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TEA for two, and two for TEA [dicentra]

You do have to give John B. Judis credit for his TNR article “Four Myths About the Tea Parties (and why liberals are too dismissive of the movement).” The four myths he choses are genuine myths that have traction on the Left, to wit:

1. The Tea Party is not a movement.
2. The Tea Party is a fascist movement.
3. The Tea Party is racist.
4. The Tea Party is a conventional Republican group funded by big business.

Many of the arguments he presents are pretty good, but as is usually the case when the Left analyzes the Right, wide swathes of What We’re About — and in some cases historical perspective — are missing utterly from the article.

For example, to debunk Myth 2, he uses a bastardized definition of fascism from The Anatomy of Fascism that the Left promulgates:

…a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Judis rightly denies that the Tea Party fits this description, yet were he to use the original definition of Fascism that Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism restores–a “heresy” of Marxist socialism that is national rather than global, and wherein the state controls the means of production without actually owning them–there would be no need to explain why the Tea Party doesn’t fit.

It’s his argument against Myth 3, though, that prompted this post. After correctly observing that the Tea Party cannot be reduced to a racist movement the way the Citizens’ Councils of the 1950s could–who were ostensibly for states rights but actually for racial segregation–he attempts to explain what we are. And makes a spectacular omission:

The Tea Party…. fits above all into the framework of American populism, which has always had right-wing and left-wing variants, and which is rooted in a middle class cri de coeur?that we who do the work and play by the rules are being exploited by parasitic bankers and speculators and/or by shiftless, idle white trash, negroes, illegal immigrants, fill in the blank here.

That phrase I put in boldface is surprisingly accurate insofar as it identifies the productive class as the protesters, but look at whom we supposedly blame: bankers, Wall Street, layabouts (“negroes”? really? Who but Joe Biden uses that term anymore?), and illegals.

Do they really hear us complain about Wall Street (outside of complaints about the bailouts)? Has anyone been blaming the economic crisis on the idle and the non-white?

What about the towering national debt, the threat of hyperinflation, the misbehavior of the Federal Reserve, a congressional class who believes that the electorate need to “be stood up to” when they object to Obamacare and Cap and Trade? What about the insolvency of the entitlement programs, the takeover of GM, the explosion of the federal bureaucracy, the impossible-to-sustain benefits packages for public employees, the unread bills that they jam through?

What about politicians who openly reject the notion that they need to operate within the bounds of the Constitution? Who use the “good and welfare” or commerce clauses to justify any legislation at all? What about a CIC who believes that his own country is so arrogant and harmful to the rest of the world that it needs to be defanged, taken down a notch, brought down to size?

Not to mention the disdain and snobbery from costal aristocrats who think that we’re too stupid to know what’s good for us, so we can be safely ignored.

Is that so hard to understand?

This is what I want to know: Does this staggering omission owe to a deliberate decision to obscure What We’re About in an article that proports to elucidate same?

Or is he minding his readership, and so includes only those things that they’ll understand, i.e., moldy stereotypes about conservatives from the 1960s, and refrains from offending their gentle sensibilities by acknowledging that what we’re really against is what they’re FOR.

Or is he genuinely blind?

I can’t tell. I really cannot tell.

h/t Insty

81 Replies to “TEA for two, and two for TEA [dicentra]”

  1. Darleen says:

    Wall Street may be furious with the Obama administration but at least Mr. Obama (and his predecessor) bailed it out. By contrast, tea party activists consider the Troubled Asset Relief Program a betrayal of America. In the Bloomberg poll, nearly 70% of tea partiers said that they’re less likely to support a candidate who voted for the bank rescue.

    Underlying all of this is a deep tea party suspicion that big government is in cahoots with big business and Wall Street, against the rest of America. […]

    History has shown that people threatened by losses of jobs, wages, homes and savings are easy prey for demagogues who turn those fears into anger at major institutions, as well as individuals and minorities who become easy scapegoats—immigrants, foreign traders, certain religious groups. Were it not for their economic stresses, Americans wouldn’t be receptive to abolishing the Fed and the IRS, or believe that government and big business were conspiring against them, or turn isolationist.

    Business leaders should be standing up to this dangerous idiocy, while actively supporting policies to relieve the economic stresses that fuel it. Their silence in both regards is bad for business and threatens the stability of our economic and political system.

