I'm not sure how people can watch Glenn Beck's mental patient impersonation for hours at a time, but apparently some people do, and they take him very seriously. If you caught the recent NYT article on the teabaggers, you probably noticed that Beck and his 9/12 project came up disturbingly often:
Most of the people there had paid only passing attention to national politics in years past. “I voted twice and I failed political science twice,” said Darin Stevens, leader of the Spokane 9/12 Project.
He sounds like a typical teabagger to me along with the 66 year old Mrs. Stout who is taking a Twitter class... I'm derailing a bit here, but I had no idea such a thing was needed or I would have hired myself out as a private Twitter tutor. Moreover, I think the existence of a Twitter class suggests that many people have been left behind as the world progresses without them. They probably feel insecure and rush to catch up, but their efforts include bogus classes and Glenn Beck books... which they'll have to buy at Borders once they figure out that the libraries are a socialist thing.
Anyway, George Packer explained it better. Mrs. Stout represents a certain type of person we've seen throughout US history:
There’s nothing new about Mrs. Stout. She’s a familiar figure in American life, always latent, but coming to the surface in national emergencies. Richard Hofstadter described her mental world in detail. In the seventeen-eighties she lived in Sheffield, Massachusetts, during a period of tight credit and land foreclosures and was sympathetic to the farmers’ uprising known as Shay’s Rebellion that began there. In the eighteen-fifties she was a non-voting constituent of Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. In the eighteen-nineties she was the wife of a Nebraska farmer who joined the People’s Party and voted for William Jennings Bryan and free silver. In the nineteen-thirties desperate poverty drove her to fall for the simple solutions of Huey Long’s left-wing demagoguery, or Father Coughlin’s right-wing demagoguery, which often sounded similar. In the nineteen-fifties she listened avidly to radio personalities like Fulton Lewis, Jr., and Walter Winchell, thought President Eisenhower was a knowing agent of the Communist Party, and was a passionate supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy. In 2001 she knew that the Bush Administration orchestrated 9/11. In 2008 she showed up at Sarah Palin rallies.
And that's the problem. Teabaggers think the answer to their discontent can be found in militias, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin.
But unfortunately, they're not the least bit cute.
First up, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall (R) says disabled children are God's punishment to women who have had abortions: "The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children."
I'm curious where he gets his statistics, but I suspect he pulls them from his butt. That's the same place he gets his superstitious prejudices. And why isn't Sarah Palin taking these monumentally offensive statements as a personal attack? Maybe she's still dumbfounded by the witty response from the Family Guy actress who has Downs Syndrome? Or maybe it's because Palin is a callow and opportunistic careerist who won't dare confront a fellow Republican.
Next up, Iowa Representative Steve King (R) justifies the suicide attack on the IRS: "I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back. … It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely." Hey King, the grieving family of Vernon Hunter (the IRS manager and Vietnam veteran who was killed in the domestic terrorist attack) wants you to know that Joe Stack is not a hero!
Third up, proving that if you harnessed all the brain-power at CPAC, you could maybe boil a cup of water, Eric Wargotz, Maryland’s Republican Senate candidate, says he does not believe Barack Obama was born in the United States. I don't know what grudge Wargotz has against Hawaii.
Lots of other wingnut pleasing garbage was said at CPAC, but this final quote is actually a screen-shot from the Republican subsidiary known as Fox News:
Maybe Fox has concluded that their viewers are illiterate anyway.
Who said the kids are all progressive? Seven years ago or so -- yeah, I remember it had to be when the country was united and frighteningly patriotic -- I was meeting my friend and her little one-year-old daughter for lunch. My friend got out of the car with those knit brows that say "mommy's upset."
We were seated at a table, and I didn't have to ask "what's wrong" because my friend just blurted it all out. She's like that. It seems sweet little Grace, while strapped into her car seat, was pointing at other cars on the road and saying "Fag! Fag!"
Of course I was shocked, but before I could ask questions, my friend explained in hushed tones (so the tot on her lap wouldn't hear I suppose) that her parents babysat Grace over the weekend, and in those two days her conservative father must have taught the child how to recognize homosexuals!
