I Don't Work For NPR, So I'll Say It....
Posted on 2011.03.09 at 16:14
The Teabaggers were a deliberately-created movement to fill out the ranks of the GOP with the Nutbag vote. These are the bigots, the homophobes (not that that's not another kind of bigot, you understand) the conspiracy "theorists" (for values of the term "theorist" that don't include anything you or I would recognize as a "theory," rather than, viewed in the most charitable possible light, a "premise") the Birthers, the ignorant, the violent. The Teabagger movement was a deliberate strategy of inviting a whole lot of genuine crazy into their "Big Tent" so they'd have the numbers to outvote the Dems.
They called on them with dog-whistles of armed revolution, with what they knew, but their targets didn't, were metaphors of enemies of the nation at the controls. Minnesota Republican Rep Michelle Bachmann calling for some sort of press-run Neo-HUAC investigating Democratic Congressmen for being "Unamerican." Sharon Angle telling her supporters that Mexican drug lords were pouring over Nevada's border with Mexico (I know, but I'm not sure she did, and less sure her followers did, that Nevada doesn't have such a border) with the collusion of Harry Reid, and if she couldn't defeat him at the polls, they'd have to "remedy" the situation by exercising their Second Amendment rights. There's more, an entire invented scenario of "real Americans" being reduced to some for of rebellion to "take their country back" from "enemies" who had somehow illegitimately seized power.
There's no serious doubt that this is deeply racist. The country didn't need to be "taken back" until it was "in the hands of" a black man, who the Teabaggers go through all sorts of gyrations to delegitimize: He's Muslim, he's Kenyan, he's a Socialist, he's a Nazi.
These were the troops conscripted to fill the ranks of the Right's political army of voters: The credulous, the uncritical, the simpleminded, easily led, easily spoon-fed the idea that someone they weren't comfortable with anyway because of their own innate prejudices was responsible for their sorry lot in life. They were shown an enemy, and told to fight-fight-fight to the very last to defeat him. Of course, the weapons with which they were supposed to fight were simply disruption and votes. No, nobody worth listening to _really_ thinks the idea was to get them to kill Liberals.
But that's the problem with crazy people: They're crazy. As Fox Mulder asked the guys who made a deal with Satan to straighten out their school system, "Did you really believe that you could call up the Devil and ask him to behave?"
They called on them with dog-whistles of armed revolution, with what they knew, but their targets didn't, were metaphors of enemies of the nation at the controls. Minnesota Republican Rep Michelle Bachmann calling for some sort of press-run Neo-HUAC investigating Democratic Congressmen for being "Unamerican." Sharon Angle telling her supporters that Mexican drug lords were pouring over Nevada's border with Mexico (I know, but I'm not sure she did, and less sure her followers did, that Nevada doesn't have such a border) with the collusion of Harry Reid, and if she couldn't defeat him at the polls, they'd have to "remedy" the situation by exercising their Second Amendment rights. There's more, an entire invented scenario of "real Americans" being reduced to some for of rebellion to "take their country back" from "enemies" who had somehow illegitimately seized power.
There's no serious doubt that this is deeply racist. The country didn't need to be "taken back" until it was "in the hands of" a black man, who the Teabaggers go through all sorts of gyrations to delegitimize: He's Muslim, he's Kenyan, he's a Socialist, he's a Nazi.
These were the troops conscripted to fill the ranks of the Right's political army of voters: The credulous, the uncritical, the simpleminded, easily led, easily spoon-fed the idea that someone they weren't comfortable with anyway because of their own innate prejudices was responsible for their sorry lot in life. They were shown an enemy, and told to fight-fight-fight to the very last to defeat him. Of course, the weapons with which they were supposed to fight were simply disruption and votes. No, nobody worth listening to _really_ thinks the idea was to get them to kill Liberals.
But that's the problem with crazy people: They're crazy. As Fox Mulder asked the guys who made a deal with Satan to straighten out their school system, "Did you really believe that you could call up the Devil and ask him to behave?"
