The Tea Party

[poliphilo]

We all hate government, right? Except the North Koreans. And maybe even they hate government deep down inside, where nobody can see. Government is always corrupt and stupid and disgusting. However, if you want to have a society of any degree of complexity you can't manage without it.  The bigger, more complex the society, the bigger, more complex its government has to be. 

The Tea Party dream is a dream of log cabins and coonskin hats and long-barrelled flintlock rifles. It's the dream Daniel Boone carried around with him, but which faded whenever he paused to set up a fort- which needs soldiers, administrators, law officers, decision makers- ie: government. It's a lovely dream if you fancy living way out on the edge- as a rugged 18th century individualist- and I can see why people buy into it- but there's no way you can make a 21st century nation conform to it without returning that nation to the wilderness. 

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I want to nail para 1 of this blog entry to the nearest church door Martin Luther style and FORCE MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN TO READ IT.

When I hear the "I blame the government" mantra I immediately conclude the person's a wanker.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

The maudlin sentimentality giving birth to such fantasies is what takes the place of intelligence and common sense among Republican Teabaggers. Their notions of history, international relations, good government, justice, common decency, and so on, are all equally childish and debauched.

As one would naturally expect, life on the American frontier was nothing as they imagine. Few lived there by choice. Most were driven to such extremes either indirectly by poverty or directly by the advance of civilization and more decent folk.

And of course, what is completely opaque to the British press, possibly by design, is that the drive to eliminate government imposition is just code throughout the South for rolling back racial equality, since it was the Federal government that stepped in and forced an end to racial segregation. What they want is not a return to coonskin caps and flintlocks, but a return to the Old South, where blacks were kept in their place and where the white trash ancestors of Republican Teabaggers enjoyed a better life as a consequence -- or so they imagine.

There has long been a movement in this country, led by wealthy corporatists and their minions, to eliminate all government programs except the military. They see the Federal government as a limit to corporate profits, and rightly so. Republican Teabaggery is just a would-be comical mask for that not so comical endeavor.

Well...you know...*cough*...1776 and all that...

[jorrocks-j.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I think we'll work it out our own way. :-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I sometimes call myself an anarchist, but I'm not really. It's our job as concerned citizens to try to keep government honest and mock the hell out of it, but in the last analysis I know we can't do without it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The myth of the old South is thoroughly pernicious. J.B Priestley has an excellent essay about how its failure to produce any art of any value gives the lie to its claim to be a "civilisation".

Re: Well...you know...*cough*...1776 and all that...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Of course.

But the Declaratian of Independence doesn't preclude us furriners from having our opinions.

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

Yeah ... well ... that's the Tea Party's _dream_ alright. But just a dream. They live next door, send their kids to public school, rely on the fire department, the department of transportation to repair the roads they use, etc and so on. Tea Partiers either (1) literally don't think things through far enough to see that someone needs to pay for these things or (2) just want someone else to pay for it.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I don't think they even know what government is.

They use "big government" as a code word for "socialism," which itself is a code word for social welfare--or rather, anything that doesn't fit the rugged, individualist, capitalist narrative that they've been fed by corporate media outlets like Fox. There are some social welfare programs that they like, or at least pay much less attention to.

Among folks like this, military spending is a non-issue, but they will raise a huge fuss about foreign aid. It's only big government if you don't like it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They live in community but dream of being Billy the Kid. I guess there's a part of most of that would like to be Billy the Kid.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Tea Party is a romantic, populist movement. It's all about emotion, not thought- which makes it very easy to manipulate.

[oakmouse]

They're yearning for a past that never existed, just as Jerry Falwell and his minions claimed to be restoring a 1950s, god-fearing Leave It To Beaver world that never was. I don't know what they think they'll accomplish with this, but it certainly won't be what they think they want.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I lived through the 50s. I'm very glad that that world has passed away. One thing that's usually forgotten in reconstructions is just how terrified we all were of the Russians and the Bomb. It wasn't a happy time.

Re: Well...you know...*cough*...1776 and all that...

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I am so astonished by the commentary in response to this entry that I am just going to stand behind you, jorrocks_j, and be amazed at the way people are assuming such ugly things about me based on politics they don't even have an investment in. :/

[oakmouse]

*nods* I wasn't born until the early 60s, but my elder siblings bore the marks of living through the 50s and even as a child I could see those marks in them. It definitely wasn't the happy, secure, peaceful time that conservatives claim it to have been.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We're paranoid now, but we were even more paranoid back then.

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

The loss of the Old South produced some excellent fiction, however--Faulkner and O'Connor, just off the top of my head. It took defeat, humiliation, tragedy (from the Southern point of view) to create Southern literature.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

My prediction is this will split the Republican movement in two.

I'm not worried, I think it will mobilise democratic voters while dividing the Republicans - I suspect Obama will do badly today but I think he will have the last laugh in two years.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You could well be right. There seems to be no love lost between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment.