    Robert Reich in favor of fascism.

  2. sdferr says:

    I do not know Judis’ motivation to latch on to “parasitic bankers and speculators and/or by shiftless, idle white trash, negroes, illegal immigrants, fill in the blank here”, but might speculate a tie to a goal similar to the goal Kurtz attributes to Obama, namely, “His long-term goal is to polarize the parties along class lines, thereby driving the country substantially to the left.”

  3. Spiny Norman says:

    Robert Reicshhhhhh-uh:

    Were it not for their economic stresses, Americans wouldn’t be receptive to abolishing the Fed and the IRS…

    Um, yes, we would. It’s those “economic stresses” that prompted us to take to the streets. It was TARP and their other monstrosities that convinced us that Wall Street and Washington (both R and D) were, well, maybe not “conspiring against us”, but were clearly in it for themselves and we “little people” (i.e. workaday, middle-class taxpayers) mean nothing to them.

  4. happyfeet says:

    The taxes. They’re too high because the city needs money.*

    Preach it, Brother Chui!

    Lots of tea party people don’t know that’s what they are yet I think.

  5. LTC John says:

    Maybe it is a mix of both – he may have a somewhat deeper understanding, but remember he is writing for TNR… Hard to say “They are genuine, and the successor to a great American political tradition” to the folks reading that publication, in most part.

  6. Bob Reed says:

    I’m guessing that Judis is in the camp that believes that the Tea-Pertiers can’t possibly understand the macro-economics surrounding the issue of public debt; and that he probably thinks that anyone who is not of a Keynesian outlook is an irrational nutter.

    So instead he looks toward the usual group hate and tribal/class divide explanations that is the prisim through which the identity politics/class warrior crowd see society.

    Just my two cents, and admittedly I’m not too familiar with John Judis and TNR.

    Because of the epistemic closure

  7. Spiny Norman says:

    A particularly stupid comment at TNR:

    drofnats1

    Judis may be correct in rejecting each of his four points— but the negative of each of Judis’s rejections is also correct That is (Judis in quotes):

    1) “The Tea party is not a movement”. Perhaps a false conjecture, but neither is it a coherent movement led by anything except some deep-pocketed republican conservative founders (Go read who was the $ behind right wing parties in many countries 1920-1940.

    2) “The teaparty is not fascist”. Almost major party in any country is truly fascist in 2010— but a lot, including Tea Party leaders and supporters are VERY authoritarian. Very few in Germany, Italy, etc were actual members of the fascist parties… most were “fellow travelers”.

    3) “The Tea Party is racist.” I think I’d sooner argue more members are than are not. It is the dog-whistle racism of the Republican Party for the last 40 years.

    4) “The Tea Party is a conventional Republican group funded by big business.” Omit “converntional” and you probably come as near to truth as one can on a political question.

    Blah, blah, blah… The entire comment consists of the same lame-ass conventional Lib-Dem talking points we see from the trolls on a daily basis (dog-whistle again? Ohferfuckssake!), but the highlighted bit is so egregious I had to point it out: TEA party protesters are nothing if not completely anti-authoritarian.

    And the rest of the comments? Jumpin’ Jeebus on pogo stick, those people are blinkered idiots.

  8. Squid says:

    Inasmuch as we’re not on board with the idea of the productive turning over their wealth to the unproductive at threat of violence, he’s not so far off. He mistakes a part of the thing for the thing itself, but you gotta cut him some slack — real-life issues are notoriously difficult for the Reality-Based Nuance Brigade to fully comprehend.

  9. geoffb says:

    What’s undeniable, though, is that those most likely to benefit from right-wing middle class insurgencies are not the embattled middle classes, but the business interests and the wealthy associated with the Republican Party. That was certainly true of the “Reagan Revolution,” which put an end to the movement toward income equality that had begun in the 1930s. So who benefits from these movements is not the same as who controls them on a day-to-day basis. That is likely to become apparent after this November’s election.

    He just can’t resist that old “they’re too stupid to vote their own best interest” meme.

  10. geoffb says:

    “His long-term goal is to polarize the parties along class lines, thereby driving the country substantially to the left.”

    And what if he succeeds and finds the “class” that supports him is 10% or less of the population?

