Submitted By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
The wrath from the right has been scortching ever since VP Joe Biden commented that certain freshman tea party congressmen were acting “like terrorists” in negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. There was equally no love lost when John McClain commented that the tea party freshman were acting as “deceivers” and their ideas were “bizarro.”
Now Tea Party freshman Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) (No, not the one with the Maserati that goes 185) has produced his own video decrying the incivility and telling us that “Vice President Biden, I’m not a terrorist. Terrorists target and kill people.” You can watch the lament here.
While the language employed by the VP was quite over the top, and especially so given Biden’s challenge to introduce more civility into public discourse, our freshman congressman fails to see the irony of his words. No one suggests the Tea Partiers are calling for mass extinction of liberals or undocumented aliens, or gays or the poor. But what do they want?
Here’s Nevada GOP Senate Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle on the frustration of her comrades:
“I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”
Some Tea Party candidates are a tad less discrete in their call for violence. Here’s Texas Tea Party candidate Stephen Broden, “Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms.”
Alaska Tea Party candidate Joe Miller found a lot to like in East Germany’s “checkpoint Charlie” system of stemming the tide of freedom-seekers “immigrating” to West Berlin during the Cold War:
“The first thing that has to be done is secure the border … East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could.”
And the Tea Party has a thing or two to say to liberals about the notion of any separation between church and state:
“Do you know, where does this phrase ‘separation of church and state’ come from? It was not in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. … The exact phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State, ask them why they’re Nazis.” —Glen Urquhart, the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for the Delaware House seat. You can even watch him here.
And then there’s that “witchy woman,” Delaware’s own Christine O’Donnell, who, when questioned about whether the Constitution calls for separation of church and state during a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School delightfully noted, “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?” Ahems were heard around the world on that one.
New York Tea Party darling Carl Paladino had this suggestion for the poor:
“Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes. These (prisons) are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities. You have to teach them basic things — taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things.”
Then there’s the First Lady of the Tea Party, Michele Bachmann, sharing all the inside dope on what it really means to be gay (no husband jokes, please):
“If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement.” — then Minn. state senator Michele Bachmann
There’s scores more and they deal with all manner of insensitivity to the poor, immigrants, the 45000 Americans who die every year from inadequate health care, and just about everyone else the right likes to pillory.
Now most of these quotes were from losers in their electoral races and maybe they represent only the most extreme dunces the Tea Party has produced, but that’s not really the point is it? The point is that while the far-out Right might be justly indignant for the rhetorical excesses of the Left, they can’t seem to find the words to decry the excesses of their own camp.
There’s a word for that.
Source: Huffington Post
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
“They felt free to follow their own version of logic unconstrained by their past, and I see no reason to be constrained by them in my own reasoning.”
Tony,
Loved the reasoning in this whole post. I would add that perhaps the problems of all philosophers, brilliant as they are, is that they are trying to formulate all-encompassing systems upon a human race whose hallmark is constant variation. Einstein, no doubt one of the greatest minds of history could never develop a unified theory of everything, try as he might. Physicists today are trying to develop such a Unified Theory, encompassing both Einstein’s macro-cosmic theory of how things work on a large scale, with Quantum Mechanics theory of how things work microscopically. Both theories have been thus far proven experimentally, but are inconsistent theoretically.
This to me is the problems that philosophers have, as great as their minds might be. Even on a finite level of the universe, humanity/society, the interactions and variations are so wide that no one has yet come along with a Unified Theory, universally applicable to human interaction. If that is the case, then we each have to make up our own minds as to what’s going on here. Those that can’t see that suffer from that old nemesis hubris and we all know how that works out.
Mike,
I have to say that one of the things I really like about this site is the lack of push back against threadjacks. (Although I would say that having been part of several of the most egregious threadjacks…) I very much approve of allowing the discussion to unfold in a totally organic manner (so I guess I’m with Nal regarding banning in general, but I can see that this case falls into a grey area and there seems to be precedent on both sides).
Regarding your on-topic point: I think that this sort of terrorism can only be supported by the ignorant as it asks the vast majority of people to vote against their self-interest. Probably why those terrorists are continually attacking public education…
As to the original question of this blog I would affirmatively say that the Tea-bagging movement is terrorist in nature. They have been directly led by a Dick Armey, who is directly funded by the Koch Brothers and others. Their
plan is to shrink the government and eliminate as many taxes as possible, while also eliminating safeguards against corporate excesses.
