I hate to say it. But its true. Your teabagger is a thug, a racist, a moron, a coward, a fraud, but they are the people. For years we've all been wondering where has the outrage been. Why aren't fucking heads rolling down Walstreet?
The teabagger is the only one who seems to give a god damn. Sure they are a bunch of johnny come lately whose only reason for their sudden angst is the chance to spit on some black politicians. But at the end of the day, a black politician is a politician!
This government is broken. Austerity is coming one way or another. Why not walk into it with courage, accept what very well could be instant depression and start on the road to real recovery. Since Saint Reagan we've had 30 years of growth. Except that growth was a facade built on debt. Your house, your job, your life is all a product of that debt. The economy is an illusion, most of us have no idea what a real economy is since we've never seen one ourselves.
Republicans and Democrats do not have this country in their interest. They are not of the people. The teabagger is the only subset of the people that has put down its t.v. remote to voice itself. Thats how bad it is in this country! The teabagger is the only one who gives a fuck lol.
This status quo that has been our lives must come to an end right? Somebody tell me that we can make up wars and lose them for 12 years straight, burrow trillions of dollars and print hundreds of trillions of dollars more in cash to give to Toyota, France, Libya, and many more dubious outlays with no cost?
When this debt ceiling is raised and the status quo is protected once again. Lets all remember when we wallow in a devastating depression a short time from now that these morons called the teabaggers were right.
I understand, I think, your despair and alarm and comments.
But the tea party is just apart of the people. It can be small or large - it makes a difference.
It doesn't really stand for anything - a mob by any other name is just as crazy. Now, that sounds dismissive but it's not, in the sense that votes matter - crazy or not.
The tea party is a portion of the electorate that is partially manufactured, partially controlled, by certain interests, like the Kochs. They're in part a move by Republicans to try to get the people they have fooled over and over to say 'Republicans sure suck, but we better vote for them because Democrats are worse.' In allying with those who are understandably uncomfortable with the alliance, Republicans are 'playing with fire' - it's that or lose those voters. We're seeing some of that fire now.
It's a bit like the politicians in the south in the civil rights movement who rode the issue to power siding with racists - but then were stuck with them when they attacked freedom riders and drew the federal marshals and caused the nationalizing of the state guard. Whatcha gonna do?
Helping the mob change its misguided views is not easy - the approach Kennedy carefully took - riding the mob is easy - the approach people like George Wallace took.
The tea party might throw its electoral weight around, cause or block policies, but it doesn't really stand for much besides rage. It was really born from a Wall Streeter's rant against 'those damn poor black people who want to take all our money' as I recall the rant (as the issue that stuck out). Not the best of agendas, but appealing to some.
This was so predictable, watching the Republicans take power with appeals to 'good government' and fiscal responsibility but a real agenda to serve the rich. Of course it would leave a lot of their voters dissatisfied. They could only milk 'but the Democrats are worse' for so long. It creates cynicism - 'they all suck'. Which has more of a place than those cynics organized by funders like the Koch brothers - leading to a 'tea party agenda' of 'get rid of the EPA', just what some of the biggest polluters happen to want to make a buck.
You're largely right IMO about how 'democracy isn't working' while the rich get away with so much and democracy doesn't create 'the people' having power to change it. Instead we get leaders at best like Obama who say a few populist things but serve the corporatocracy, and at worst even worse corporatists who barely pay the public lip service.
Every time that happens, there's a temptation to grab the first opposition you see - be it tea party, communists, whatever, and it's usually a mistake.
The tea party needs to be opposed, minimalized, marginalized for the mob it is - even while a better for of 'tea party' with a public agenda would be good.
It's hard to be optimistic about the issue - the money behind the wealthy is incredibly large and effective.
You're overly broad about 'Republicans and Democrats', because the Progressive Caucus of the Democrats is the only major political faction that's more 'for the people'.
Destruction isn't the answer. Not raising the debt ceiling would be nothing more than transferring massive amounts of our wealth into the hands of the same bankers who are behind so much bad for the country; weaken the US in the global economy; reduce the spending for the people while protecting spending for the wealthy, helping them accomplish 'starve the beast' radical policies they can't achieve (hopefully) directly.
Just as the problem in the financial crash wasn't so much the fact we had to bail out the financial system because it had a gun to the head of the nation, it was the fact they had been allowed to have that gun and become too big to fail before that, this isn't about the debt ceiling. The problems are in things like our allowing the corporation dominance of our elections through their money and the massive right-wing propaganda machine corrupting voters.
With that, leaders who you might say fit the type who would be better for the country about being outraged over corruption - the Bernie Sanders, maybe the Dennis Kuciniches - can't begin to be 'nationally elected'. Politicians who will support the wealthy mysteriously find themselves with the funding to have marketing organizations make them 'viable'.
We can use grass roots organizing, grass roots funding, grass roots media (like Current TV or authors in my sig); unfortunately, these 'correct' movements rarely get majority support.
Funny enough, one of the biggest problems is the 'centrist bias' so loud in the country, dominating our media, that is so easily manipulated to move things to the right repeatedly.
These same people are the types many in the tea party come from.
They legitimize the non-legitimate (the radical right), and marginalize the opposition. We all know Grover Norquist; he has 232 of 240 Republicans in Congress wrapped around his finger. Who's the progressive counterpart to that, with a national image, a national agenda dominating the entire political debate in the nation including the President? Who's the counterweight to the Norquist message in the media?
Our democracy is troubled and I don't see how it's not going to get worse before it gets better, with more and more corporate money pouring into our elections.
No, things are more likely to just 'go badly', ever more wealth shifted to the top, the people poorer, and the powerful class reducing the power of the public step by step.
That just becomes what people become used to.
I've said before, the American experiment in 'democracy' and 'egalitarianism' is quite delicate and a historical accident, that there are always pressures to destroy.
We're seeing that. We could have used things like a global strategy for globalization that looked for win-win between the wealthy nations and the poor; instead we had a mess dominated by the short-term interests of the wealthy, who got whatever they wanted put into the law, and it's not going so well.
The bottom line is having politicians who actually 'represent the people's interest', and between those who serve other interests and the corruption of many voters, we don't.
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