to “sell” it, the Tea Partiers must be further demonized in any way possible, including of course that perennial favorite, the race card.
But if the Tea Partiers hadn’t already been discredited, it’s not for lack of trying. From the start they were mocked as hate-filled extremists and racists, and given the sexual epithet “teabaggers” as their name instead of the honorable and historically-based one they devised for themselves. They were considered to be similar to those “bitter clingers” Obama had described during his 2008 campaign to supporters in San Francisco.
The idea was (and still is) that, if the ad hominen attacks can be made to stick, the substance of the Tea Party message could be discarded, and the hope of the administration and its supporters was/is that more Americans would be dissuaded from joining up with this bunch of crazy racists.
With a willing press as co-conspirators (or at least cooperative in the coverup), proof was not necessary, and accusations could be made up. Right out of the Alinsky handbook. But what did we expect when we elected a president who had taught Alinsky methods in workshops?
One of the many things the Democrats may have forgotten, however, is that (outside of true-blue monolithic liberal bastions such as Berkeley and NYC), most people actually know a few Tea Partiers, and are aware of who and what they are, and what they are actually protesting, and why. What’s more, those who attend a tea party can report on what they saw there, and they’re not reporting anything like what the media and Democratic leaders are describing.
And, because the Tea Parties are actually rather sedate except for cries of “Kill the bill!” (the ones I attended featured such radical acts as singing “God Bless America”), the would-be demonizers are having trouble finding much evidence for their accusations. Mark my words, however: if they don’t find more of them, they will have to invent them. And they will have no moral reservations about doing so.
There may not be a lot of people attending Tea Parties in terms of percentage of the population of the US. But every person who does attend stands for a host of others who sympathize but do not. It’s easier to demonize a fake populist movement. But it’s much more difficult to successfully demonize a real one.
And the Obamites know this one’s real. That’s why they fear it so.
neoneocon.com
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expat Says:
April 3rd, 2010 at 5:54 pm
When I attended my high school class reunion last summer i learned that several classmates had attended town hall meetings and were very skeptical of the Democrats’ plans. One couple in particular is my only insight into the kind of people attending the Tea Parties. They have been together since 9th grade and are as sensible and decent as any people I have ever known. They don’t have Ivy League law degrees, but they are educated and they are the rocks on which our country is built. I am outraged that Chicago thugs and Washington parasites try to discredit them.
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gcotharn Says:
April 3rd, 2010 at 7:28 pm
In matters of politically correct accusation (Raaaacism! et al), most accusers are conducting political warfare, and are not searching for truth. I suspect my instincts are common to many people: it’s difficult to really let it sink into my bones that they do not care about case-specific evidence and they do not care about truth. I can read neo saying it, I can tell it to myself, yet it’s hard to internalize it and then to keep it internalized. The accuser’s purpose is to use generalization as ammunition, attack as tactic, and to conduct political warfare. I tell myself this, yet continually slip back into an unconscious habit of believing their purpose is to suss out truth. It is not. They are conducting political warfare. They are at war.* If I don’t realize it, then I am a chump.
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SteveH Says:
April 4th, 2010 at 6:36 am
The reason a leftist can’t have a real conversation is because accepting the premise of real-ity,they know, destroys their assertions.
They don’t need to factually know tea partiers are by and large racist. They need to “feel it” as a form of self defense. Or else they are faced with the dillema that they actually are sanctioning stealing from segments of the population, and undeservedly so.
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Richard Aubrey Says:
April 4th, 2010 at 7:14 am
I live along what is known variably as “the I75 corridor, the UAW corridor, the commie corridor” in Michigan.
There have been no Tea Parties, to my knowledge, within a hundred miles of me.
With the exception of a few professionals–Land Conservancy full timers, etc, and some self-deluding ignoramuses who are related–everybody I can think of–whom I know well enough to judge–is a Tea Partier at heart.
I should subtract a few BDSers who have to continue their views for consistency’s sake and insist that Tea Parties are Boooosh. Otherwise, they’d have nobody to hate.
So, say, eighty percent of the people of whom I know enough to judge are Tea Partiers.
Overhear people at work, on the street, odd comments from vendors or customers who are fencing just a bit, but not keeping everything to themselves.
To make an analogy, following the Viet Nam years, some military and political leaders decided that having the Reserve component fully involved in future wars would increase the connection between the population at large and the folks at risk, decreasing belligerent jingoism. Not like fighting the war with regulars whom nobody knows.
Turns out not to have worked, afaik, but it does mean you can’t smear the grunts any longer. They’re us. Or, to put it another way, they’re the parents of the guys you’re smearing.
My son was about twelve during the Gulf War and had a hard time at our local mall. The proprietors had erected a “Wall of Honor”, featuring letters from the guys overseas and pictures and unit flags and so forth.
He was outraged when I told him that, during the Viet Nam war, it would have taken armed guards to protect the thing from the hippies, lefties, liberal protestants, and democrats.
So hauling in the Reserve component cost the left one of their tactics, or at least one of their recreations.
Ditto–coming back to the point at last–with the Tea Parties.
They’re us. Smear them, you’re smearing us. Me.
And, to address another point, there’s no point in addressing the smears as if the left actually thinks this stuff. They know better. They’re lying. But it’s a useful distraction if the rest of us react in the normal fashion, i.e. try to make cnvince them that they’re factually wrong but presuming they’re arguing in good faith.
They’re lying. They know they lie. Taking them as if they’re arguing in good faith, even reflexively, is giving them an advantage. |
