Ellis Weiner nails the tea bag astroturf would-be movement:
2. These same people, whose economic and physical well-being are a matter of supreme indifference to the richest families in America, have been persuaded to insist on policies that will only benefit the richest families in America. There is a term for these people, and it isn't "right-wing" or "conservative" or "patriotic" or even "Republicans." The term is "sucker." These people are suckers. They have been tricked and manipulated into working against their own interests and for the interests of people who could literally not care less about them. Their patron saint isn't Barry Goldwater or Thomas Paine or Ronald Reagan or Jesus H. Christ. It's P.T. Barnum.Laugh all we want at the ridiculous foolishness on the right. But more wingnut violence is coming. Count on it.
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6. Fox News, a factory of propaganda and lies on the best of days, has decided "the hell with it" and become an outright partisan fomenter of "revolution." ...
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[I]s all this manipulated, phony "grass-roots" outrage fated to lead to some serious danger to innocent people? For every thousand citizens who gather in public to scream idiotic slogans and proudly flaunt their ignorance, how many more are laboring away in basements and garages, building bombs or assembling arsenals? How many does it take to lead to disaster?The anger and fear of these people are real and, probably in most cases, justified, however much they misidentify their causes. That's what the Limbaughs and Hannitys and Becks depend on exploiting in order to make themselves rich and famous. But this entire cycle (rage; exploitation; more rage) seems to me worse than usual, as does its manipulation by the wealthy and their servants.
(h/t Main St. USA)
4 comments:
"how many more are laboring away in basements and garages, building bombs or assembling arsenals? How many does it take to lead to disaster?"
Thank you for today's Two Minutes of Hate (1984). Your quotes are unsubstantiated predictions that only serve to demonize people who dare to Question Authority (Leary).
Arrest people who actually commit crimes. Attend those who protest out of conscience.
I personnally am thrilled to pay taxes into a liberal government which is helping the people, if we ever get one. But I am also thrilled to see people protesting with ideas that are different from mine.
Predictions? There are already dead liberals (real liberals, not blog commenters posing as liberals) and dead cops due to insane right-wing political outrage. Yet the allegedly sane right-wing politicos seek to exploit the ignorance of that outrage, instead of tempering it.
Here's a pertinent question: If it's hate for me to quote this speculation, how is what your sainted, manipulated authority-questioners not hate? You don't think it's completely clear that they are the ones doing the demonizing?
Sheesh. Get a clue.
There are right wing nut jobs in their basements doing illegal things and thinking of violence.
There are tax protesters on the street. For you to connect the two with only emotion and no evidence is prejudice.
The tax protesters folks are not saints. In spite of your labels, they are people. I don't even agree with them but I am very suspicious of anyone who cannot stand to see the government questioned.
I am curious: Today's CNN news reported that some human rights groups are angry at Obama for not prosecuting CIA members for illegal torture under Bush. Should they be quiet too? What is your label for those people?
Real people are more complex than your labels thankfully.
Who do you think you're arguing against, Silence? Not even a single point you make addresses anything I've actually said.
An unblemished record such as that is hard to attain by accident, so pardon me if I think your self-identified ideology is as fictive as your namesake's person. Usually only committed right-wingers think that their free speech rights are compromised by the free speech of their critics. And that's what you imply.
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