  11. Spiny Norman says:

    Many of the arguments he presents are pretty good, but as is usually the case when the Left analyzes the Right, wide swathes of What We’re About — and in some cases historical perspective — are missing utterly from the article.

    What he has done, in reality, is make a reasonably sincere and honest effort to drive a square peg into a round hole.

  12. RRRoark says:

    There are two quotes that explain the libtards search for ways to explain the TEA Party phenomenon that so befuddles them that they resort to myths:

    1. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

    2.Kaffee: I want the truth!
    Col. Jessep: You can’t handle the truth!

  13. Not for nothing, but I know some bankers who work pretty fucking hard. Harder than I want to work anyway, and also almost definitely a shit-lot harder than Judis did writing this article. Doesn’t really connect well with the article, but I’m not all that pissed off at bankers. I am incensed at public employee unions, unions in general and the Foghorn Leghorns in Congress, even if, and I mean this, even if they like the soldiers, smoke the dope and want the homos to marry.

  14. dicentra says:

    Thanks, Jeff. Sorry for forgetting to send a title along.

  15. Randy says:

    #10 geoffb

    No. His only frame of reference is economic interest. A liberty interest is beyond his ken.

  16. Randy says:

    #13 LMC
    Many years ago, when I was in law school, I dated a girl whose father was a senior partner in a big firm in Memphis. He still worked Sundays, sometimes. I decided then that they could have the money.

  17. geoffb says:

    BTW For those with the Kurtz book Mr. Judis shows up on pages 149-150 and 381-382.

  18. sdferr says:

    What is he doing there geoffb?

  19. newrouter says:

    What is he doing there geoffb?

    let me guess he’s a commie too. no sarc

  20. bh says:

    He wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority in 2002.

    He was right but I wonder if he also predicted it wouldn’t last even five years.

  21. newrouter says:

    carville wrote a book about that too. must have been the thing to do in proggland

  22. geoffb says:

    He was part of the NAM (the SDS successor) group. Former editor at “Socialist Revolution”. He left them in 1975 to work the electoral process to build a majority movement for socialism that would take over the government and form a new society. They had the socialist periodical “In These Times” as their forum.

  23. sdferr says:

    Thanks for the precis geoffb. So perhaps, given that account, my suspicions of Judis’ motivation aren’t too far off.

  24. geoffb says:

    They are cut from the same cloth, yes.

  25. LBascom says:

    we who do the work and play by the rules are being exploited by parasitic bankers and speculators and/or by shiftless, idle white trash, negroes, illegal immigrants, fill in the blank here.

    Uuum, no. It’s pretty much just “government”.

    Wall street and speculators and banks all played by the rules government set up. That businesses try to profit is no new thing, it’s government that was corrupt. And by government I mean the crooked bastards in congress.

    The shiftless and idle white trash ain’t my problem til government takes my wages to support them. That just encourages more shiftlessness.

    Negros can work side by side with me; government policies are what make victims of minorities by pandering to them. All of government needs to be blind as lady justice when dealing with the people. Equal treatment under the law. The only identity group government should recognize is “citizen”, or “foreigner”.

    Illegal immigrants are a problem with only a magnitude that equals how blatantly government refuses to enforce immigration law. They’re pretty fucking blatant.

    Another few blanks I’ll fill…we don’t want our leaders going around apologizing to foreign leaders for us. We don’t want to side with Israels enemies. We don’t want to abandon Poland and Nicaragua, or play nice with Venezuela. We don’t want the Executive branch suing a state for enforcing a constitutionally sound law. As citizens, we don’t like being treated as the enemy by our President if we didn’t vote for him, or don’t like his vision for America. These aren’t Tea Party issues, but I double dog dare you to find a Tea Partyer that disagrees.

    I think Judis is working from the Dem script. He knows…

  26. derek says:

    How come none of these brilliant leftists have figured out that 2008 was the solution, not the problem, and the solution was thwarted by government? I have no opinion about bankers or Wall Street other than they would be eating out of dumpsters but for the generosity of the US taxpayer. Odd that some cockamamie story has to be made up, complete with racism and class struggle to explain the gut level reaction to such stupidity.

    Derek

  27. Ric Locke says:

    No, Lee, I don’t think he does know.