[oakmouse]

Oh yeah, we were. In a big way. Simple J. Malarkey (Pogo cartoonist Walt Kelly's parody of Joseph McCarthy) came out of that paranoia. The modern era doesn't have a Simple J of its own. (Yet. *crosses fingers*)

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

There's a terrific book called "The Way We Never Were" that talks about how incredibly wrong this idealized notion of the American 1950s was. For one thing, the prosperity that Americans enjoyed was largely due to MASSIVE amounts of government subsidy--far from the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" ideal we like to attribute to that period. And contrary to the "Leave it to Beaver" stereotype, divorce rates were the highest they'd ever been in the 1950s.

Anyway, fascinating read if this kind of thing interests you.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's right. The South has produced great art, but only since it got rolled over.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The 50s- across the world- were a period of recovery from the trauma of war.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree that the South was not civilized, but trust that Priestly was not suggesting that civilization necessarily flourished outside the South. As we have discussed before, American men of letters have historically been few and far between.

Re: Well...you know...*cough*...1776 and all that...

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

So, the French are coming to our rescue once again? Thank God.

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

I think you have it wrong. I'm no Tea Partier--far from it--but this doesn't really seem to describe anything about the Tea Party.

There's not a good descriptor for it, which is why I've relegated it to "populism" and left it there.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Not just populism, but romantic populism. These are people hankering after a golden age that never was.

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

Here's another take.

Most things said about the Tea Party are true, just not quite true enough.

[oakmouse]

Thank you very much for the recommendation! I went and looked this up, and I definitely need to read it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I'm not a huge fan of American literature (it's just too foreign) but the 19th century roll-call isn't too shabby- Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, Poe, Twain, Dickinson; these are not just good writers, but writers who broke new ground.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Interesting article.

It's indicative of the lack of focus that while it may have spokespeople- and people behind the scenes pulling strings- it doesn't have a single, identifiable leader.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

As I recall, this is the second time we have broached the topic of American letters.

I cannot but agree with your roll call and its significance. Melville, Poe, and Twain, are among my favorite authors of whatever age and clime, but their inclusion tends to damn American literature, generally, rather than uplift it. Melville and Poe were both extreme outliers, Poe especially, and part of what marked Twain was his loud and rather humorous rejection of the hallowed myth of American literature.

Emerson of course seems so profound and so terribly important, when we read him now, just as he seemed to be in his own day. After Emerson came Thoreau, but after Thoreau came no one and New England transcendentalism went no where. It failed to inspire, not because Emerson and Thoreau were not themselves inspired, or because they were incapable of inspiring others, but for the simple reason that in the New England of their day there was no one to inspire. They might as well have read their work in a cabbage patch, expecting the assembled heads to be edified and uplifted thereby. Emerson and Thoreau were great minds, but as such they practically stood alone.

I happen to be reading Emerson at the moment and am very impressed. In some ways he is still ahead of his time, sad to say, and in the darker expanses of the Republic I suspect he could still stir up controversy, were explicit rumors of his ideas to spread that far.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

The Republican party does not have functioning, ostensible leadership, either, yet that does not mean that they are leaderless or a genuine expression of grass-roots populism. Former Republican Rep Dick Armey is one of the slime balls behind the 'movement'. Murdock's Fox News and the editorial page of the WSJ are busily feeding it and fanning the flames. When polled, self-identifying Teabaggers are demographically and ideologically indistinguishable from main-stream so-called conservatives, these days. In other words, they are merely Republicans ashamed of identifying as Republicans, after 2008.

Glenn Beck is a leader. Rush Limbaugh is a leader. Sarah Palin is a leader. That half-witted harridan Michelle Bachman is a leader. The list is very, very long. The fact that there is no official leader of the 'movement' is a feature, not a bug. The whole silly business is just an attempt to deflect attention from the massive cock-up that was eight years of the Cheney-Bush administration and the millions of ignorant people that went to the poles, at Mr Murdoch's behests, and made it all happen.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

I find it astonishing that in the Baby Boomer Generation, according to American Association for Retired People, a great number of us voted for the TeaPartyers. Now when I was i the 60s, I was sure we were going to make this a more liberal place. Perhaps I had too much marijuana at the time. Perhaps I forgot that college liberalism infected only 10% of the population and of the 90% left a good deal of us were longing for the 50s. Rebellion was a thing to want if you were young in the 60s and I suppose in its own way is what these folks want in the 21st century. A telling point is that there are folks in several other countries, Israel I know, but I think maybe even your lovely Isle, that want to have a Tea Party of their own.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There are elements of the Tea Party philosophy (if you can call it that) that chime very well with that of the 60s counter-culture. Both are/were anti-establishment, libertarian, individualistic, Utopian, revolutionary.

Were the hippies on the left? On reflection I'm not so sure they were. Opposition to the Vietnam War may have had less to do with pacifism than with a desire not to be drafted.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

Good question. A lot of us felt we were liberals, but maybe even greater numbers were along for the ride. Still I thought we would be different. Silly me.