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<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 8:04 PM, unionyes <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:unionyes@ameritech.net">unionyes@ameritech.net</a>></span> wrote:</div>
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<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">On a positive note of where and how to focus on " Tea-baggers " are economic issues that effect them and their families directly and goes beyond the " cultural " identity politics of ; guns, abortion, gays, etc..<br>
<br>David J.<br></blockquote>
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<div>I don't see how, Dave. Tea baggers are neo-conservative. They want "less taxes" and "smaller government", and have no clue that the government actually grows larger during so-called conservative administrations. They seem unable to escape from their own identity politics, and unable to grasp the notion of the "common good" if it impinges even slightly on their precious "liberties". I may agree with a Tea bagger that America has problems, chief among them economic, but a Tea bagger and I would never in a million years agree on solutions to the problem. I've certainly tried to dialogue with them.</div>
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<div>John</div>
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<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <<a href="mailto:galliher@illinois.edu" target="_blank">galliher@illinois.edu</a>><br>
To: "Brussel Morton K." <<a href="mailto:mkbrussel@comcast.net" target="_blank">mkbrussel@comcast.net</a>><br>Cc: "Peace-discuss List" <<a href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net" target="_blank">peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>><br>
Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 7:23 PM<br>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Jokers to the right, maybe, but where are the clowns?<br><br><br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">I wish the Dems felt uncomfortable for the right reason - guilt for consciously betraying the people who elected them: (1) money for military thugs and contractors and death for the Middle East; (2) bonuses for Wall Street and unemployment for Main Street; and (3) profits for insurance companies and no health care even to the standard of other industrialized countries. It's a sorry record - it's going exactly in the wrong direction - and it's no wonder that people are rejecting them at the polls. There'll be more of that in the fall.<br>
<br>And who is the Left that the Tea-partiers are supposed to make uncomfortable or fearful? Here's what the authentic Left says:<br><br>First of all, don't believe anything you hear from power systems. So if Obama or the boss or the newspapers or anyone else tells you they're doing this, that, or the other thing, dismiss it or assume the opposite is true, which it often is. You have to rely on yourself and your associates -- gifts don't come from above; you're going to win them, or you won't have them, and you win by struggle, and that requires understanding and serious analysis of the options and the circumstances, and then you can do a lot. So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm getting shafted." And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you -- they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.<br>
<br>Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren't getting them anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks [that were the problem].<br>
<br>I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, "Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now." That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left. So, there's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything -- a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer...<br>
<br>Amen. --CGE<br><br><br>Brussel Morton K. wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">On the subject of the Tea Party and its racial overtones, see<br><br><a href="http://www.truthout.org/white-racial-resentment-bubbles-under-surface-tea-party-movement56709" target="_blank">http://www.truthout.org/white-racial-resentment-bubbles-under-surface-tea-party-movement56709</a><br>
<br><br>One commenter of this article asks:<br><br>/Is there much difference between the Tea Party and the John Birch Society?<br>There's nothing new here. It's rural versus urban.... I remember it all from<br>growing up in rural Michigan in the 1950's. Southern? I don't think so. It's<br>
too easy to brand white southerners as the only racists in America. Remember,<br>Timothy McVey was from Michigan. The Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan was<br>from a neighboring Michigan town in the 1960's. This is the racist fringe of<br>
Libertarianism./ / / I wonder how Carl et al. feel about joining the chorus<br>of Tea Party guests and advocates like Tom Tancredo, Glenn Beck, and Sarah<br>Palin, all notable at their convention in Nashville? Carl and people like<br>
Cockburn seem to relish them, since they clearly make the Dems and the Left<br>uncomfortable and/or fearful.<br><br>--mkb<br><br><br>On Feb 6, 2010, at 4:18 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">Clowns to the left of me! Jokers to the right! Here I am stuck in the<br>middle with you.<br><br>Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you, and I'm wondering what it is I should<br>
do. Its so hard to keep this smile from my face. Losing control yeah I'm<br>all over the place.<br><br>[The Tea party movement - a crazy quilt of new growth forest, weeds, and<br>Astroturf - is growing up outside the limits of allowable debate policed by<br>
the Republicans and Democrats, causing them some anxiety. They know the<br>interests they defend have less and less support among Americans.<br><br>But where is the escape from those limits on the left?<br><br>As all recent presidents have, Obama advertised to his masters - American<br>
elites - in the Mendacity of Hope that he could successfully occlude the<br>contradiction between the goals of that small group and the mass of<br>Americans ("Bring us together again!") and his principal - perhaps his only<br>
- success so far has been the co-option of the anti-war movement.<br><br>Perhaps the Tea-partiers will gives an example - and maybe even the moxie -<br>to get it together again.]<br><br><br>Republicans seek 'Tea Party' allies<br>
<br><br>The Tea Party political movement in the United States has been gaining momentum since early last year by appealing to conservative Americans who<br>want lower taxes and smaller government.<br><br>Thousands of people are attending the first Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee. And its something the Republican Party has taken a<br>
keen interest in.<br><br><br><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/02/201026182135711755.html" target="_blank">http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/02/201026182135711755.html</a></blockquote>
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