    Like most leftoids, he doesn’t actually perceive the world, he sees the stereotype he’s built up. From time to time something in the real world resonates with the stereotype, but the best he can do is get something that’s colored by his preconceptions. Most of the time what he sees is a bit of the stereotype that’s, what, activated(?) by something in the real world.

    One of the big problems is that Marx has models for proletarian revolutions and oppression by privilege, but there’s nothing in there that models a bourgeois revolution. It just isn’t possible by his theory-set, so it’s puzzling.

    Regards,
    Ric

  28. LBascom says:

    “Like most leftoids, he doesn’t actually perceive the world, he sees the stereotype he’s built up”

    You’re very likely right.

    I do, however, take self denial with a grain of salt. The T-movement is conservative, lots of talk of the Constitution, and the ideas of the founders.

    To say we are feeling exploited by Wall Street and illegal immigrants is a mere variation of “bitter clingers”. It seems too cynical to be cluelessness.

  29. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Fuck Marx, and the Lenin he rode in on.

    – The Left is intimately familiar with all things Marxian, since Progressivism is Marx lite. Just their usual masterful job of projection. I doubt he even noticed his definition for Marxism read like a typical Progressives Bio.

  30. bh says:

    Long time no see, BBH. Hope all is well.

  31. motionview says:

    What about the towering national debt, the ….Is that so hard to understand?

    Excellent questions, it would be great if they were on every voters mind this weekend.

  32. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Yo bh. Did a re-locate to new digs. Lots of fits and starts, as usual for any move, but things are smoothing out nicely.

  33. bh says:

    Good deal, BBH.

  34. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Has feets been behaving his staunchy little self?

  35. bh says:

    Heh, ‘feets has been ‘feets.

  36. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – I hear you, and after all, any other kind of feets would pale in comparison.

    – Oopsie. My bad.

  37. happyfeet says:

    Hi Mr. Hunter I wanna a new place real bad but moving is something I’d rather do later

  38. Bob Reed says:

    Moving. Something I’ve done too many times.

    It’s a royal pain in the arse, whether across the hall or across the country…

  39. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Hiyah feets. Wait. Is that cupcake crumbs I see on your fingers?

    – You need to get a pail ‘in wash your hands.

  40. happyfeet says:

    it is a pain a big expensive one but I’ll probably move everything to storage gradually first

  41. Bob Reed says:

    I see what you did there BBH.

  42. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – This was definitely a positive move for us. Much newer, cleaner, and cheaper, plus we were just sick of the old place really. Time for a move.

  43. happyfeet says:

    I had a pancakes n bacon one this week it was very very very tasty … it wasn’t my fault … then guess what I discovered? This is awful.

    Gooey butter cake!

    It’s evilicious. It’s at the soul food place I finally got around to going to. Way better than Roscoe’s.

  44. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Yeh, I’m busted Bob.

  45. sdferr says:

    hf, can you get a recipe for the G-B-C and promulgate teh evils?

  46. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Now if you can add a lemon custard to that buttercake feets you’ll be in cake heaven.

  47. wind sprints says:

    This is not how we make weight.

  48. bh says:

    Wind sprints is right.

  49. happyfeet says:

    hah I will see… I bet not though … it’s so indescribably good kinda like cheesecake except at room temperature and gooey and buttery and very very America

  50. happyfeet says:

    it’s gooey like it shouldn’t be able to retain cake form and yet it does … and the crust is like no other – cause of it’s been soaking in the gooey buttery goodness I guess

  51. sdferr says:

    never has had it but looking online we find:

    1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
    1 cup butter, melted
    5 eggs
    1/2 tsp vanilla
    1 (8 oz) package cream cheese
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    3 cups powdered sugar

    Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
    Mix cake mix, butter, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 3 eggs.
    Pat into a 9 X 13 inch pan.
    Mix cream cheese, 2 eggs, 1/2 tsp vanilla with a mixer. Slowly beat in powdered sugar. Pour over cake.
    Bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Cool.