Last night on Bill Maher they had and admitted and proud Tea Party member who had written the Sara Palin saga “Undefeated”. He was confident and bold talking about reducing government spending and waste, but was flummoxed by the question as to whether this should include Oil Subsidies and Tax Write-offs for Corporate Jets.
There is a disconnect in this movement that goes beyond its not so secret backing by some of the most radical elements of this country’s wealthy Corporatists. That disconnect is the inability to see the inconsistencies in their own logic and the subsequent use of the defense mechanism of denial to resolve them. I would submit that this is the same characteristic of terrorists everywhere, be they Muslims who feel the killing of innocents is just; Christians “Right to Lifers” who take the lives of Doctors; Jews who would justify deaths of innocent Palestinians on the premise they do it to us;
Hindu’s who would kill Muslims and vice versa. And so it goes.
What occurred in last weeks manufactured crisis was indeed holding hostage the economy and lives of most Americans, by people willing to allow catastrophe and suffering, in order to enforce their shaky economic doctrines. This was an act of terrorism. What is ironic to the point of bitter amusement is that the “sane” men in our government from both parties, would give into this terrorism, yet have been so willing to risk the lives of American troops in the name of fighting terrorism. I am disgusted by all the actors who took part in this farce.
Mike S said:
“[NoWay] appear[s] to feel I am a bit of an egotist. Perhaps I am. Perhaps all of us who write here are because the very act of writing for public view is at base an expression of “look at me” and see my “wisdom” on the topics of the day.”
I think this is a great point – the very act of deciding to de-lurk (as most of us start out as lurkers) and post something requires a belief that one has something to add to the discussion. I think that NoWay, however, confuses the genuine respect with which Mike is treated here (due to the obvious thoughtful wisdom in his words rather than any perceived [or actual] saintliness…) with an egotistical attempt to claim unearned authority or respect.
NoWay,
I’ve been posting on this blog since around the 2008 election and my first impressions (a big part of the reason I was attracted to the discussion here) were of Mike and FFLEO viscously attacking each others ideas while maintaining an obvious mutual respect. Mike (and FFLEO) have EARNED all of the respect they receive here – just as you and I have earned our reputations at this site (and just because you switch handles doesn’t erase that history, by the way…). Ultimately, I view everyone’s reputation here as good indications of who they are (or, more accurately, the persona they are projecting – we’re all really sock puppets of a person behind the keyboard – since they are since they are based on nothing but unadorned words. I’ve exposed every gravatar/handle I’ve posted under (well, I posted mocking sock puppetry under several more handles, but always under one of those four gravatars…) – will you do the same? (I’m not asking you to expose your identity – just be honest about what you’ve said on this site. If you’re not willing to do that, maybe you could explain why you are not and why that isn’t an indication that you are acting in bad faith.
“Impressive. You would almost think they were related. LOL”
NoWay,
So what?
“Stop addressing people by anything other than their chosen pseudonym and you may then have clean hands.”
NoWay,
This and what followed it are merely evasions. If you remember I was responding to your calling me Mikey and then explaining it was because I was being disrespectful to Kenny. Sort of a “how does it make you feel to be insulted” question. I merely pointed out to you that I was replying to him in the manner he had responded to me. Nowhere in any of my writings here for years will you find me whining about a name someone calls me.
“Stop addressing people by anything other than their chosen pseudonym and you may then have clean hands. Until such time, please stop trying to play the victim. It’s a childish game of he touched me first. It’s not very becoming of any adult.”
I have neither asked for, nor sought to portray myself as having “clean hands” in the vitriol that often plays a role here.
“That wasn’t nice and it was vengeful.” (NoWay)
“I would say vengeful is an apt characterization of what I did.” (Me)
You seem to be a tad obsessive in trying to portray me as someone pretending to be on a loftier plane, when in fact the evidence by my own
admission is that I’m clearly not.
“Nobody needs to compliment you Mike. You pat yourself on the back enough to cover that.”