Uh... really? Well, later that night we had a follow-up phone conversation. My friend had confronted her father (that must have been an awkward inquisition) and found out little Grace was saying "Flag! Flag!" Of course! It was 2002 and everybody had an American flag on their car. What we thought was a lesson in bigotry was really just a lesson in civics.
But this wasn't Grace's last foray into politics. Three years later, at the tender age of four, she informed me she didn't want to be friends with one of the neighborhood kids because the parent's car had a John Kerry bumper sticker. Nice. Grandpa was still doing his own homeschooling it seemed.
But I'm not sure "schooling" is the right word. Children at that young age are masters of mimicry (if video doesn't show, click here).
That's 13-year-old Jonathan Krohn at CPAC. He's written a book on conservatism and starred on Broadway. He's a master of dramatic gestures, public speaking, empty words, and the failed Republican talking points. If you think for even one hot second that he understands conservatism, then here's one sobering thought: he would love to see Sarah Palin become president. Sarah Palin, Jonathan Krohn and Joe the Plumber are the trinity of the Republican party. God help us all.
Jon Stewart told me that I can't make fun of 13-year-olds. But in general terms, I must say I cannot tolerate a child that has the poise, stylings and vocabulary of an adult. It's abnormal and creepy, and listening to such a creature is like nails on a chalkboard. In other words, Jonathan Krohn reminds me of Dakota Fanning.
Why can't adults let kids be kids? Don't thrust your failed dreams and aspirations on them. Let them play, make friends, and find life on their own path. They have this tiny slice of time to be a child, and many decades to be a boring blowhard... It takes decades to become a boring blowhard!
Maybe that's what Republicans like about Jonathan. He's young, and for his entire cognizant life Bush was president. A functioning government is like an Aesop fable his parents assured him wasn't real. So during these difficult times, a child is the Republican's savior and symbol for their party.
I need to have another lunch with Grace. She's almost nine now, and I'm sure she can tell me if Jonathan is winning the youth vote or if he just has cooties.
Republicans tell us they have kept us safe and there have been no terrorist attacks in the US since September 11, 2001. But what do you call this? In Miramar Beach, Florida, Dannie Roy Baker shot 5 people killing two of them. Baker had a recent history of e-mailing friends about national political issues. One recipient described the e-mails as "radical" and "inappropriate."
Another acquaintance of Baker commented, "he did come up to me one time and asked me if I was ready for the revolution to begin and if I had any immigrant in my house to get them out." Baker fits my definition of a hateful homegrown terrorist. His demented dreams of creating fear in a group of people through violence and intimidation with the goal of promoting his own ideology unfortunately came to reality last Thursday.
Some people might simply call Baker an "angry white male." Strangely, we didn't hear much about this species during eight years of the Bush administration. Glenn Greenwald points out that this group is not so much fueled by anti-government sentiment but more so by a fear of losing its cultural and demographic supremacy:
What was most remarkable about this allegedly "anti-government" movement was that -- with some isolated and principled exceptions -- it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory. Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional -- limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending -- they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on.
The angry white male is only pacified when one of his own tribe is in the White House.
Unfortunately the angry tribe has its own political party which is proving itself to be completely out of touch with the American public and reality. Tonight the Daily Show covered the endless hate and malice spewed at last week's CPAC (if video doesn't show, click here):
Though Jon Stewart is awesome, I can't laugh. I can't laugh at the CPAC audience laughing at a nuclear bomb being dropped on Chicago. The whole joke -- based on misquoting President Obama -- was too disturbing. The Republicans are cheering for another terrorist attack in the US. And I fear they are trying to inspire such an attack. This is the new Republican Nihilism.
Because they say socialism is the enemy, or "islamofascism" is the enemy, or immigration is the enemy, they are moved to broadcast creepy fantasies about a coming civil war. It's only a matter of time before more disturbed people take these war games as prophecy. Now I know what Republicans really imagine when they say they want Obama to fail.
I keep waiting for somebody in the Republican party to stand up and stop this vitriol for the sake of the nation.