  52. happyfeet says:

    I know Mr. bh next week and for many weeks after that I’m on restriction it’s coming up on two years next march for when I quit smoking and by then it’s time to bring the I can eat anything I want as long as I don’t smoke chapter to a close

    damn it

  53. sdferr says:

    And the Paula Deen version apparently built to kill more slowly:

    1 18 1/4-ounce package yellow cake mix
    1 egg
    8 tablespoons butter, melted

    Filling:
    1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
    2 eggs
    1 teaspoon vanilla
    8 tablespoons butter, melted
    1 16-ounce box powdered sugar

  54. happyfeet says:

    that sounds about right – there was a discernible cheesecakey reminiscent crustyness on top from the baking

    if you ever come out west I promise I hook you up

  55. happyfeet says:

    I like the first recipe better

  56. sdferr says:

    my druthers tend in that direction too. I think I can safely say I’ve never bought a margarine of any sort, stick or tub. Life without les oeufs? Impossible. Sugar? More, never less.

  57. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Yes, yes, the weight thing can be a real downer, but assessing California’s immediate future for the next ten years or so, I’d just as soon think happy thoughts because we’re going to have to go through a real calamity before things will get back to any sort of normal. Hopefully the water and money will run out soon which will give us a chance.

  58. cranky-d says:

    My arteries just slammed shut in anticipation. Mmmmm.

  59. happyfeet says:

    the water n money’ll last longer than this tasty bottle of piss-coloured rum I bet

  60. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Bicardi’s purple label feets. Might as well go top shelf if you’re going to hammer your liver.

  61. bh says:

    I eat stuff like this maybe four times a year.

    I really, really hate you guys.

  62. bh says:

    If I quit drinking I could eat like this but that’s just crazy talk.

  63. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Don’t hate us bh. Bet most of us do about the same as you. I know I do.

  64. happyfeet says:

    this is some stray dog bottle of rum from the republic of dominica my sister got at duty-free … I have to remember to save the bottle

  65. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Besides, isn’t special if you did it all the time.

  66. sdferr says:

    We may be in process of creating a bushido eating spirit. Embrace your death.

  67. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Interesting idea sdferr.

    – Here’s how I look at it. Two things.

    – Try as best you cab to stick with the “all things in moderation”.

    – But enjoy as many things as you can while you’re in this corporeal world.

    – The one thing I don’t want to end up doing is shuffling around in the afterlife, whatever it is, all pissed off and remorseful that I missed out on things when I could enjoy them.

  68. geoffb says:

    1 cup butter, 5 eggs, 8oz creamcheese. Add some English muffins and bacon and I’ve got a breakfast.

  69. bh says:

    Freakishly large men with odd hair loss and zits on their back are coming to choke all of you.

    Trust me, this is how it ends.

  70. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Coming soon to an ICU ward near you.

  71. Big Bang Hunter says:

    “Trust me, this is how it ends.”

    – Well, if that’s the case, then we all might as well pull up a huge slice of strawberry – whip cream topped vanilla cheese cake and our fav appertif and have at it as we keel over in a complete food induced stupor.

  72. wind sprints says:

    Don’t listen to him, bh. Wouldn’t it be more fun to run as fast as you can a few times until you puke?

  73. Big Bang Hunter says:

    – Kind of ironic we got on food tonight since we had our unofficial new home warming dinner this evening, just one of my step daughters, my youngest son, and myself.

    – Went all out for a change. I won’t rattle off the evening’s menu. bh sounds like he’s edging close to seppuku as it is.

  74. sdferr says:

    If it’s puking you want, may I suggest mushrooms at 15 paces? You eat yours, I eat mine, then we try to puke on each other’s shoes, after which we just get down to hallucinating for a couple of hours?

  75. Moving. Something I’ve done too many times.

    It’s a royal pain in the arse, whether across the hall or across the country…

    Same here. Moving is teh suck.

  76. bh says:

    I appreciate that, BBH.

    Ahhh, ‘shrooms. The year was ’95 and we were watching Leprechaun when they started to kick in…

    … that’s why you never…

    … so I apologized even though I’m pretty sure I wasn’t there when it happened.

  77. Carin says:

    If I quit drinking I could eat like this but that’s just crazy talk.

    PERISH the thought.

    I eat salads for dinner so I can have some wine afterwards. Don’t judge me.

    To stay OT – good post Di. I saw that piece earlier but could only make it halfway through before the words turned into “bla bla bla” before my eyes.

    Perhaps if a few of these liberals actually KNEW a REAL LIVE conservative (or Tea partiers) their analysis wouldn’t be so silly.

  78. LTC John says:

    “a bushido eating spirit”

    That sounds like an excellent blog title.

Comments are closed.