Would you say that was somewhat not nice, NoWay? You appear to feel I am a bit of an egotist. Perhaps I am. Perhaps all of us who write here are
because the very act of writing for public view is at base an expression of “look at me” and see my “wisdom” on the topics of the day.
“Leave the past in the past and move on. Respond to the ideas and forget about the person presenting them.”
NoWay, really? Aren’t you doing in this comment just what you accuse me of doing? Pretending to stand above the fray. Your responses to me have been an attack, though carried on at an adult level. That is fine. It is your right of course and I really take no umbrage. However, twixt you and me, that which you accuse me of, albeit tastefully, could also be said of you. No human being is saintly, or ever has been, though a rare few (I’m certainly not amongst them) approach it from afar. In my life there have been people who thought I was wonderful. People who thought me asinine. People who thought me bland. People who thought me a monster, People who loved me and people who hated me, with all the gradations in between. From their perspectives all of them have been correct. My only saving grace has been to admit my own faults to myself, to admit my human frailty to those others and to move on. That is what I’m doing now in this discussion.
Maggie Simi-
Please take your meds immediately. You are nattering badly and need to return to this planet at once. I will increase the dosage tomorrow.
Love and kisses,
HenMan Masquerading as Maggie Simi’s Doctor
Mike A,
What we really need is to go back to Reagan – let’s have some trickle down tax INCREASES.
Gene H.:
I believe it is a form of sabotage. S&P has modified the U.S. credit rating a tad. I call it the “Norquist Nudge.”
Is the U.S. Credit Rating a Victim of GOP Sabotage?
Swarthmore mom,
What Lottakatz said. That little gem of a quote has to be causing conniptions in the GOP and a certain amount of discomfort all around Congress.
Swarthmore mom: I bet heads on the right are going to start exploding in 3 – 4 – 1 – … I wonder if any mention of that will be picked up by the MSM or used by the Democrats?
Thanks for that link.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/08/highly_salient.php?ref=fpblg S&P refers to the Republicans and taxes.
I wonder if the Tea Party believes in the ratings services now?
Woosty, I’m sorry. I misunderstood, somehow your mention of Florida just tripped a mental toggle and I crossed ‘witness’ with ‘voting’. Darn. Well, my sentiment is the same even if the advice is c**p. Be strong and watch your back.
Woosty,
and, I forgot … document, document, document ,,, every little instance, date, time, place, description … try to keep the description factual with as little emotion as possible
Woosty’s still a Cat,
Black and whites (photos and videos) are very helpful … check the laws in your state before using. And think stalking laws for continued harassment of this sort might qualify.
“I thought I lived in a braver place.”
A lot of us did, Woosty.
Thank you Lottakatz, as usual you are the voice of both compassion and reason…and living proof that we don’t have to have one without the other. 🙂
Voting rights, at least, is worthwhile…. but I think I just inadvertantly tinkled in the wrong catbox. Thank you for the information.
There just seems to be so much fear in the populace right now and a lack of recognizing it by the P’stB. A perceived threat, real or not, becomes the impetus for a show of control or worse, force. And there are always those who take advantage of times like these for acts of personal gain.
I thought I lived in a braver place.
Woosty=^..^
The question is, does having your brake line cut , in a long line of targeted criminal/malicious events, rise to the ‘witness intimidation’ level as defined by legal or law enforcement people? And;
If you live in Florida, and this has been going on for quite awhile, and the other parties involved in the brouhaha ARE of the legal community…what do you suggest to counter and end the terrorism?
———–
I’m not a lawyer but as I recall from the Civil Rights movement and other movements one just keeps going ‘up the chain of command:
If it’s a city one goes to county law enforcement;
If its a county one goes to the state;
If it’s a state one goes to the federal level, some DOJ section that specializes therein.
The problem is that that it takes a long time and for a long time now the Justice Department seem to have a hand’s-off approach to any election related crime. I would think that he EEO Division of DOJ would be all over some of the state laws on photo ID as investigators first and then a plaintiff, I don’t see ’em anywhere. Voting rights seem to be devolving to the same conditions I recall from the news as I was growing up in the 50’s. A question like yours just tears at my soul, I’m so sorry you’re having to fight a fight that should have been left behind years ago.
Does anybody have any photos or witness statements?